I’m not so sure beef-loving foodies are going to be down with that. No matter, it should be fun to see the new genre of cooking shows and recipe books based on lab grown meat.
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Category: agriculture
Watch Out For Those Genetically Modified Hamburger Buns!
In this space, I’ve frequently shown how GMO fear mongering plays out in the media. The latest frightful example aired Monday on CNN. It was a piece about the mysterious genetically modified (GM) wheat recently found in an Oregon farm field.
First, some quick background: In the early to mid-2000s, Monsanto field tested GM wheat in 16 states. But as NPR reported, “the country’s wheat growers told the company that they did not want it.” So Monsanto never sought to commercialize the crop and stopped its field tests in 2005.
Nobody knows how this isolated strand of GM wheat suddenly reappeared. Is it sabotage, as Monsanto and others have suggested, or a case of gene flow? Although the U.S. Department of Agriculture says the GM wheat has not spread, there is fallout for Monsanto and repercussions for American wheat farmers.
On Monday, CNN dove into the story with a 3-minute segment that starts off this way: Read More
Why GMO Myths Are So Appealing and Powerful
Guest post by Cami Ryan, a Canadian agricultural researcher:
Last week, an executive with a biotech trade group asserted in an interview that it wasn’t too late to win the hearts and minds of consumers suspicious of genetically modified foods. Biotech advocates just need to do a better job of explaining the technology and its benefits. The headline for the piece read:
It’s not too late to change the conversation on GMOs
While I admire this optimism and agree that we should continue to engage in conversations about GMOs, there are certain present-day realities that constrain our efforts to find common ground on this very controversial topic.
At the top of this list is the sheer amount of information we are inundated with every day. Many of us are tapped into mobile technology. We are referred to as ‘just in time’ users (Rainie and Fox 2012). We account for 62% of the entire adult population who often look to online sources and online social networks for information. Anti-GMO interest groups have successfully leveraged these networks to disseminate misinformation and influence public opinion. Using carefully crafted words (frankenfoods!) and images (syringes in tomatoes), they create myths–GM corn causes cancer, fish genes have been forced into tomatoes or GM corn kills the larvae of monarch butterflies–that tap into people’s fears about genetic engineering.
When you combine these myths with our cognitive habits, things become even more complex: Read More
Don’t Let Mark Bittman Cook Your Brain with Bad Science
Mark Bittman, the popular food writer for the New York Times, has written a column that is almost beyond parody for its unintentional irony. The only way to fully appreciate his lack of self-awareness is to stop and marvel at numerous passages. Let’s start at the top:
Things are bad enough in the food world that we don’t need to resort to hyperbole to be worried or even alarmed.
This is some chutzpah. Here’s Bittman from September 15, 2012:
It’s not an exaggeration to say that almost everyone wants to see the labeling of genetically engineered materials contained in their food products.
Almost everyone? Same column:
G.M.O.’s, to date, have neither become a panacea — far from it — nor created Frankenfoods, though by most estimates the evidence is far more damning than it is supportive.
This is completely untrue. If Bittman had wanted to be factual he would have referred NYT readers to credible sources on the state of the science on biotech crops and foods, such as here or here. Instead, he links to a website called the Organic Authority and a post that explains why
GMOs are bad for your body, bad for the community, bad for farmers and bad for the environment.
This is what is known as laundering untruths. Read More
When Media Uncritically Cover Pseudoscience
Anti-biotech activists, like their fellow travelers in the anti-vaccine movement, are masters at pseudoscience. As I’ve previously discussed, the really clever GMO opponents put a veneer of science on their propaganda.
One recent example that an anti-GMO website approvingly pointed to was so obviously absurd that I was sure it would be ignored by media. Read More
Is There Room at the Table For an Organic Food Eating Skeptic?
Being a city boy (for all my adult life), my exposure to agriculture is woefully limited. I’ve parachuted onto actual farms in the Midwest during reporting trips for stories and every year around Halloween my wife and I take our kids to a farm in the outskirts to pick pumpkins, get lost in a corn maze and ride on a hay truck. When we trek on occasion to Eastern Long Island (you know, on the way to the Hamptons or Montauk Point), we’ll stop off at a roadside farmstand to pick apples or whatever’s in season. Oh yeah, and last summer while driving through central California, we stopped off at a pistachio farm. That was cool.
So I’m your stereotypically disconnected urban food consumer who nonetheless cares about the environment and how my food is produced. That’s why if you opened my refrigerator door, you would see organic milk, eggs, yogurt, cheese, salad greens, fruit, vegetables. I’m so brainwashed that I’ve even taken to buying organic bananas, because they look so fetchingly yellow. To be extra sure that we’re not poisoning our kids with pesticide residue, my wife and I use all “all-natural, lemon scented” fruit and vegetable wash to detox our organic grapes and apples. (I know, what happened to good old fashioned tap water?) Even our frozen pizza is organic. (No GMOs, either, the package boasts.) On our bookshelves, you’d spot the works of Michael Pollan and Alice Waters, who teach us how to lead this virtuous, eco-conscious lifestyle.
The only thing keeping me from being totally pathetic is my stubborn refusal to join our local food co-op. A man has his limits: I’m not bagging groceries or stocking shelves during that 2 3/4-hour shift that members are required to work every four weeks. (If I was a reincarnated Phil Ochs, I’d write a song called Love me, I’m a liberal foodie.)
Some readers are by now gasping at the hypocrisy of their hippy punching, sacred cow busting blogger, he who lambasts the nature-worhshipping, organic-loving, GMO-fearing denizens of the world. Read More
CATEGORIZED UNDER: agriculture, ecology, environment, food, food movement, organic agriculture, organic food, select
Why Organic Advocates Should Love GMOs
Adapted from the new book The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet by Ramez Naam
What if there was a way to farm that spared the rainforests, cut down on toxins in our soil and waters, and provided healthier, more nutritious food?
Sounds like organic farming, right? But actually, it’s GMOs.
Golden Rice, biologically enriched with Vitamin A, will boost nutrition for millions of children. Photo/ International Rice Research Institute
The goals of organics – farms that cause less damage to the environment and grow food that’s better for you – are great. But organic isn’t living up to that potential. Read More
CATEGORIZED UNDER: agriculture, biotechnology, climate change, environment, food security, GMOs, select
The Sacred Messenger
Once upon a time, long before a recent wave of ideological zealotry drove the Republican party to cleanse itself of moderates, appeals for GOP comity were often couched in Ronald Reagan’s eleventh commandment:
Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican
In liberal and environmental circles, a similar dictate seems to now hold, with respect to those who are perceived as tireless defenders of nature and champions of social justice. If someone meets that criteria and is also credited with taking on evil, greedy corporations, a one-dimensional portrait of the hero is often painted by admiring media. This is the case with Vandana Shiva, the internationally famous activist and author. Her deified status is such that I can’t imagine any of my colleagues working at progressive media outlets ever speaking ill of her. Besides, to do so would only undermine her message–her larger cause to save the earth from profit-hungry plunderers. That is likely the rationale of those who might not buy into everything she says. But I doubt that most progressive or eco-minded writers are even inclined to be skeptical of Shiva. She is the green world’s Mother Teresa. Read More
CATEGORIZED UNDER: agriculture, biotechnology, environment, environmentalism, genetic engineering, genetically modified foods, GMOs, select, Vandana Shiva
MORE ABOUT: agriculture, biotechnology, ecology, environmentalism, genetic engineering, GMOs, Vandanda Shiva
Teaching the Controversy
When it comes to evolution, no reputable museum would dare “teach the controversy,” a catchphrase used as a ploy by creationists some years back, when they tried to put “intelligent design” on an equal scientific footing with evolutionary biology.
The biotech issue, which is a source of much controversy in environmental and food circles, is a separate beast. But exactly what aspects of biotech constitute legitimate scientific debate is also a contentious matter. It would be nice if we could sort that one out. Unfortunately, the public GMO discourse is dominated by phony, pseudoscientific claims advanced by ideologically motivated activists and their enablers in the media.
Like climate change, the crazy politics of the GMO debate trump the science. Along those lines, I view the “right to know” campaign (which is part of a larger effort to label genetically modified foods) as a variation of the creationist “teach the controversy” strategy. Both the “right to know” (and “just label it”) and “teach the science” movements have something in common: They deny and muddy established, consensus science. Partisan climate skeptics that are ideologically motivated play the same game.
So museums, which help educate the public on evolution and climate change, play an integral communication role on the issue of genetically modified crops. With that in mind, I was curious to learn how the subject would be treated in a new exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History called, Our Global Kitchen: Food, Nature, Culture.
How Green is Your Steak?
Which is better for the environment: Grass-fed or corn-fed cows?
The question is not as simple as you might think. Eco-minded meat eaters tend to assume that free-ranging cattle nibbling on grassy pastures is superior to herded cows fattened on corn in concentrated animal feeding lot operations (CAFO’s). Slate explored this assumption in 2010. (There is also a similar debate over which method produces tastier, more nutritious T-Bone steaks.) Discussion has largely focused on which has the bigger carbon footprint.
The issue is more complicated than that, as Marc Gunther describes in a new Yale Environment 360 piece. He also notes, interestingly:
…green groups that readily fight coal plants or suburban sprawl have for the most part shown little desire to do battle with meat. The Meatless Monday campaign was started not by environmentalists but by the school of public health at Johns Hopkins. The Mayo Clinic has more to say about meat than The Nature Conservancy, although TNC’s chief executive, Mark Tercek, is a vegetarian. Another vegetarian, Danielle Nierenberg, who directs the Nourishing the Planet program at the Worldwatch Institute, explains: “Most environmental groups don’t want to tell people what to eat or what not to eat. It’s a personal issue that’s tied to your culture, to your history, to what your mom fed you when you were five years old.”
That may be so, but with the global demand for meat rising–which will exact an increasingly heavy toll on the environment, regardless of whether cows are corn-fed or grass-fed– it’s an issue that greens are are going to have to grapple with.
What might turn out to be the best animal-friendly, eco-minded solution of all? Lab meat.
As Michael Lind recently put it:
…the technology of using stem cells to grow safe and healthy food in laboratories rather than in croplands and pastures is developing rapidly. And two trends almost certainly ensure its eventual widespread adoption: the increasing desire for meat, fruit and vegetables in the diet, as populations grow more affluent, and the limits to the land that can be used, particularly for free-range livestock. If a richer humanity is not going to go vegan, and if there is not enough range land to support free-range beef, chicken and pork for billions of people, then the choice between cruel and filthy and unsanitary feed-lots and clean, well-lit food factories will be pretty easy to make.
Who Will Elevate the Conversation on GMOs?
Yesterday, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now devoted her program to a discussion on California’s Proposition 37, a voter initiative that, if passed on November 6, would mandate the labeling of many foods in the state’s grocery stores (restaurants are exempted) if they contained genetically modified ingredients. One of the guests on the program was Michael Pollan, the best-selling author and a journalism professor at UC Berkley. At one point in his interview with Goodman, Pollan lauded Michelle Obama for “elevating the conversation” on food issues. (The First Lady has adopted healthy eating as her main cause.)
The debate on genetically modified foods (and the CA labeling initiative) is screaming out to be elevated by someone with prominence. Here’s what Pollan, who is in favor of labeling GM foods, said to Goodman on this issue:
Consumers would probably avoid genetically modified food if they were given a choice. Why would they do that? It’s perfectly rational to avoid genetically modified food so far. It offers the consumer nothing. To the consumer, all it offers is some uncertainty–the doubts [on safety] that have been raised by certain studies about it.
Pollan is no dummy. He knows that such studies are rubbish (I wonder which ones he’s referring to) and that there is no scientific evidence to support claims that GMO foods are potentially unsafe to eat. But he reinforces the fears that are fanned by anti-GMO campaigners.
In the next breath, he says this:
It [genetically modified crops] is also a type of agriculture that some consumers want to avoid: giant monocultures under a steady rain of herbicides, which is what most GM crops are. So faced with that risk/benefit analysis–some undetermined possible risk vs no benefit whatsoever, what is the smart thing to do? The smart thing to do is just to avoid it until we know more about it.
It’s incredible to me that someone so smart can make this argument with a straight face. As University of Wyoming agronomist Andrew Kniss tweeted today,
Monoculture adoption is due to the increased efficiency, not due to any one technology.
Kniss also said this in a follow-up tweet:
Monoculture & GMO are often associated, but not cause-effect.
So Pollan, given an opportunity to elevate the debate on GM foods, instead plays the “uncertainty” card and repeats the “monoculture” trope. What a shame.
In her program, Goodman also interviewed the scare-mongering huckster Jeffrey Smith, who is Dr. Oz’s go-to source on GMO issues.
Is there any hope for a sensible public conversation on GMOs?
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