Read this and weep - and then speak out against Monsanto - this is population control to the nth degree. There was a trace of mischief in Michael Pollan’s smile as he took the stage of Wheeler Hall at the University of California, Berkeley, last week to introduce a lecture for a course that he co-teaches, with the activist Raj Patel, called Edible Education 101. The auditorium was crammed with seven hundred students, most looking as you might expect young Berkeley food activists to look: wholesome and bright-eyed, visibly eager to help make the global food system “more equitable, healthful and sustainable,” as the course mission states. This group constituted a kind of monoculture, and Pollan was about to introduce an invasive species. Pamela Ronald, a prominent plant geneticist and a professor at U.C.-Davis, had come, at Pollan’s invitation, to present her perspective on the benefits of genetic engineering—even though Pollan himself has been a vocal skeptic of G.M.O. foods. “If anyone can make the case for this technology, it’s Pam Ronald,” Pollan told the audience. This was a generous but daunting introduction. It’s not easy for anyone, let alone a plant geneticist who spends fifty hours a week directing a large laboratory, to persuade a crowd of young activists to shift their thinking on one of the most contentious environmental debates of our time. Last year, G.M.O. crops—corn, cotton, and soybeans—were planted on more than a hundred and sixty-seven million acres in America. Seventy per cent of processed foods now have at least one genetically engineered ingredient. But anti-G.M.O. activists have worked to mobilize a backlash: food with the “non-G.M.O.” label is today among the fastest-growing categories of product sales in U.S. markets. More at link newyorker/online/blogs/elements/2014/04/a-civil-debate-over-genetically-modified-food.html
Posted on: Wed, 18 Jun 2014 04:03:11 +0000
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