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Anastasia Bodnar on 10 September 2009
In Looking for the Truth, I did a point by point critical analysis of Organic Agriculture Beats Biotech at its Own Game by Timothy LaSalle, CEO of the Rodale Institute. I gave Dr. LaSalle credit for being a smart person who allows his ideology to cloud his judgement.
After reading Why GMO Foods Have Failed at Producing Healthy Food for More People, I don’t think I should have given him that much credit. I already covered most of his points in my previous post, but he makes some new points in this article that are, frankly, reminiscent of the scaremongering lies promoted by the Republican party about imaginary death panels.
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Anastasia Bodnar on 10 September 2009
If you’re not reading Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog yet, you really should start. Luigi and Jeremy write about seed banks, traditional agriculture, and tasty native plants, just to name a few. And they post a lot.
I’m mentioning them now because of GURT big mess, posted by Jeremy. In this post, he says that activists who oppose biotechnology and oppose genetic restriction use technology (commonly known as Terminator) are hypocrites. It’s an interesting way
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Karl Haro von Mogel on 9 September 2009
This afternoon, I polished off my entry into the Ashoka Changemakers GMO “Risk or Rescue” contest, with minutes to go before the deadline. I was going to submit my entry last night, but what I had written on the site’s system disappeared when I tried to publish it. So I had to start all over, this time writing it out in Word first. It would have been nice to know the character limit of the ‘describe your idea’ section beforehand, which led to the catastrophic disappearance.
Anyhow, please consider registering at the changemakers site and voting for my entry. The number of votes to beat is 33 votes, I know way more people read this site than that! As opposed to the hiccups that the publishing process experiences on changemakers, registration takes less than a minute and is pain-free. So get to it!
My entry is below the fold.
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Karl Haro von Mogel on 7 September 2009
A few weeks ago, I got a message from the folks at Ashoka Changemakers – earlier this summer they started a contest, one of many that they host, to spur some original thinking to help see our society out of the debate over genetically engineered crops. It is called GMO Risk or Rescue? Helping Consumers Decide. Here’s what their contest is about:
The debate over the future of our food supply is heating up. Everyone is weighing in on the moral, environmental, and nutritional effects that Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) will have on our society, but how do we really know what’s on our plate?
This summary is well-written and gets everyone in the right mindset to offer up an idea no matter their point of view. The Welcome Letter goes into more detail:
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Labeling GMOs
In my post What’s in a label?, I argued against mandatory labeling for specific details of crops, farming methods, etc. that aren’t health related, such as Kosher, “contains animal-derived ingredients”, GMO, and rBST. However, I argue in favor of any additional labels that a grower or manufacturer might want to provide, even when they go against science and may do more harm than good. In a free market, so as long as claims are true, additional labels should be allowed.
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