Greenpeace has a campaign to convince Nestlé to ban genetically modified crops from their products in India. They have an auto-letter set up that has been sent 25,808 times (as of 2:40pm Central time). That includes my letter which I sent through their site urging Nestlé to stand up against fearmongering.

I’ve since sent a second letter thanking them for being strong through the Nestlé India contact form. I’m guessing that Greenpeace opted to

Continue reading…

Marion Nestle’s post Labeling GM foods: if the U.K. can do it, we can too! has been passed around the internet many times in the past few days by opponents of biotechnology. I appreciate their desire to know more about what they are eating, and I appreciate that Dr. Nestle admitted that “GM labeling as an issue of consumer choice, not of science”. However, I think these efforts are misguided. To help demonstrate why seeking mandatory labeling of ingredients derived from GM crops is inappropriate, please consider the following example:

Continue reading…

Timothy LaSalle, CEO of the Rodale Institute, has an article in the Huffington Post: Organic Agriculture Beats Biotech at its Own Game. Despite obviously being a very smart man, he doesn’t seem to be thinking very much as he goes through the same old weak talking points that attempt to boil a complex issue down to black and white. Let’s see what he has to say:

Real question #1: Why bother?

To this point, biotech crops have not produced the yield advantages or biological resilience to multiple stressors.

Continue reading…

A student in my Sustainable Agriculture program sent out an email a few weeks ago that really piqued my interest (I’m glad I finally have time to blog about it!). It included a link to the New Scientist article: Robot farmhands prepare to invade the countryside. The student said:

I wish this was a link to the onion, but it is frighteningly real. Do you think the cats at the “appropriate technology” center are talking about this? Doubt it. This is progress! I guess now I need a bumper sticker that says “Family farms not Robot farms”

Continue reading…

While pollinating, I’ve been listening to the Center for Inquiry’s Point of Inquiry podcast. If you are interested in non-mainstream-media topics in subjects as diverse as Naturalistic philosophy, secular child rearing, the planetary status of Pluto, and blasphemy at the United Nations, this podcast is for you. Added bonus: the host, D.J. Grothe has a nice voice and directed interviewing technique that is lacking in many podcasts.

All of the episodes are interesting, but I just had to write a quick post about the 8 May 2009 episode Who Owns You with David Koepsell. Dr. Koepsell has a lot of interesting things to say about intellectual property in his new book Who Owns You? The Corporate Gold Rush to Patent Your Genes. They cover a variety of topics in the interview that relate to human genes and IP, including the ACLU v Myriad case. I’m really looking forward to reading the book.

Continue reading…