by Karl Haro von Mogel on 28 October 2009 Today, Biofortified gained another 120 votes in the Ashoka Changemakers contest, coming in at 812 at the time of this writing. It would be great if in the last day of voting, if we could top 1,000. To help to that end, I will present the fourth reason why I think we deserve a little of your time: Michael Pollan.
When I first heard about the contest, the grand prize was a ‘social media training’ session and a conversation with Michael Pollan. As I noted on my personal blog, I have been waiting to do an interview with him for almost three years. Back in 2006, I participated in a panel discussion (available here on UCTV) with him and others on Food, Farming, and Genetics, as part of the Community Book Project at UC Davis, which focused on The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Pam Ronald was also the moderator of the discussion. Our group conversation left more questions than answer in my head, so I asked him if I could interview him sometime on my radio show and he agreed. A combination of timidity, lack of radio show after moving to Madison for grad school, and the sheer amount of demand on Pollan’s time, it hasn’t yet happened.
In the interim, more questions have piled up. Not just about genetics, but even about the philosophy of science, the future of agriculture, and whether he thinks that health food stores like Whole Foods have the highest concentration of contradictory food philosophies or if he didn’t notice the food supplement aisles. I could write several pages of questions, always thinking that I will have to jettison most of them to make for a radio/podcast interview someday that will will have continuity and make sense. Over time, questions related to The Omnivore’s Dilemma slid away to be replaced by questions related to In Defense of Food. A few questions about plant genetics held steady in the heirarchy of importance.
I initially entered the contest so that I could win the conversation with him and see if he wouldn’t mind adding a microphone to it as a podcast interview. I assumed that it would be a conversation over the phone as well. The other part of the prize, the social media training, didn’t have much appeal considering I’ve been doing social media for years! You could pretty much say I entered us in the changemakers contest to talk to Pollan. But then after I entered, the contest deadline was extended and a $1,500 grant was added to the grand prize. This was going to change the dynamics of the contest dramatically, and it did.
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by Karl Haro von Mogel on 26 October 2009 In the last 12 hours, the Ashoka Changemakers contest has really taken a dramatic turn for the better for Biofortified. The vote tallies are constantly changing, but at the start of writing this post, we have rocketed forward to 632 votes, leaving behind our leading opponent the Non-GMO Project, at 260 votes. During the course of the day, we have gained about 570 votes to their 100. There are still two more days left to the contest, and you never know how much things may change down the road. So today I will present another reason why I think Biofortified deserves your vote: Honesty.
Last week, a day into the final voting week, we received a comment on our entry from Megan Westgate, the Executive Director of the Non-GMO Project. I will reproduce it in full:
Biofortified Pro GE?
Although you say here you are not pro GE, on your own homepage there is a link to “Other Pro GE Blogs” implying that yours is one, too. And there is no link to anti GE blogs (which would be a requisite if you really were committed to balanced representation). You even have a link to “Monsanto According to Monsanto” (the industry blog), but no link to the powerful documentary “The World According to Monsanto.” Given these facts, how can you really say that you are offering both sides? Your entry here doesn’t seem honest.
Anastasia and I both pounced on the comment, pointing out that nowhere in our entry to we “say we are not pro-GE,” and asked her to retract her statement and pledge not to engage in dirty politics. Making stuff up is totally not acceptable tactics (misreading isn’t very good either). Later that day, she did just that, which I applaud her for. Let the contest be about who can gather the most support over the internet, not who can misunderstand the other side the most.
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by Karl Haro von Mogel on 22 October 2009 As of Wednesday afternoon, the entry period for the Ashoka Changemakers contest is over. Everyone has had a chance to enter the contest since the deadline was extended, so now it is down to a week’s worth of voting to decide the winner. Each day, I will post a reason why I think Biofortified deserves your vote. The reason for today is Science. We bring lots of it to the site, and we would like to bring more.
Understanding the issues involved in genetic engineering in agriculture means that you have to understand some of the science. You don’t have to have a Ph.D. to have an opinion on the topic (it sure helps), but like any important issue it pays to do research first. Would you buy a car without researching your options? Maybe you don’t need to know exactly how a four-stroke wankel engine works, but knowing the difference between a V6 and a V8 might be important if you want to make the right decision for your driving needs. Wouldn’t it make sense to treat the genetics of the food you eat (and the clothing you wear) with the same information-oriented approach?
That is one of the primary reasons why we started this blog almost one year ago:
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by Karl Haro von Mogel on 3 September 2009 Note: This one is a little old, it took Anastasia’s recent post on food selling laws to remind me to post it.
In the discussion about the food safety bill, HR 875, there are many urban myths going around. From our friend Stephen Lendman’s characterization of it as a “GMO proliferation bill,” to the claim that it will ban backyard gardens, many of the myths seem to follow a similar pattern. And almost no one who promotes these myths has even bothered to read the bills.
Point of fact – if you read the text of the bill, there is absolutely nothing in it about genetic engineering, so where do they get this idea?
Nevertheless, myths such as these have traversed the intertubes and the lack of fact-checking combined with the sensationalism (and perceived plausibility?) of such a bill have put it on youtube, blogs, and some news sites.
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by Karl Haro von Mogel on 16 August 2009 Only a day after my last post about a bizarre argument against GE wheat that argued that Australian non-GE wheat producers would need to be protected from prices being lowered by a hypothetical frost-free wheat, the opposite is reported in the UK. The Daily Express reports that GM crops could send food prices rocketing. Wha?
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