by Karl Haro von Mogel on 28 October 2009 Overnight, Biofortified gained a few more votes, strolling up to 824 votes so far. Our competitor, the Non-GMO Project has 346 votes, and has been gaining faster than we have in the last day. And I just discovered last night that a stealth competitor that no one noticed has rapidly gained votes. On Monday it was at 2 votes, last night when I saw it it was at 218 votes. Right now it has passed the Non-GMO Project and is sporting 368 total votes!
This entry is the Orwellian-named Campaign for Healthier Eating in America, an initiative started by dance instructor and author Jeffrey Smith. Orwellian? Oh yes, it isn’t about getting people to eat more vegetables and cut down on saturated fat – it is about getting people to eat blue corn instead of yellow corn to avoid GE crops. In fact, on their website, Smith explains how manufacturers can advertise in his ‘shopping guide,’ for a nominal fee of course. What does the money go to?
Interestingly, Smith is on the Communications Committee of the Non-GMO Project.
Anyway, for my final reason why I think Biofortified deserves your vote, I will briefly discuss the grant that comes with the grand prize. When we entered, there was no such grant being awarded. Consequently after it was added, we have thought about what we would want to do with that money. Here are some of the ideas that we have come up with.
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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 26 October 2009 The Ashoka Changemakers GMO Risk or Rescue contest is about halfway through its final voting week, a lot has happened in this time, which I will fill you in on, and today I present the second reason why I think Biofortified deserves your vote: Dialogue.
One of the reasons why we started a group blog to talk about plant genetics and food is because of the many opportunities it allows for dialogue, of several kinds.
First, it allows scientists to start talking about their work and the work of others in a manner that people without a background in genetics can access. Most people in this country, and many around the world, have access to a computer that is internet-capable and can read about it. Scientific Journals are the primary go-to place for the latest science and the most complete summaries of knowledge and issues, but these are often behind a registration wall that limits its access to only a small part of the population. On a science blog such as Biofortified new research can be presented where almost anyone can access it, and in a language common to non-scientists.
But more importantly,
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by Karl Haro von Mogel on 18 October 2009 Tomorrow’s Table, the book and blog by Pamela Ronald, has now moved to ScienceBlogs. Home of the popular Pharyngula blog written by PZ Myers, the medical blog Respectful Insolence by Orac, and a whole host of others, this means she will have a lot more exposure and the support of a pool of regular blog readers in that community. Congratulations! Maybe a few of those readers might find their way from the hive mind
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