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 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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Hello everybody. This morning I caught a red eye flight to Atlanta, Georgia. Although this trip has been almost three months in the making, I’ve been so busy getting ready that I have not had the time to give everyone the heads-up with a blog post. (Busy making time in my research, that is. Packing took one evening.) Today through Friday, I will be at the Biotechnology Industry Organization’s 2009 International Convention, representing Biofortified and blogging about it. Let me give you a few more details.
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Earlier this year, I heard about a plant science video contest called Chlorofilms. Supported by a grant from the American Society of Plant Biologists, (ASPB) they wanted to encourage people to produce informative and entertaining plant science videos and organize the best of them on one website. Their deadline was in early March, and I was busy getting some of my videos ready to be entered when they extended the deadline to April 15th. This was good, because up until they announced the extension, there were very few videos entered in the contest. As a result, over 60 videos were entered for their first contest!
This morning, I received a press release from Chlorofilms – They have chosen their winners and I’m counted among them!
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GE to cause food prices to go up?
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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