Slow Food
November 12, 2015
Tequila
December 3, 2015
Food Chain Radio Show #1036
Michael Olson, Author & Urban Farming Agriculturalist
The GMO Controversy
This Poll is closed!!
Guest: Professor Sheldon Krimsky, Tufts University and Author, An Illusory Consensus Behind GMO Health Assessment
Seventy-five percent of the processed foods we buy are made from organisms that have been modified to contain foreign genes.
Michael Olson Food Chain Radio: The GMO Deniers – Guest: Professor, Sheldon Krimsky, Tufts University
Some scientists say foods that have been modified to contain genes from other species are safe to eat. Other scientists disagree and say GMO foods are not safe to eat.
The reason food crops are re-engineered with foreign genes is to make them easier to grow. Corn, for example, has been modified to contain Bacillus thuringiensis, a biologic pesticide that dissolves the stomach of insect pests. Corn has also been modified to withstand glyphosate herbicides. These genetic modifications are “stacked” in the genes of corn so as to enable a single farmer to grow a thousand acres of corn with no insects or weeds.
Needless to say, the genetic modifications have made growing some food crops much easier, and have brought some seed companies much wealth.
Consumers, however, are left with supermarkets filled with processed foods that have been infused with pesticides and drenched in herbicides, and so ask…
Leave a comment below: Are foods that contain genetically modified organisms (GMOs) safe to eat?
Tune in here, for the syndicated Food Chain Radio Show #1036 November 21, 2015 Saturday 9AM Pacific
3 Comments
Actually, we don’t definitely know that ANYTHING is safe to eat. Safety is the illusory category here. Traditional agriculture has relied on selecting crops for chance mutations that have produced apparently better stock. There is no way to know for sure that an improved characteristic, in for example higher protein content in a new “natural” strain of wheat, is not accompanied by different allergenic potential. For a further example, fava beans are very very dangerous for certain people despite the antiquity of their use. And there never has been any financial incentive to perform the exhaustive testing on heirloom crops that is done on GMO crops. I won’t make the argument that this means GMO are inherently safer (though the gene-splicing industry claims this) but it also doesn’t make GMO’s inherently more dangerous.
Hi Michael,
Thanks for holding conversations on these mostly overlooked topics of critical importance. I would like to see the GMO conversation shift from safety of the food to the effects of this type of agriculture on our soils and long-term food security. Few people realize the damage that has occurred and continues to be promoted by our government, our schools and by the chemical manufacturers. There has been an uptick in natural farming practices and this is bright news. It is not publicized enough though to convince farmers that they can turn a profit without destroying their local ecology.
Thanks for all you do!
Claudia Joseph
My mother in law gave me your book for Christmas, bcuaese she knows this is an interest of mine and bcuaese she is friends with Joshua’s mom, Terry. I am loving the book and your blog (that I stumbled on while googling local grains haha), but we live in Peoria, AZ, so many of the things you can grow there we cannot here. Do you know of anyone like you that lives here? I really need connections for locally grown produce and grains. I have a few ideas and am visiting a farm in Scottsdale next week that is a resource as well, but thought asking you might yield even more information. We will be building our first chicken coop soon so excited!! Thanks for your book it has given us the kick in the pants we needed been thinking this way for awhile, but only had a minimal garden til now. Hoping to expand soon, but taking each step as we can so as not to overwhelm and make us want to quit. Jill Creed