Photograph from mattdente on Flickr Slate Magazine says: Maybe. As much as companies like Monsanto and Syngenta might position themselves as the solution to the global food crisis, Slate claims that they would have to significantly change the way they operate first. The article gives the GM industry some specific suggestions for policy change, such as no longer requiring poor farmers to buy new seeds every year, as well as increasing investment in nutritious, easy-to-grow crops like cassava, sorghum, millet, and chickpeas. Slate also urges GM companies to be more honest about the amount of time, energy, and technological development that will be necessary to achieve the kind of crop yields they're promising. Finally, the article proposes that GM companies...
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The current issue up for discusion in Business Week's Debate Room is GMO Crops: A Growing Concern (get it?). The debate about genetically modified food pits Gillian Madill and Ian Illuminato, of Friends of the Earth, against Jim Greenwood, of the Biotechnology Industry Organization. For me, though, the real debate here isn't about the pros and cons of genetically engineered food (at least not until long term studies on its effects have been completed), but about whether or not companies who use GM ingredients should be required to say so on their labels....
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In August of 2006, then Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns announced that the U.S. commercial rice supply had been tainted with an experimental, genetically modified variety unapproved for human consumption. The experimental rice supposedly posed no threat to human health, according to both the USDA and Bayer CropScience, the company that created it. However, the European Union subsequently banned imports of American rice, a move that drastically affected the domestic market. Now, 14 months later, in absence of any evidence one way or another as to how this contamination occurred, Bayer CropScience has been cleared from any governmental enforcement action, and the investigation has officially been closed....
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