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Author Archives: GDS
A Biotech Page-Turner
If you’re floundering around looking for a topic for your masters thesis in literature, allow me to submit for your consideration corporate media for children on GMO’s, a fascinating and understudied emerging genre. I was first introduced to this genre … Continue reading
Posted in Biotechnology, India
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New GM Grass: Unregulated and Unstudiable
The NY Times recently published “Engineering Food for All,” a gushing op-ed by professional GMO proponent Nina Fedoroff that bemoaned the increasingly burdensome regulatory oversight of GM crops. She went so far as to link world hunger to regulation of … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Biotechnology, Intellectual Property
16 Comments
Putting the Germ into Germany
A truly frightening outbreak of E. coli food poisoning appeared in Germany in May. Within a month it had infected more than 2,400 people in 13 countries across Europe, killing 23. The toxic strain of E. coli is being called O104:H4 … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Biotechnology, Food, Industrial Agriculture
Tagged agriculture, biotechnology, factory farming, food safety, genetically modified, organic, toxicology
1 Comment
Feeding Hungry Indians
News today in the Bombay press about India’s worrisome food imbalance. Too much food. It seems that India’s “buffer stocks” have more than 30 million tons of wheat and rice over what they want or can handle. Having sucked down … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Biotechnology, Food, India, Population
17 Comments
Why We Eat So Much Meat: Beef, Bombs, and Convenience
Why we eat so much meat is a question that keeps coming up, as well it should. The real reason is that…. well to cut to the chase, there are a lot of reasons, big and small, general and specific. … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Food
Tagged beef, distancing, feedlots, fertilizer, food, overproduction
2 Comments
Golden Rice, soon. Or not.
We have a new E.T.A. on Golden Rice. Well, sort of: the institutes in the Philippines that have been conducting field tests since 2008 say they may be able to submit the needed data for regulatory approval by 2013 in … Continue reading
Do Not Read: GM Cotton and Indian Farmer Suicide
More in the news this week about Indian cotton farmers killing themselves. Mainly cotton farmers. Mostly deep in debt. One every 30 minutes. According to some, the underlying cause is the spread of being genetically modified Bt cotton. It has … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Biotechnology, India
Tagged biotechnology, bt botton, cotton, genetically modified, india, suicide
5 Comments
10 Billion People and Paul Ehrlich’s Taxi
When the U.N. announced its global population projection of 10 billion by 2010 a few days ago, it was hard not to think back on Paul Ehrlich. Prof. Ehrlich was the butterfly researcher whose books and TV appearances scared the … Continue reading
Gone are the Days when the Ox Fall Down?
Last year my daughter’s boyfriend sent us a bottle of red wine from a biodynamique winemaker in the Loire Valley, along with a note explaining that “he uses a horse named Joker to plow fields and transport grapes.” A slightly … Continue reading
Baseball Bats and Breast Cancer: The Court Mulls Over Gene Patenting
A few weeks ago in a courtroom in Washington DC, lawyers with the blessing of the US Dept. of Justice (DOJ) argued that gene patents are invalid. The judges of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit are now … Continue reading
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