Food and Farm Segment with Ray Bowman
I recently did a segment of internet talk radio with Ray Bowman, host of the Food and Farm show. We talked about how sometimes misinformation is taken as fact on the internet and about how I, non-scientist-consumer, came to change my mind about GMOs. The conversation specifically focused on early warning signs that I noticed as an anti-GMO blogger, the red flags that registered in the back of my mind, warning me that I was not on the side of the facts.
Examples of the red flags
1. Silly, highly propagandized videos and articles touting the same information over and over and appearing ad nauseum on activist blogs.
2. So-called science reports that had major flaws and were shredded by mainstream science worldwide. Usually the scientists that conducted the research were out on a limb all by themselves, or “fringe” types. I’ve come to learn that good science repeats itself and none of the reports that supported the anti-GMO view did that. Not even one!
Though my conversation with Ray ended there, little by little, those red flags added up and came to a tipping point, which was the now infamous Stunning Corn Comparison: GMO vs non-GMO crashing head on into plant geneticist Kevin Folta with whom I was in email contact at the time. This comparison table tried to pass off soil samples and who knows what other gobbletygook as actual corn data and, well, anyone who passed undergrad organic chemistry apparently would have laughed this data off of the paper it was printed on. So all hell broke loose at that point, for me anyway. Basically, science was shining a spotlight on me and I had nowhere to hide. I was busted, and frankly, embarrassed.
Next came Science Is Laughing At Us and the rest is history!
Here is the 13-minute segment recorded 8/20: Food and Farm Segment with Ray Bowman
SLEUTH 4 HEALTH 
5 responses to “Julee K talks GMOs on ‘Food and Farm’ with Ray Bowman”
So that’s what you sound like!
Boy have you hit the nail on the head that our posts can affect others and, together with other posts, cause a landslide of public opinion to form, in this case, an opinion that may end up hurting and even killing hundreds of millions. It’s interesting how you did allow the weight of evidence to build in your head.
I find myself questioning the motives and methods of environmental organizations in other areas because of the maniacal stances against GMO’s. I think this might be called the halo effect. Though there’s no question that anthropologically caused global warming is upon us, i do question the real motives of some organizations cry for a zero-carbon world. Too often, like the anti-gmo movement, i see groups, like permaculture, promoting a romantic agenda for us to return to a human and animal based agrarian society. I also see a lot of overlap between the two areas with a claim that some sort of back to the past blast will cure all our global ills.
Because of the anti-gmo movements tactics and claims, do you find yourself now scratching deeper when it comes to the positions on non-GMO issues from the same groups, such as Greenpeace?
Absolutely yes. And I used to consider myself a staunch envirornmentalist! I still care deeply about the environment itself, but like you said, question what is really behind the movements to protect it. I have questioned my stance on a lot of issues lately, to be honest! I am not inclined anymore to just blindly accept what an NGO has to say about a topic and not look into it for myself. I used to support the efforts of Greenpeace but now, they have crossed the line.
Hi Julee;
I meant to get back to the is sooner but, as you can see, i’ve been fighting the fight elsewhere.
Many years ago i participated in a march against nuclear weapons in Central Park, NY. In that vein, i traveled to New Paltz, NY to attend a similar event. To my surprise, it morphed into a protest against nuclear power. To this day, Greenpeace is against Nuclear Power, even though, it causes far less loss of life per terrawatt-hour produced than all but wind and solar. And, what really gets me, is that they are also against Fusion on principle. There main reasons against fusion is not safety but that it takes away funds that could go to solar and wind and that we spend enough time on it. In effect, they have decided for us what and where we will explore carbon free sources of energy, regardless of actual potential.
I didn’t know this about GP being fundamentally against fusion. Fusion would of course be the best case scenario and… well, clean and unlimited for the next few billion years! How are we doing on that technology? That’s an interesting topic to explore.
Always a pleasure to hear from you, FO!
Lockheed Martin has thrown their hat into the fusion ring. What i find most exciting about that is that’s the first real serious private venture into the field ! While a spoonful of salt should always be taken with fusion predictions, Lockheed Martin feels they can have a prototype reactor running in about 4 years and be in production with 100MW modular reactors in about 10 years. These reactors would be small enough and light enough to be transported on 18 wheel trucks. These would be deuterium-tritium reactors so they wouldn’t give us billions of years of power, just mere tens of thousands of years or so.
http://www.fusenet.eu/node/400