In my initial foray in this series looking for facts behind the rhetoric on transgenic food, I reasoned that, since we can’t eliminate risk, we’d better have the right regulatory safety net in place.
As soon as I asked this, however, I was met with an apparent contradiction: Critics of genetic engineering say the industry is not required to do any safety testing. The developers of GE crops say they have to do a ridiculous amount of safety testing. Both are correct.
If you try to cross-check the claims of people on either side of the GM debate, you run into problems, because these warring clans speak different dialects. Their foundational assumptions point them in opposite directions, facing different landscapes and talking past each other. This can leave outsiders feeling that someone is lying. But often the miscommunication comes down to a difference in perspectives.
Read the full story here: The GM Safety Dance: What’s Rule and What’s Real
