Enviro crusader turns pro-GMO, anti-organic—and anti-logic

Tom Philpott | Mother Jones | January 23, 2013

X LinkedIn Facebook Reddit Bluesky Threads SMS Email

The following is an excerpt.

[Mark] Lynas is quite correct that the backlash against GMOs is often clouded by emotion. He points out that even today, certain GMO critics murmur darkly about Monsanto’s “terminator” seeds, designed to produce sterile offspring so farmers can’t replant saved seeds. Actually, Monsanto itself swore off ever using the terminator trait back in 1999, declaring it shared “many of the concerns of small landholder farmers” who opposed it. The GMO seed industry protects its traits through patents and contracts, not genetics.

But he veers off course by portraying such fringe critics of GMOs as the driving force of an “anti-science movement” to block the novel technology. He dismisses the idea that reasonable people might disagree about the merits of GMOs.