THE BOTTOM LINE: A polished and provocative call for activists to be as scientifically minded as they believe they are.
Neil deGrasse Tyson helps director Scott Hamilton Kennedy challenge enviro-activist orthodoxy in a new food doc.
A necessary contribution to ongoing debates over food and farm policy worldwide, Scott Hamilton Kennedy’s Food Evolution — which defends the place of GMOs in agriculture — sounds on paper like it might be one of those hack-job rebuttals in which moneyed right-wing interests disguise propaganda as a documentary. Many on the left will likely dismiss it as such, which is a shame: Though it doesn’t address all of their complaints, the movie makes an excellent case against those who seek blanket prohibitions against genetically modified organisms — and, maybe more importantly, against those of us who support such bans just because we assume it’s the eco-conscious thing to do.
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Recalling the debate over climate change, Food Evolution asserts that a consensus of scientists worldwide believes there’s no danger in consuming crops whose genes have been modified. More specifically, it discredits some of the evidence promoted by those seeking bans: Activists have made widespread use, for instance, of a scientific paper and related photos claiming Monsanto’s Roundup pesticide causes horrific tumors in rats — a paper Kennedy points out was not subject to peer review, and was later retracted amid much controversy.
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