David Zaruk
Viewpoint: How technology-rejectionist fearmongering poisons public opinion against farmers
As other NGOs are stepping away from campaigning against gene editing, CEO is becoming the last loud voice of protest ...
Viewpoint: ‘Organic is good’? — Greenwashing propagated by environmental advocacy group lobbyists and marketing-savvy green industry
Recent draft legislation on its way to the European Parliament and Council commonly known as the Greenwashing Directive (officially the Green Claims Directive) plans ...
Mythinformation: ‘Fear campaigns from anti-biotech NGOs make it a challenge to even keep products on the market let alone introduce new technologies’
Technological innovations in plant breeding can address serious issues from climate resilience to biodiversity decline to sustainable intensification to feed ...
Viewpoint: ‘Imposing impoverishment’ — How European leadership has failed by promoting ideological solutions to sustainability challenges in farming
It is hard to find anyone with anything positive to say about 2022: economic, social, ethical, political, geopolitical success stories ...
Viewpoint: Subverting the science of crop biotechnology — Leaked document from German NGO illustrates ‘scandalous’ strategy by anti-biotech activists to manipulate the public
A leaked internal document from the German anti-biotech NGO community recently found its way to the Risk-Monger’s dusty basement. As ...
Viewpoint: Anti-chemical film polemic “Into the Weeds” is wrong on the facts but a tort lawyer’s dream. Did lawyers and the organic industry fund it?
The organic food industry lobby was in full swing in Brussels with their StopGlyphosateWeek. A collective of NGOs ran an ...
Viewpoint: How tort lawyers came to fund environmental activist fundamentalist attacks on science and agriculture
Since the period of stakeholder dialogue in the 1990s and early 2000s, environmental activists engaged in the policy process to ...
Viewpoint: How Environmental—Social—Governance (ESG) screens can be manipulated to promote misleading science and damage sustainability efforts
While the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investor point system has had a bit of a rough time over the ...
Viewpoint: Innovation vs. extreme precaution — What should drive science regulation and policy in Europe?
People like me often claim we need science-based policy. Regulations have to follow the best available evidence and European agencies ...
Viewpoint: What role should industry have in refashioning Europe’s food system?
I feel like Brussels is a puzzle where the pieces keep changing. The best way to start a puzzle is ...
Viewpoint: Precautionary near zero-risk standard is an impossible policy stifling European innovation and productivity. Here’s a safe alternative
After 30 years of squandering the peace dividend, deindustrialising economies and ignoring facts and evidence in their ideology-driven policies, Western ...
Viewpoint: Can large-scale agriculture overcome stigma it is not sustainable? Here’s a 10-step regulatory guide to make that happen
Regulators seem blissfully unaware, especially in Brussels, how much their pandering to the idealistic aspirations of small environmental activist groups ...
Viewpoint: Inside two decades of anti-industry attacks by green activists in media, film and politics
Humanity is (hopefully) coming out of a global pandemic thanks, in a large part, to the massive, rapid development and ...
Viewpoint: Tobacconization of corporations — How green activist groups delegitimize industries regardless of the benefits of their products
I am often bemused by how industry actors think of themselves. Often they are content with being the second slowest ...
Precautionary Politics: Europe Moves Backward into a Fear-Based ‘Dark Ages’ in Regulating Agriculture and Cancer Risks
David Zaruk, Founder of GreenFacts, Environmental-Health Risk Governance Analyst, Professor at Odisee University College | July 25, 2018 Highlights: The ...
Viewpoint: ‘Pro-science lobby’? Europe’s continued failure to keep up with crop biotechnology innovation suggests a new approach is needed
In a recent Politico Brussels debate on the future of new plant breeding technologies within the EU’s Farm2Fork strategy, a ...
Risk, hazard and the precautionary principle: Why Europe gets crop biotechnology and chemical regulation so wrong
David Zaruk, Founder of GreenFacts, Environmental-Health Risk Governance Analyst, Professor at Odisee University College | July 24, 2018 Highlights: European ...
Viewpoint: Great Green Leap… backwards — Europe’s ideological obsession with old solutions
I have too often warned that Western affluence and prosperity can disappear in a heartbeat through irrational policies. Europe has ...
In the Battle to Regulate GMOS, Gene Editing and other New Breeding Techniques, Who Has ‘Hazard Blood’ on their Hands?
This third segment in the mini-series will look at the networks of highly-motivated campaigners manipulating policy and pushing the hazard-based ...
Viewpoint: ‘Arrogance of affluence and ignorance of ideologues’: EU’s failing agroecology Farm-to-Fork strategy — and what can be done to ensure sustainable farming and food
The world is teetering on the brink of multiple food security crises which will lead to famines, political and social ...
Viewpoint: ‘Higher yields and sustainable intensification’ — Russian aggression resets perceptions and policy of global agriculture
When Russia brutally invaded the Ukraine in February 2022, war in the world’s breadbasket could only forebode greater tragedies to ...
Part 2: Misinformation or disinformation? Deniers or skeptics? How the GMO and vaccine controversies are undermining science communication
“Disinformation” is a clever term to relegate the views we don’t like or care to hear to the realm of ...
Part 1: Does Europe-based Precautionary Principle protect consumers from reckless corporations or retard innovation and undermine public trust in science?
Proponents of the precautionary principle often claim that it is necessary to secure public trust in research and technology. Without ...
Russian invasion of Ukraine portends a global food crisis—and the European Union’s Green Deal Farm to Fork Policy will only exacerbate it
Well before the Russian invasion began, I shared a shocking FAO statistic. Overall global food prices increased by almost 20% ...
Viewpoint: How the hazard-based, European-promoted ‘Precautionary Principle’ has undermined global agriculture — and why we should kill it
Twenty years is a long time in the wilderness. Since 2001 and the European Environment Agency’s publication, Late Lessons from Early ...
Viewpoint: ‘An environmental activist-driven narrative spun by a small population of privileged zealots is presently shaping global climate and agricultural policy’
As the COP26 winds down and the world leaders, delegates and activists all head home, it is time for the ...
Viewpoint: European politicians seem hell-bent on undermining sustainable farming
As Members of the European Parliament meet... to discuss how violently to continue Brussels’ attack on European farmers and consumers, ...
Precautionaria: Risk-averse Europe is undermining innovation in sustainable farming and battling climate change
Europe has been suffering from a disease outbreak that is debilitating its population, leading to economic malaise and destroying its ...
