David Zaruk
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 ...
Viewpoint: ‘Predatorts’ — How activist nonprofits create fear and seed science doubt, generate lawsuits, and distort public policy
Imagine you are a US tort lawyer wanting to extract as much honey from the pot as possible. What do ...
Viewpoint: Here’s why activist environmentalists’ promotion of a ‘binary organic vs conventional/good vs evil dichotomy’ is bad for sustainable agriculture
Due to successful fear-based marketing campaigns, the demand for organic food in many affluent countries is rising far faster than ...
Viewpoint: ‘The European Green Deal has been captured by chemophobic activists with no understanding of science’. Here’s how the EU can put sustainability ahead of ideology
After seeing rampant chemophobia and fear-mongering influence the REACH process in the mid-2000s, I set up a satirical blog called ...
Viewpoint: Organic farming offers some sustainability benefits, but ‘fear-driven marketing campaigns’ exaggerate advantages and demonize acceptable alternatives
When the “Risk-Monger’s Dirty Dozen” list of pesticides used in organic farming was published, I had broken a taboo. Before ...
Viewpoint: Despite its ‘social justice pretense’ agroecology promotes poverty in developing countries
The world is made up of sunshine and butterflies, roses and rainbows. If we can stop Father Profit from raping ...
Viewpoint: ‘Toxic-free EU’? Why Europe’s naive Green Deal is scientifically illiterate and could cripple innovation for years to come
July is usually a good month for environmental activism in Europe. Many people are on holiday and nobody feels like ...
The ‘Church of Nature’ and the sudden collapse of the cult of Extinction Rebellion
When a cult loses its grip on a person, a form of reawakening takes place. It involves having to return ...
Viewpoint: How precautionary public health policy turned coronavirus into a ‘global train wreck’
Worldwide coronavirus response was a failure in risk management ...
Podcast: How ‘activist science’ behind IARC’s glyphosate assessment fuels unjustified cancer lawsuits
In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) published a monograph concluding that glyphosate, the active ingredient in ...
Viewpoint: ‘Roundup game plan’—How ‘environmental’ activists, IARC’s Chris Portier plotted attacks on Monsanto-Bayer to get glyphosate banned and cripple ag biotechnology
The failure to retract the monograph despite overwhelming rejections from the scientific community points to a Glyphosate Gameplan at IARC ...
