2018 Predictions: The Death Throes of the Anti-GMO Movement

[progressoid]

This is a long one with lots of links and he makes some reasonable points IMHO.

Of the five predictions for 2018 that I’m going on record with, this is easily the mostly likely to leave me with egg on my face. But what’s the point of making predictions if you aren’t willing to put something on the table? To be clear, I’m not predicting the end of anti-GMO activism, but rather its ability to be taken seriously in mainstream venues.

Here I lay out how the landscape has changed since 2009 and how recent anti-GMO campaigns show a movement running out of issues and credibility, especially as the mainstream press has embraced gene editing and synthetic biology (especially for making plant meats). Meanwhile as I laid out in a previous prediction, a new wave of biotech crops and products is going to change tired old narratives that formed the bedrock of anti-GMO rationalizations. I believe we will end 2018 with the anti-GMO movement mostly relegated to the fringes from whence they came.

...

A lot had changed. Industry control over biotech research had changed; in fact, it had never been as chilling as the SciAm editorial had made it out to be. The EU had released a major report summarizing the findings[PDF] of the €300 million they had spent over two decades researching the impacts of biotech crops. Biofortified had created the GENERA database of the relevant research. Two major literature reviews had been added to the scientific literature. Nathanael Johnson has published his landmark series “Panic Free GMOs”. The Séralini rat study debacle had given the anti-GMO movement a huge black eye. A scandal that led Keith Kloor to add the anti-GMO movement to his science denial beat:

I used to think that nothing rivaled the misinformation spewed by climate change skeptics and spinmeisters.

Then I started paying attention to how anti-GMO campaigners have distorted the science on genetically modified foods. You might be surprised at how successful they’ve been and who has helped them pull it off.

I’ve found that fears are stoked by prominent environmental groups, supposed food-safety watchdogs, and influential food columnists; that dodgy science is laundered by well-respected scholars and propaganda is treated credulously by legendary journalists; and that progressive media outlets, which often decry the scurrilous rhetoric that warps the climate debate, serve up a comparable agitprop when it comes to GMOs.

In short, I’ve learned that the emotionally charged, politicized discourse on GMOs is mired in the kind of fever swamps that have polluted climate science beyond recognition.

more...http://fafdl.org/blog/2018/01/25/death-throes-of-the-anti-gmo-movement/

[lunasun]

1. Our tax dollars being used by a Republican congress to discredit WHO scientists -IARC

Then they will cut US funding as the rest of the world watches

What happens when Monsanto doesn’t like what the World Health Organization (WHO) has to say about its flagship product, Roundup weedkiller?

The chemical company convinces U.S. lawmakers to hold a “smoke and mirrors” Congressional hearing, under the guise of “defending scientific integrity,” but really to undermine the unanimous finding by 17 international scientists, based on their analysis of independent, peer-reviewed science, that Roundup is “probably carcinogenic to humans.”

The hearing, which Monsanto asked Congress to hold, will be used to decide if WHO’s International Agency for Cancer Research (IARC)—an unbiased scientific agency charged with protecting public health by warning the public about cancer-causing chemicals—will continue to receive federal funding.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/02/who-rebuts-house-committee-criticisms-about-glyphosate-cancer-warning
The hearing was held by the Science, Space and Technology (SST) Committee, and led by its chair, Republican Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas. Smith was once described as “the most obnoxious climate change denier in Congress”—not exactly the ideal candidate to be passing judgment on the work of serious scientists

In a 10-page January response that summarized and expounded on the points he made in his letters to lawmakers, Wild also preemptively rebutted many of the criticisms that Republican committee members and the witnesses they invited made of IARC yesterday.

EPA's internal watchdog is currently investigating allegations that former agency official Jess Rowland colluded with Monsanto during the review process to counter suggestions it endangers human health

[progressoid]

2. Uh, you know that GMO use doesn't always mean the use of glyphosate, right?

Furthermore, 44% of glyphosate use is not related to GMOs.

[DinahMoeHum]

3. Two blogs I read re the GMO issue. . .

Cornell Alliance For Science:
https://allianceforscience.cornell.edu/

The next blog led me to the Cornell Alliance For Science in the first place, written by
the daughter of a Hawaiian papaya farmer whose livelihood was saved by GMOs:

Hawaii Farmer's Daughter:
https://hawaiifarmersdaughter.com/

https://twitter.com/HIFarmersDtr

The GMO issue has been a hotbed of controversy out there in Hawaii.

[Squinch]

4. .

[Archae]

5. Real science is under attack, on many fronts.

Anti-GMO hysterics and con artists.

"Organic" hucksters.

The flat-earthers are INCREASING in numbers.

Climate change deniers.

Anti-vaxxers.

Etc...