Could Conservation-Friendly Farming Include GMOs?
Nice article in NYT on weeds, pesticide resistance, and the challenges going forward
What do you think Mayor Bloomberg is now mandating for food?
If you've missed it, this series of posts (the first episode is here, part two, and part three, with more promised) on GMOs is one of the best, most honest, appraisals I've seen in a while
The newest release of our monthly, nationwide food demand survey (FooDS) is now up. The report contains data on trends in meat demand and awareness and concern over various food issues.
Given the renewed interesting in mandatory labeling for genetically engineered food, we added two new questions to the July survey (if you're interested, you can see the results of a previous survey we conducted in California just before the Prop 37 vote); a version of that report is coming out in the Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics).
The first question on GMO labeling asked in the most recent survey was worded:
Which of the following do you think the FDA or USDA should require to be labeled on food packaging?
Then, 10 items were listed, and respondents had to place four and only four items in a box indicating which items they though were most important to label. Here are the results.
I must say that I am shocked by the results. 63.6% said they thought "added growth hormones and antibiotics" should be labeled followed by 55% who said "GMOs." Oddly, those items which ARE currently required to be labeled, including fat content, total calories, and known allergens (e.g., nuts), fell further down the list. At first I thought this might be a mistake, but after double and triple checking the data, this is apparently how consumers responded. Perhaps they take currently mandated information (e.g., calorie content) for granted (or don't realize it is mandated). Perhaps GMOs are just more in news these days drawing attention? On a technical note, the order of the 10 items was randomized across respondents, so these findings cannot result from some sort of order effect. All in all, I'm not sure what is driving the result but I welcome any insights if you have them.
Secondly, we asked consumers:
Which of the following best describes your views on mandatory labeling of foods containing genetically modified (GMO) ingredients?
They could pick one (and only one) of the following responses:
Here are the results
A majority (54%) said they wanted mandatory GMO labeling because they said they had a right to know regardless of the costs. This result is surprisingly high and doesn't quite mesh with the actual voting outcome in California (or our previous survey which showed voting intentions influenced by cost and information).
As I articulated in several editorials in Sept-November last year, I do not think the economic arguments for mandatory GMO labeling are particularly strong (voluntary labeling is a different matter all together). These survey results suggest little public support for that particular view. However, there is also ample evidence to show that most consumers are woefully uninformed about biotechnology and that information can have big effects on attitudes (and as Prop 37 showed - voting outcomes).
Saturday was Bastille Day, the French holiday commemorating a pivotal moment of the French Revolution: The storming of the Bastille prison. But in addition to remembering the revolutionaries with a spirited verse of "Do You Hear The People Sing?"* should we also celebrate with a plate of veggies?
The French Revolution storyline that lives in history books and popular culture involves the lower classes, driven by hunger and rising bread prices, fighting back against oppression from their 18th century rulers.
However, nearly lost to history were the middle and upper class opponents of the political system, some of whom were reported to have used vegetarianism — not the guillotine — to protest the monarchy.
That's from the NPR blog, the salt. I also thought this line at the end was interesting:
Of course, political vegetarianism did not begin or end with the French revolutionaries.
As an aside, I was sitting on a beach in Nice France on Bastille Day in 2011 watching fireworks with my wife and kids, and I couldn't help but think it was a bit odd that the Beach Boys were blaring over the loud speakers as the French were celebrating their revolution.
Claims about early agricultural practices and how much grain our ancestors ate are apparently full of… manure.
As early as 8,000 years ago, Stone Age farmers across Europe were working their crop lands intensely, irrigating and strategically applying manure, according to new research published in today’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The findings also call into question previous estimates of how much protein in the Neolithic human diet was derived from animals rather than plants.
There is more at the post by Gemma Tarlach at Discovermagazine.com
The following video from MSN contains some of the worst kind of fear mongering in relation to non-organic foods. Eat non-organic celery? It will lower your kids IQ. Eat non-organic apples? Your kids will get ADHD.
The sources for all the claims in the video (see the bottom right hand part of the screen) are to places like wired.com, organicauthority.com, cnn.com, thedailygreen.com, and CBSnews.com. Of course, non of the actual links are provided, so one can only guess at what "evidence" supports the claims. I would bet good money the claims arise from associative studies that cannot support cause-effect claims.
If you want real facts on organic (along with citations to real science journals), I suggest chapter 5 of The Food Police. A twitter follower also pointed me to this older paper on the history of "black marketing" associated with some (but not all) wings of the organic food movement.