With its passage of Act 120 this past June, Vermont became the first U.S. state to require mandatory labeling of foods containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs). (This followed Connecticut’s and Maine’s decisions to require it once adjacent states do.) Since then, GMO food manufacturers have announced they will challenge that decision in court. Meanwhile, critics of GMOs have come under fire from some surprising places.
Vandana Shiva is probably the best known critic of genetically modified foods. The prominent environmentalist, who was critiqued in an August article by Michael Specter in the New Yorker, spoke here (in Burlington, Vermont) over the weekend.
For those interested in following the debate that’s followed Specter’s article, I’ve compiled the main sources on it below.
1) Michael Specter’s New Yorker article, “Seeds of Doubt,” can be read here:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/25/seeds-of-doubt
2) Vandana Shiva’s detailed response to it, “Seeds of Truth,” can be read here:
http://vandanashiva.com/?p=105
3) New Yorker editor David Remnick’s response to Shiva’s response can be read here:
http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2014/09/02/new-yorker-editor-david-remnick-responds-to-vandana-shiva-criticism-of-michael-specters-profile/
4) Shiva responds indirectly to Remnick in this interview with the Italian newspaper Repubblica:
http://www.repubblica.it/ambiente/2014/10/03/news/vandana_shiva_i_m_a_pain_in_the_neck_for_the_gmo_industry_they_want_to_discredit_me_but_i_will_continue_to_fight_-97239762/
(I’m not aware of a more direct response from her.)
5) Some further responses to the debate, from a range of environmentalist positions, can be found in these articles (and in the comments; see especially the 600 or so comments to the Grist piece):
- http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php/news/archive/2014/15631-responses-to-specter-s-pro-gmo-article-in-the-new-yorker
- http://www.foodpolitics.com/2014/08/on-two-views-of-gmos-michael-specter-vs-vandana-shiva-and-gary-hirshberg/
- http://grist.org/food/vandana-shiva-so-right-and-yet-so-wrong/
- See also the sources listed on this Society of Environmental Journalists page devoted to the controversy: http://www.sej.org/headlines/seeds-doubt
And if you wish to read a fairly run-of-the-mill example of a right-wing anti-Shiva screed, Ronald Bailey’s piece in the libertarian monthly Reason is as typical as any (note the title and the reference to Goebbels): http://reason.com/blog/2014/07/29/vandana-shiva-is-one-of-the-worlds-worst
Navigating between such polarized views is not easy. The GMO debate, of course, exceeds the work of any single activist, but these pieces offer a good starting point for those wishing to get caught up on the most recent flare-up.
Thanks for posting this, Adrian. Having just read Vandana Shiva’s response to THE NEW YORKER’s “Seeds of Truth”, the thing that struck me most strongly was her lesson on real-world cause and effect: farmers driven into the ground by crop failure. But that’s just a flaw in their ‘blind brains’, right? (Zadie Smith’s “Find Your Beach” in the 10/23 NY REVIEW notes that according to corporate culture “it’s only our own limited brains that are keeping us from happiness” – just like medical / insurance newsletters always suggest that diseases of stress are usually our own personal fault for being workaholics!)
Dr. Shiva points out that this real-world cause and effect is quite different from the cause and effect so often cited by corporate scientists in the biotech and pharmaceutical industries (not to mention energy industry climate-change deniers). Their causes and effects are mostly statistics based on contrived studies that may or may not reflect the real world. I seem to recall another journal that recently took this corporate science tact on GMOs, the beloved National Geographic! At least we don’t yet have any corporate-sponsored Speculative Realists, right?
Mark (soon to become a grandfather, concerned about the climate-changed world this child will have to live in, because I’ll likely be gone by mid-century..)