It's More Than Food
Genetic Modification in Food
On this installment of It's More Than Food, Michel Nischan is talking genetically-modified crops with Scott Faber and Fred Kaufman. Scott Faber leads a team working to improve food and farm legislation, chemicals policy and a host of other issues important to EWG and its supporters. Prior to joining EWG, Scott was vice president for federal affairs for the Grocery Manufacturers Association, where he spearheaded efforts to enact the Food Safety Modernization Act, which sets new food safety standards for food manufacturers and farmers. From 2000 to 2007, he was a food and farm policy campaign manager for the Environmental Defense Fund, leading efforts to reform farm policies in the 2002 and 2008 farm bills. From 1993 to 2000, Scott was a senior director for public policy for American Rivers. A native of Massachusetts, Scott holds a J.D. From Georgetown University Law Center and lives in Washington, D.C. Frederick Kaufman, author of Bet the Farm: How Food Stopped Being, has discussed food policy on NBC and MSNBC, Fox Business News, Bloomberg TV, C-SPAN, National Public Radio, and the BBC World Service. A contributing editor at Harper's Magazine, Kaufman's work has also appeared in Scientific American, Nature, Popular Science, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, The New Yorker, Foreign Policy, Gourmet, Saveur, Slate, and Wired. He is Professor of English and Journalism at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, and has spoken at the American Museum of Natural History, the New York Public Library, Yale Sustainable Food, Harvard Law School, and the General Assembly of the United Nations. Find out why the panel believes in labeling for genetically-engineered foods, and why old patent laws are threatening the inherent open-source nature of agriculture. Will labeling of genetically-modified food products actually benefit the health of the public? Find out on this installment of It's More Than Food!
"You don't have to be anti-GMO to be pro-labeling. Many people are pro-GMO are also pro-labeling because they believe that people have a basic right to know what's in their food." [4:30]
"Conventional breeding has produced as many breakthroughs as genetic modification." [20:20]
-- Scott Faber on It's More Than Food
"I'm all for labeling, and I'm all for transparency, but I don't believe that it's going to be the most efficient way to achieve the most important aims of the food movement, which is trying to dent the ownership of the world's food source by these huge transnational players." [10:40]
-- Fred Kaufman on It's More Than Food