Genetic Engineering in Food Production: Impact on Environment & Sustainability | Eco-Friendly GMO Solutions for Agriculture & Health

Mr. Anderson succeeds admirably in eliciting shock and outrage in the reader with his clear, succinct, and fluid prose on the visible and invisible dangers of agricultural biotechnology. Modern day manipulation of the food chain and the ecosystems that provide humanity with its food (and other valuable services) has the potential to irreversibly affect both human beings and the environment. While the scientific and industrial cognoscenti exchange increasingly friendly repartee genetically modified foods, and governments turn a blind eye to `scientific progress', Mr. Anderson is right when he says that the human is being unwillingly and unwittingly subjected to an experiment whose long-term effects are difficult to assess.Written shortly before scientists began to seriously question the effects of even minute quantities of hormone disrupting and cancer-causing, mutagenic chemicals and the potential effects of errant DNA in the greater environment, and shortly after genetically modified crops had been shown to sterilize insects and willy-nilly cross-pollinate with plants of the same species located either nearby or a great distance away, this handy little book introduces a considerable amount of information on genetic engineering and its dubious successes to readers who are not well versed in the sciences. In seven highly fluid and readable chapters, the book addresses a plethora of ethical, economic and technological issues associated with genetic engineering and agricultural biotechnology. The first chapter lucidly explains many of the key concepts underpinning genetic engineering as it applies to agriculture, and introduces most of the very real specters to health and the environment that the technology not only has caused, but also can and ultimately may cause in the future. The author devotes one chapter each to the thorny issues of genetic engineering and its effects on the environment, the way that agricultural biotechnology portents to and actually is transforming farming globally for the worse, and the attempts of individuals, universities and corporations, with all the zeal characteristic of a gold rush mentality, to patent every snippet of DNA they can get their hands on. Readers may find the book's fifth chapter to be truly shocking, as it describes in vivid detail the apparent disinterest of governments in industrialized nations to safeguard the best interests of its citizens- especially in the area of public health, from the bitter fruit of agricultural biotechnology. Chapter six presents a detailed case study of one particular biological abomination- the superfluous use of increasing amounts of biotech hormones to increase milk production, even in the face of persistent gluts year after year. The seventh and final details efforts by many groups to resist the onslaught of the adoption of such biotechnologies, and offers insight into the ways the poor in Third World countries are used as dupes and guinea pigs for these less than optimal technologies. The author also includes a detailed list of resources that concerned readers can tap into in their efforts to learn more or to protect themselves from most, but not all, of the spurious products of agricultural biotechnology.In reading this book, one gets the feeling that the author wants us to share in his concern about the lingering effects of these overly hyped technologies of dubious merit. While the author clearly did his best to choose many of genetic engineering's most egregious examples, readers of this text should bear in mind that these examples merely represent the tip of the iceberg. As a scientist and engineer, it is hard for me come up with a suitable justification for many of the fruits of ag biotech, given that farmers in the industrialized countries are plagued with the onerous problem of oversupply. Furthermore, with slight modifications to current agricultural practices, and a shifting of inputs and plant resources, every single person on the planet could easily be fed, so the excuse of biotechnology feeding the world's hungry does not quite wash either. Basically, I find the motives of big biotech companies to be less than altruistic: if the biotech corporation controls the seeds and the larger food supply, then they control the people dependent upon them.In this day and age of financial skullduggery and scientific chicanery, astute citizens must actively behoove themselves to exercise caution and awareness at all times. As Huff told us in his classic little book, How to Lie with Statistics, if the honest person wants to prevent oneself from being burglarized, then it pays to learn the ways of the criminally minded. As such, this book's disclosure of the aggressive foisting of these dubious scientific advances on an unsuspecting public by an unscrupulous gaggle of corporate, academic and government interests clearly demonstrates a most disturbing and peculiar case of criminal intent of the highest degree.