Can GMO’s be a part of our vision for a sustainable, equitable, and healthy world?

Eighty to one hundred Pace students and community residents packed Butcher Suite on February 26, 2014 to attend Pace Academy for Applied Environment Studies’ 2013-2014 FoodYou Campaign Bioethics Forum XX: Feelings, Facts and GMOs-A Fresh Look.

The event was co-sponsored by Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society and Dyson College for Arts and Sciences.

Senior Fellow for Environmental Understanding at Pace, Andrew Revkin, moderated a notable panel including Pamela Ronald, Professor at the Department of Plant Pathology and the Genome Center at the University of California, Davis, Gilbert and Sarah Kerlin Distinguished Professor of Environmental Law, Jason Czarnezki, Shelly Boris, a chef at the Garrison Institute and creative director and executive chef at Fresh Company and Nathanael Johnson, a San Francisco-based food journalist who writes the “Thought for Food” column at Grist.org.

Within the wider food movement, many issues are being addressed such as fair wages for farmers and farm workers, food insecurity in poor and minority neighborhoods, declining sales in the dairy industry, concentrated animal feeding operations and food sovereignty violations in other countries around the world.

Labeling GMOs is another movement.

The California “Right to Know” Campaign advocates for consumer awareness and calls attention to the negative health and environmental effects of GMOs, all of which can be found on their website. They have loudly voiced their concerns to government agencies that are involved with food policy and the companies that are pushing against labeling.

According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), “genetic engineering is the name for certain methods that scientists use to introduce new traits or characteristics to an organism. For example, plants may be genetically engineered to produce characteristics to enhance the growth or nutritional profile of food crops”.

“After last year’s successful water awareness campaign, we agreed as a team that food was the direction to take” said Caroline Craig, Pace Academy’s Research Associate, “food helps us sustain life and is so closely related to the health of our environment. We realized that the community had a lot of unanswered questions about GMOs and the cloud of debate around them”.

Many Pro-GMO advocates point to GMO fear-mongering and the technology’s identity unfairly connected to acquiring power and money, strongly affecting a negative public perception of GMO food.

“There’s no such thing as “GMOs” – that’s a cultural construct,” said Nathanael Johnson, answering a follow up question via e-mail. “There are genetically engineered plants that really are designed to make the world a better place. And there are genetically engineered plants that are mostly designed to make a lot of money for a big corporation. Flood resistant rice for the poor shouldn’t be lumped together with herbicide-resistant soy”.

During the panel discussion, Professor Ronald, also Director of the Laboratory for Crop Genetics Innovation and Scientific Literacy, emphasized asking the important questions when it comes to food, farming and genetic engineering. She discusses her thoughts and work developing flood resistant rice for farmers in India and Bangladesh further, in a short video titled “GMOrganic, A Botanical Love Story”.

Today as innovative technology expands more and more into different facets of life, the benefits and consequences of GMO food is surely a discussion to have.

Keep the conversation going. Visit www.pace.edu/FoodYou for more information, including access to a recording of the live streamed event.