Mark Bittman, the popular NYT food writer, has offered up a column chock full of biotech scare mongering. It's such a half-baked concoction that I can't imagine he'd ever serve a meal based on such flimsy ingredients. Let's inspect just a few of the numerous questionable assertions. He writes (my emphasis):
G.E. [genetically engineered] products may grow faster, require fewer pesticides, fertilizers and herbicides, and reduce stress on land, water and other resources; they may be more profitable to farmers. But many of these claims are in dispute, and advances in conventional agriculture, some as simple as drip irrigation, may achieve these same goals more simply. Certainly conventional agriculture is more affordable for poor farmers, and most of the worlds' farmers are poor. (The surge in suicides among Indian farmers has been attributed by some, at least in part, to G.E. crops, and it's entirely possible that what's needed to ...
