On GMOs, New York Times foodie Mark Bittman is a dark cloud in the brightening sky of reason

It’s challenging to name a more influential food writer than The New York Times Mark Bittman—nor one less informed and more damaging to the public weal on the issue of genetically modified crops and foods. Simply said, he is a scourge on science.

Those are strong words, and not written lightly. However, when a journalist carries the imprimatur of the world’s most influential newspaper, he/she has standards to uphold, not the least of which is to know the basic facts about what one writes about. Bittman freely and often engages the debate over GMOs in food, from lobbying for government-mandated labeling to, most recently, attacking the biotechnology industry in a piece on the so-called Monsanto Protection Act (the debate about which the GLP deconstructed).

Bittman seems to have the pulse of everything Upper West Side, but not the nation. During his relentless campaigning for California Proposition 37, he boldly wrote: “It’s not an exaggeration to say that almost everyone wants to see the labeling of genetically engineered materials contained in their food products.”

I don’t, but that’s a trivial aside. The fact is that his prediction fell flatter than a pancake, as the mandatory labeling campaign lost. And similar efforts show signs of falling short in almost every state in which anti-GMO campaigners have stormed the statehouse. Intriguingly, science-minded progressives are showing signs of breaking from foodie hegemony, recognizing the can of worms that would open should these ill-conceived labeling initiatives become law.

It’s time to refocus the “dialogue on science,” opined the liberal Seattle Times. “Well-meaning consumers say they want more freedom of choice,” it wrote. “With I-522, they may end up with less. Just look at European Union countries where producers are using higher-priced ingredients to avoid even the potential stigma of a mandatory GMO label.”

It’s not clear that Bittman falls into the “well-meaning consumer” category. He’s a feckless crusader, like a teenage Greenpeace warrior ranting that “corporations are evil”. His tirades on behalf of Prop 37 and almost of his writings on bioengineering are littered with derisive references to “Big Food” (he never writes about Big Journalism, which he carries the flag for) or “ultraprofitable” companies, as if corporations are more virtuous if they regularly make less or lose money (again, maybe that’s a function of working for the corporation known as the New York Times).

The FDA does not require labels on foods with genetically modified ingredients because scientists have concluded government required labels could mislead consumers into thinking there could be adverse health effects, which has no basis in scientific evidence. Scientists have long since determined that there is no material difference between a food that has been genetically modified purely as a result of that modification.

Just a few years ago, the venerable National Research Council (NRC) issued a report detailing a “long and impressive list of benefits” that has come from GE crops, including improved soil quality, reduced erosion and reduced insecticide use. It merely reinforced what Bittman willfully chooses to ignore—as the NRC’s previous reports noted, engineered crops have harmed neither human health nor the environment. As importantly, in a rebuke of campaigners trying to impose trendy anti-science values on the developing world, the updated report carried an appeal to apply genetic engineering to a greater number of crops—not only to modify major commodity crops in the West, but also to improve a much wider range of crops that can be grown in difficult conditions, facing drought or flooding, throughout the world.

Going forward, we very well could have labeling, but it shouldn’t be based on anti-science demons. Even as Bittman bitches about Big Bad Food, he and other campaigners are feeding the ‘monster’ they now decry. “As it now stands,” Pamela Ronald, a professor of plant pathology at the University of California, Davis and James McWilliams, a history professor at Texas State University, wrote in a New York Times op-ed: “[O]pposition to genetic engineering has driven the technology further into the hands of a few seed companies that can afford it, further encouraging their monopolistic tendencies while leaving it out of reach for those that want to use it for crops with low (or no) profit margins.” Of course labeling—the mandatory kind that Bittman peddles—would only increase those dangerous trends.

As Discover blogger Keith Kloor wrote in discussing Bittman’s views last fall, before Californians rejected mandatory labeling, “Unfortunately, the real message environmentalists and foodies are sending by coalescing in support of Proposition 37 is a dangerous one—and not one that will help the food movement in the long run. That’s because Proposition 37 is predicated on junk science and blind, simplistic mistrust of multinational corporations. If the food movement continues down this road, it will soon be as politically irrelevant as the once-promising environmental movement is now.”

Bittman’s views on mandatory labeling are self-destructive and annoying. More consequential, and even dangerous, is his eagerness to spread the central myths about genetically engineered foods—that GE foods remain relatively untested and have not proven to be “beneficial to society at large.” He floated these standard stump speech themes once again in a recent disingenuous diatribe in the Times:

It’s smart to prudently explore the possible benefits and uses of genetically engineered materials in agriculture, and to deploy them if and when they’re proven to be a) safe (otherwise, no) and b) beneficial to society at large (otherwise, why bother?). I don’t believe that any G.E. materials have so far been proven to be either of these things, and therefore we should proceed cautiously. … Genetic engineering, or, more properly, transgenic engineering – in which a gene, usually from another species of plant, bacterium or animal, is inserted into a plant in the hope of positively changing its nature – has been disappointing.

What parallel universe does Bittman inhabit? As Henry Miller noted in Forbes.com, because GE crops require less chemical pesticide, from 1996 to 2010, the amount of pesticide that was sprayed on crops worldwide fell by an estimated 443 million kilograms – 1.5 times the total amount of pesticide applied annually to crops in the European Union. Moreover, GE crops’ higher yields and lower production costs have reduced global commodity prices (corn, soybeans, and derivatives), resulting in higher farm income, enhanced supplies of food and feed products, and more readily available high-quality calories.

Like a climate-denying archconservative, Bittman and hasn’t altered his views for years even as science has long since passed him by. As Keith Kloor, one of the world’s sharpest commentators on the politics of agricultural biotechnology journalism, recently noted in a response to Bittman’s latest, he couches his nutty views in reasonable-sounding verbiage that disguises the reality that his opinions are almost fact- and science-free.

“Bittman’s entire piece is disingenuous artistry,” Kloor wrote. “He starts off by saying: ‘Genetic engineering in agriculture has disappointed many people who once had hopes for it.’ Really? Who are these people?”

Kloor responded with a quote from professor Ronald,  one of the world’s leading advocates of sustainable agriculture. “After 14 years of cultivation and a cumulative total of 2 billion acres planted, no adverse health or environmental effects have resulted from commercialization of genetically engineered crops,” she is quoted as writing, citing an NRC study. In fact, even the French Supreme Court threw out France’s ban on a GMO because the government couldn’t produce any credible evidence that GMOs were a threat to the environment or human health.

There have been hundreds of independent medical studies on the health and safety of genetically modified foods. The World Health Organization, the National Academy of Sciences, the European Commission and many other groups—these are science based groups, not gourmands—have reached the identical determination that foods made using GM ingredients are safe and “substantially equivalent” to conventional alternatives. Last fall, facing down intense pressure from the “antis”, the American Medical Association reaffirmed its prior statement that “there is no scientific justification for special labeling of genetically modified foods.”

Added Kloor: “I think if Bittman bothered to talk to someone like Ronald, he’d learn that it is scientists who are disappointed that that the demonization of biotech by activists has been so successful. Their toxic rhetoric and campaigning has poisoned the well, which Bittman continues to drink from. And that disappoints many people who perhaps had high hopes that he would elevate the GMO dialogue. Instead, he continues to muddy it. What a shame.”

Stanford’s Miller, who otherwise shares few political views with Kloor, was equally disgusted at Bittman. “He and other cynical, anti-social activists who have opposed and obstructed agbiotech relentlessly for years now have the gall to complain about the hype and over-selling of its benefits — rather like the teenager convicted of murdering his parents who pleads for mercy from the judge because he’s an orphan.”

Bittman and his ilk may score points at foodie dinner parties, but increasingly they are becoming the butt of jokes in science circles. Even worse, their shrill but influential voices are making it increasingly challenging for federal and state regulatory agencies to follow the science when it comes to promoting good nutrition and public health.

Jon Entine, executive director of the Genetic Literacy Project, is a senior fellow at the Center for Health & Risk Communication and STATS (Statistical Assessment Service) at George Mason University.

22 thoughts on “On GMOs, <i>New York Times</i> foodie Mark Bittman is a dark cloud in the brightening sky of reason”

  1. Some readers of your excellent piece might get the impression that the N.Y. Times is unanimously opposed to GM crops, but that would be wrong: Jane Brody wrote a column a few years ago that ably presented the case against the fear-mongering anti-biotech activists and writers. (I’d tell you when the piece appeared in the paper, but my memory is not perfect.) —- Keep up the good work!

    Reply
    • Alas she’s not part of the science staff…one lone voice in a sea of anti-science writing (on this issue–most of the Time’s reporting is extremely competent).

      Reply
  2. ” engineered crops have harmed neither human health nor the environment”……..quoted from the above article

    .Does Jon Entine have anything to say about the condition of families living beside GE soya fields in Argentina?

    Reply
  3. Jon, it seems that the reverse is also true. Your articles and this rant seems to suggest you are a mouthpiece for the biotech Monsanto cartel; You will note that in this glowing and carefully worded spin from Monsanto you are the only journalist mentioned: “Separating ‘Fact from Fury’ on the Falsely Labeled “Monsanto Protection Act” http://ow.ly/k7Yq9 and all the other affiliates are biotech sponsored or funded.

    There IS another side to this whole saga on biotech manipulating of genes in our food which you refuse to engage and continue to dismiss if anyone challenges you. Shame. 52 pages of archived articles that seriously question your position http://www.scoop.it/t/agriculture-gmos-pesticides

    Reply
  4. Perhaps there’s some miscommunication between people who support GMO labeling and people who support Monsanto’s policies and practices. The AMA’s statement that there’s no scientific justification for labeling GMO’s may be true (at this point in time), but it’s not really an issue of scientific evidence. This is an ethical issue that concerns freedom of choice and freedom to be aware of what we’re consuming.

    Further, it’s about control of the food supply; since every human equally needs food, many people view food as something to be necessarily open and accessible to everyone. When Monsanto sells seeds that grow into sterile crops and sues farmers who have patented crops growing on their land accidentally, people see these actions as horrific, greedy, and potentially devastating to our food supply.

    It’s also very difficult to discern whose facts are accurate; Bittman’s statements of GMO’s being disappointing and not providing the increased yields, drought resistance, etc. are just as backed up by facts and statistics as your points… it takes more than a background in science to discern which “facts” are “true.”

    Reply
  5. Umm, did you even read that article you use as a reference on the “long and impressive list of benefits”? It hardly says that at all! Quite the contrary.

    Reply
  6. It’s interesting that the comments don’t get posted in chronological order- The “superb post” comment always remains on top.

    Reply
    • Kirsten,

      The comment order is determined by the number of “up” or “down” votes each comment gets, regardless of when the comments were posted. No one at the GLP is doing anything to influence the order of these comments. You’ll note that the top comment is in fact one criticizing the piece because it’s received two positive votes and one negative. That’s just how this comment system works.

      – Kenrick
      Editor, Genetic Literacy Project

      Reply
  7. We will see if this comment remains on top. As I wrote before but it got sent down to the bottom of the list:

    Did you or anyone reading this article even read the article that is used as a reference on the “long and impressive list of benefits”? It hardly says that at all. If you read the article, from 2010, it actually states, there are things to be worried about.

    Reply
    • Nobody upvoted your post. Two people upvoted the “superb” post. Upvotes determine ranking, though I don’t think that’s the way it should be.

      Reply
  8. Too bad about Bittman…I like his cooking books, he should keep his mouth shut about science he knows nothing about…Pollan knows a little better but not much..

    Reply
  9. The entire GMO propaganda machine is running out of steam – and science. From the falsified research papers (now retracted) published by GMO darling Professor Pamela Ronald, (papers that got her column space in major media outlets) to the debacle that is Monsanto’s glyphosphate, 2,4-D and Dicamba to the aerial spraying of RoundUp of coca crops in Colombia, the game is up – scientifically. The GMO juggernaut is now facing the longer term problem, despite extravagant claims, the GMO product pipeline is *not* bulging with promising ideas bit.ly/KycdZR. Mostly, it is more of the same: herbicide resistance and insect resistance. Historically likely to fail big.

    Pack it in before more damage is done. The ponzi GMO scheme is over. NONE of the touted promise of GMO being spewed since the 90’s has delivered. Many of the warnings are revealing themselves. Chipotle, Whole Foods and others is just the beginning.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

glp menu logo outlined

Newsletter Subscription

* indicates required
Email Lists
glp menu logo outlined

Get news on human & agricultural genetics and biotechnology delivered to your inbox.