Dive Brief:
- A call to ban GMO crops in Hawaii won wide support from activists and many residents. But as is often true in such debates, growers and scientists saw things differently.
- The New York Times has published a detailed and fascinating story about how a local politician named Greggor Ilagan committed himself to getting to the truth—only to find that the truth was elusive, and not central to the argument.
- In the end, Illagan finds that he can't even muster support to study the impact of the ban.
Dive Insight:
We've read a million articles about GMO crops, the fight to ban them, and the crusade to use them to bring food to the world. But this is the best article we've read. For the first time an article manages to make clear the two most fascinating things about the GMO debate:
First, that good, decent, intelligent people struggle to find a good, decent, intelligent path in this fight.
Second, that the anti-GMO movement has become an anti-science movement, and in that regard it is remarkably similar to the movement to deny climate change.
It's unfortunate that the GMO fight has come to this. Because there may not be a more important issue than how we produce food. And as we've said before, we will never resolve that issue "until we somehow manage to bridge the chasm between those who wish to feed healthier food to Americans and those who wish simply to feed the starving."