Genetically modified food is in the news and on our plates. And while consumers may not have known they were being used as lab rats, America's uncontrolled experiment with such "inventions" as StarLink corn, with its built-in insecticide, is already well under way. In Eating in the Dark, environmental journalist Kathleen Hart examines the battles being fought in boardrooms, grocery stores, and government agencies over the creation, distribution, and regulation of genetically engineered organisms. The truth is quite disturbing. Companies like Monsanto began releasing modified seeds to farmers in the 1990s, but consumers weren't informed. From baby formula made from engineered soybeans to taco shells that cause dangerous allergy attacks, the stories here are well-researched and frightening. Hart accuses the U.S. Food and Drug Administration of aiding and abetting what she calls a public health "nightmare," and she calls for both intense research and strong legislation as a way of getting the experiment under control. --Therese Littleton --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
If we are what we eat, then we may be ingesting our way toward a sick new world: that's the gist of Hart's cautionary examination of how "Frankenstein food" genetically modified food, particularly corn- and soy-based products has come to fill grocery store shelves in the past decade. Hart, a health and environment writer for 15 years, is aghast that produce modified by biotech companies is not labeled. She is bewildered that consumer resistance has been much slower to develop in the United States than in Japan and in Europe, where test fields of modified sugar beets and oilseed have been destroyed by scythe-wielding "croppers." She worries about the impact of altered plants on pollinating bees and butterflies, and she fears the long-term health consequences of an uninformed and unsuspecting population becoming guinea pigs for an untested agricultural technology. For all her concerns, however, Hart is no one-note alarmist; the book is admirable for its exhaustive, balanced presentation and in its grasp of the science and the politics propelling the biotech industry. Some readers may find it a little dry. There are scattered colorful quotes from British protestors and angry American farmers, and there's the tale of a San Francisco woman who may have had a life-threatening allergic reaction to modified corn, but otherwise Hart's book is short on human-interest hooks and the storytelling punch carried by last fall's less fact-laden but more sprightly Lords of the Harvest, by Daniel Charles.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
作者简介
Kathleen Hart is a journalist who has been writion about health and the environment for more than sixteen years.She has coverde agri-culture and biotechnology for Food Chemical News and has reported on nuclear power and nonproliferation for McGraw-Hill's Nucleon-ics Week. Her articles have appeared in The Boston Globe, the Bulletin of the Atomic Sci-entists, and other publications.She has been a guest on numerous television and radio sta-tions, including National Public Radio and C-span.sHE LIVES IN Washington,D.C. |
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