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Dinner at the New Gene Cafe: How Genetic Engineering Is Changing What We Eat, How We Live, and the Global Politics of Food
Dinner at the New Gene Cafe How Genetic Engineering Is Changing What We Eat How We Live and the Global Politics of Food Author:Bill Lambrecht Recent headlines will tell you that biotechonology companies are knocking down barriers as they race one another to alter the genetic building blocks of the world's food. In the United States, the primary venue for this quiet revolution, the acreage of genetically modified crops has soared from zero to more than 70 million acres since 1996. More... more » than half of America's processed grocery products-from cornflakes to granola bars to diet drinks-contain gene-altered ingredients. But the U.S., unlike Europe and other democratic nations, does not require labeling of modified food. Resistance to this technology is growing fast and furious-sometimes even violent.Dinner at the New Gene Caf lays out the battle lines of the impending collision between a powerful but unproved technology and a gathering resistance from people worried about the safety of genetic change and the power of those who own the technology. Amid the furor, this precocious science is cutting applications of dangerous insecticides, and the next wave of modified crops could deliver more nutritious food and even food that wards off disease. But even before people weigh the potential costs and benefits, this Mendelian magic is thrusting itself on the world in Orwellian fashion. Author Bill Lambrecht has watched the technology from its inception and traveled the world to witness its introduction. Timely and important, Dinner at the New Gene Caf examines the growing international struggle over a matter that is vital to everyone on the planet: the very nature of our food, who shall shape our food supply, and who shall own it.AUTHORBIO: BILL LAMBRECHT has been a Washington correspondent for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch since 1984. After a decade as the paper's national political writer, he now covers environment and resource issues. His journalism prizes include three Raymond Clapper Awards for Washington reporting, one of them in 1999 for his articles on genetic engineering from around the world. Lambrecht lives with his wife, Sandra Olivetti Martin, editor of Bay Weekly newspaper, in Fairhaven, Maryland.« less