Unnatural Harvest: How Corporate Science Is Secretly Altering Our Food
Description
Contains Index
$32.95
ISBN 0-385-25749-X
DDC 664
Author
Publisher
Year
Contributor
Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University and an avid outdoor recreationist. She is also the
author of The Mountain Is Moving: Japanese Women’s Lives, Kurlek, and
Margaret Laurence: The Long Journey Hom
Review
Unnatural Harvest alerts us to the alarming prospect that in the first
decades of the new millennium, the majority of our food will be the
product of genetic engineering. Most of us will be ignorant of this
fact. Scientists are currently mixing and matching species to create
life with unnatural properties. For example, a leaner pig was the goal
of some scientists in both the United States and Australia who injected
human DNA into hogs.
Ingeborg Boyens’s work is timely and significant. Boyens is an
award-winning journalist who has been with CBC television for more than
a decade and is currently producing documentaries on food and
agriculture for Country Canada. Her lively writing is marked by keen
intelligence and wry humor. She notes that her subject is as much about
ethics and public policy as it is about science.
Only informed and active consumers can assess and take joint action to
protect themselves against foods whose long-term effects are completely
unknown. Bovine growth hormone (BGH), for example, was the first product
of genetic engineering to be approved for use in the United States.
Currently, concern about its impact on the health of both cows and
humans has limited its spread to other countries. Genetically
manipulated canola oil, tomatoes, corn, and soy beans are already on the
market.
Boyens presents the implications of this new technology that is quietly
revolutionizing our basic foods. She points to dangers, possible
consequences, and the need for biodiversity on our planet. Unnatural
Harvest may be the most important book you read this year.