Dinner at the New Gene Café: How Genetic Engineering Is Changing What We Eat, How We Live, and the Global Politics of Food

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Macmillan, 2002 M12 19 - 383 pages

The definitive book on the rise of biotechnology and genetic modification in the world's food supply, a growing topic of fierce international debate.

Biotech companies are racing 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 70 million acres since 1996. 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.

Dinner at the New Gene
Café expertly 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.

"Should be required reading for anyone who eats" --Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

 

Selected pages

Contents

IN THE BEGINNING
18
A CRY9 SHAME WHEN THE RULES BROKE DOWN
40
THE NEW GENE CAFÉ
55
WINGS OF A BUTTERFLY MARTINA VERSUS MARGARET
74
IN ILLINOIS AN APOSTLE OF MODIFIED FOOD
92
THE TERMINATOR
103
AN ORGANIC CORNUCOPIA IN THE GARDEN OF GLICKMAN
124
ICE CREAM WITH EARL
137
IN BRITAIN ABSOLUTELY UNSTOPPABLE
213
WHAT WENT WRONG?
240
CYBERSPACE TECHNOLOGIES CONVERGE
260
IN INDIA A FATAL CONNECTION
268
BIOTECH AND THE PARADOX OF PLENTY
288
COLOMBIA RISING VOICES IN A TROUBLED LAND
310
THE BATTLE OF SEATTLE
326
MONTREAL LAST STOP ON THE GMO TRAIL
343

THE PIGS OF CHEZ PANISSE
144
GENES OF THE JUNGLE
153
IN IRELAND BEETS OF WRATH
176
IN FRANCE DEMOCRACY EUROPEAN STYLE
199
Afterword
370
Index
374
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About the author (2002)

Bill Lambrecht, author of Big Muddy Blues and Dinner at the New Gene Café, writes about environment and natural resource issues for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. His journalism prizes include three Raymond Clapper Awards for Washington Reporting, one of them in 1999 for his articles on genetic engineering around the world. He lives in Fairhaven, Maryland.

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