bittman, mark
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">promoted 2nd, target</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">forbes mag guest post (blog?):</font></div><div><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">GUEST POST WRITTEN BY</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>Julie Kelly and Jeff Stier</b></font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Ms. Kelly is a cooking instructor and food writer. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Mr. Stier is a senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research.</span></font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Don’t let his bespectacled, mild-manner fool you: Mark Bittman is the foodie version of a war-monger.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“There’s a war here,” the New York Times columnist proclaimed at a food conference last year. His battle is America’s next social justice crusade much like civil rights and suffrage. But this time, the oppressors are McDonald’s, Wal-Mart and Monsanto. From soda to sugar to meat, Bittman has declared war on nearly every ingredient in the American food system.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">And if the pen is mightier than the sword, Bittman is the literary Napoleon of the progressive food movement. He depicts our food system as enemy territory that must be conquered then ruled by the omnipotent culinary elite in Manhattan and San Francisco with support from taxpayer-funded bureaucrats in Washington, DC.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">His latest book, “A Bone to Pick” (Penguin Random House, May 5), is a collection of Bittman’s NYT columns on how to "un-invent this food system" that has been “a major contributor to climate change, spawned the obesity crisis, poisoned countless volumes of land and water, wasted energy and tortured billions of animals.”</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Like all good social warriors, Bittman is armed with a plan for victory. The introduction of the book is his “Food Manifesto for the Future,” which lists a number of government-controlled remedies from the rational (limit subsidies) to the banal (mandate more labeling) to the outlandish (offer cooking classes for everyone and even give free cookware and cooking assistance to poor people.) Nearly every solution requires the reach of the federal government—which Bittman refers to as the “entity that is supposed to be vigilant regarding our health and welfare”—and the largess of the American taxpayer.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>Other entries are somewhat comical, such as his suggestion to convert suburban lawns into vegetable gardens.</b> “If you want to plant a lawn, that’s fine though it’s a waste of water and energy…Lawns are an attempt to dominate and homogenize nature.” Another column fantasizes about his “dream food label” designed as a stoplight for witless American consumers.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">But few of Bittman’s strategies are revolutionary; in fact, many have been tried with limited or no success. Consider his repeated call to limit consumption of soda, sugar and processed foods by children. He cites California’s ban on sugary drinks and restrictions on unhealthy snacks in public schools over the last several years. The result? By 2010, California’s childhood overweight/obesity rate dropped—by 1%. It’s still an eye-popping 38% among adolescents despite massive statewide efforts to stem the crisis.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">He often promotes taxing unhealthy food to fund subsidies and access to healthier food, such as his idea to convert “soda machines to vending machines that dispense grapes and carrots.” Pushing fresh produce is a big goal for many urban leaders and is being tried at great expense and unknown results. The CDC’s Putting Prevention to Work fund is one such example: The federal government gave local governments money to reimburse corner stores to buy refrigerators to sell produce.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" /></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Even when food corporations try to satisfy Mr. Bittman’s agenda, he questions their motives and integrity. McDonald’s is one example; it’s a frequent target in his book. He mocks the company’s efforts to please him, writing that McDonald’s wants foodies like “…me to stop kvetching and instead acknowledge that they’re making great strides in promoting health.” He sniffs that “only the most gullible will buy” McDonald’s attempts to offer healthier menu choices. Bittman has pointed to “the decline of McDonald’s” as a win for the food movement.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">===</font></div><div><a href="https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2013/04/15/on-gmos-new-york-times-foodie-mark-bittman-is-a-dark-cloud-in-the-brightening-sky-of-reason/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">2013</span>/04/15/on-gmos-new-york-times-foodie-mark-bittman-is-a-dark-cloud-in-the-brightening-sky-of-reason/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">12/21/2015 On GMOs, New York Times foodie Mark Bittman is a dark cloud in the brightening sky of reason | </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Genetic Literacy Project
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Mark Bittman
www.geneticliteracyproject.org
On GMOs, New York Times foodie Mark Bittman is a dark cloud in the
brightening sky of reason
Jon Entine | April 15, 2013 | Genetic Literacy Project </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>It’s challenging to name a more influential
food writer than The New York
Times‘ Mark Bittman</b>—<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">nor one less
informed and more damaging to the public
weal</span> on the issue of genetically modified
crops and foods.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Simply said, he is a
scourge on science.</span>
Those are strong words, and not written
lightly. However, when a journalist carries
the imprimatur of the world’s most
influential newspaper, he/she has
standards to uphold, not the least of which
is to know the basic facts about what one
writes about. Bittman freely and often
engages the debate over GMOs in food,
from lobbying for<b> government mandated labeling </b>to, most recently, attacking the
biotechnology industry in a piece on the socalled Monsanto Protection Act (the debate about
which the GLP deconstructed). </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Bittman seems to have the pulse of everything Upper West Side, but not the nation. During his
relentless campaigning for California Proposition 37</b>, he boldly wrote: “It’s not an
exaggeration to say that almost everyone wants to see the labeling of genetically engineered
materials contained in their food products.”
I don’t, but that’s a trivial aside. The fact is that his prediction fell flatter than a pancake, as the
mandatory labeling campaign lost. And similar efforts show signs of falling short in almost
every state in which antiGMO campaigners have stormed the statehouse. Intriguingly,
scienceminded progressives are showing signs of breaking from<b> foodie hegemony,
</b>recognizing the can of worms that would open should these illconceived labeling initiatives
become law.
It’s time to refocus the “dialogue on science,” opined the liberal Seattle Times. “Wellmeaning
consumers say they want more freedom of choice,” it wrote. “With I522, they may end up
with less. Just look at European Union countries where producers are using higherpriced
12/21/2015 On GMOs, New York Times foodie Mark Bittman is a dark cloud in the brightening sky of reason | Genetic Literacy Project
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> ingredients to avoid even the potential stigma of a mandatory GMO label.”
It’s not clear that Bittman falls into the “wellmeaning consumer” category. He’s a feckless
crusader, like a teenage Greenpeace warrior ranting that “corporations are evil”. His tirades on
behalf of Prop 37 and almost of his writings on bioengineering are littered with derisive
references to “<b>Big Food” (he never writes about Big Journalism, </b>which he carries the flag for)
or “ultraprofitable” companies, as if corporations are more virtuous if they regularly make less
or lose money (again, maybe that’s a function of working for the corporation known as the
New York Times). </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The FDA does not require labels on foods with genetically modified ingredients because
scientists have concluded government required labels could mislead consumers into thinking
there could be adverse health effects, which has no basis in scientific evidence. Scientists have
long since determined that there is no material difference between a food that has been
genetically modified purely as a result of that modification.
Just a few years ago, the venerable National Research Council (NRC) issued a report detailing
a “long and impressive list of benefits” that has come from GE crops, including improved soil
quality, reduced erosion and reduced insecticide use. It merely reinforced what Bittman
willfully chooses to ignore—as the NRC’s previous reports noted, engineered crops have
harmed neither human health nor the environment. As importantly, in a rebuke of campaigners
trying to impose trendy antiscience values on the developing world, the updated report
carried an appeal to apply genetic engineering to a greater number of crops—not only to
modify major commodity crops in the West, but also to improve a much wider range of crops
that can be grown in difficult conditions, facing drought or flooding, throughout the world. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Going forward, we very well could have labeling, but it shouldn’t be based on <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">antiscience
demons. Even as Bittman bitches about Big Bad Food, </span>he and other campaigners are feeding
the ‘monster’ they now decry. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“As it now stands,” <b>Pamela Ronald,</b> a professor of plant
pathology at the University of California, Davis and James McWilliams, a history professor at
Texas State University, wrote in a New York Times oped: “[O]pposition to genetic engineering
has driven the technology further into the hands of a few seed companies that can afford it,
further encouraging their monopolistic tendencies while leaving it out of reach for those that
want to use it for crops with low (or no) profit margins.</span>” </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Of course labeling—the mandatory
kind that Bittman peddles—would only increase those dangerous trends.
As <b>Discover blogger Keith Kloor wrote in discussing Bittman’s views last fall, before
Californians rejected mandatory labeling,</b> “Unfortunately, the real message environmentalists
and foodies are sending by coalescing in support of Proposition 37 is a dangerous one—and
not one that will help the food movement in the long run. That’s because Proposition 37 is
predicated on junk science and blind, simplistic mistrust of multinational corporations. If the
food movement continues down this road, it will soon be as politically irrelevant as the oncepromising
environmental movement is now.”
12/21/2015 </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On GMOs, New York Times foodie Mark Bittman is a dark cloud in the brightening sky of reason | Genetic Literacy Project
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bittman’s views on mandatory labeling are selfdestructive and annoying. More consequential,
and even dangerous, is his eagerness to spread the central myths about genetically engineered
foods—that GE foods remain relatively untested and have not proven to be “beneficial to
society at large.” He floated these standard stump speech themes once again in a recent
disingenuous diatribe in the Times:
It’s smart to prudently explore the possible benefits and uses of genetically engineered
materials in agriculture, and to deploy them if and when they’re proven to be a) safe
(otherwise, no) and b) beneficial to society at large (otherwise, why bother?). I don’t
believe that any G.E. materials have so far been proven to be either of these things, and
therefore we should proceed cautiously. … Genetic engineering, or, more properly,
transgenic engineering – in which a gene, usually from another species of plant,
bacterium or animal, is inserted into a plant in the hope of positively changing its nature –
has been disappointing.
What parallel universe does Bittman inhabit? As <b>Henry Miller</b> noted in Forbes.com,
because GE crops require less chemical pesticide, from 1996 to 2010, the amount of pesticide
that was sprayed on crops worldwide fell by an estimated 443 million kilograms – 1.5 times
the total amount of pesticide applied annually to crops in the European Union. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Moreover, GE
crops’ higher yields and lower production costs have reduced global commodity prices (corn,
soybeans, and derivatives)</b>, resulting in higher farm income, enhanced supplies of food and
feed products, and more readily available highquality calories.
Like a climatedenying archconservative, Bittman and hasn’t altered his views for years even
as science has long since passed him by. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As Keith Kloor, one of the world’s sharpest
commentators on the politics of agricultural biotechnology journalism, </span>recently noted in a
response to Bittman’s latest, he couches his nutty views in reasonablesounding verbiage that
disguises the reality that his opinions are almost fact and sciencefree.
“Bittman’s entire piece is disingenuous artistry,” Kloor wrote. “He starts off by saying:
‘Genetic engineering in agriculture has disappointed many people who once had hopes for it.’
Really? Who are these people?”
Kloor responded with a quote from professor Ronald, one of the world’s leading advocates of
sustainable agriculture. “After 14 years of cultivation and a cumulative total of 2 billion acres
planted, no adverse health or environmental effects have resulted from commercialization of
genetically engineered crops,” she is quoted as writing, citing an NRC study. In fact, even the<b>
French Supreme Court threw out France’s ban </b>on a GMO because the government couldn’t
produce any credible evidence that GMOs were a threat to the environment or human health.
There have been hundreds of independent medical studies on the health and safety of
genetically modified foods. The World Health Organization, the National Academy of
Sciences, the European Commission and many other groups—these are science based groups,
not gourmands—have reached the identical determination that foods made using GM
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ingredients are safe and “substantially equivalent” to conventional alternatives. Last fall,
facing down intense pressure from the “antis”, the American Medical Association reaffirmed
its prior statement that “there is no scientific justification for special labeling of genetically
modified foods.”
Added Kloor: “I think if Bittman bothered to talk to someone like Ronald, he’d learn that it is
scientists who are disappointed that that the demonization of biotech by activists has been so
successful. Their toxic rhetoric and campaigning has poisoned the well, which Bittman
continues to drink from. And that disappoints many people who perhaps had high hopes that
he would elevate the GMO dialogue. Instead, he continues to muddy it. What a shame.”<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
Stanford’s Miller</span>, <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">who otherwise shares few political views with Kloor,</span> was equally disgusted
at Bittman. “He and other cynical, antisocial activists who have opposed and obstructed
agbiotech relentlessly for years now have the gall to complain about the hype and overselling
of its benefits — rather like the teenager convicted of murdering his parents who pleads for
mercy from the judge because he’s an orphan.”
Bittman and his ilk may score points at foodie dinner parties, but increasingly they are
becoming the butt of jokes in science circles. Even worse, their shrill but influential voices are
making it increasingly challenging for federal and state regulatory agencies to follow the
science when it comes to promoting good nutrition and public health.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Jon Entine, executive director of the Genetic Literacy Project, is a senior fellow at the Center
for Health & Risk Communication and STATS (Statistical Assessment Service) at George
Mason University.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">==</font></div></div>