On Tuesday, I’ll be in Washington, D.C. to speak at the AEI Conference “Science and Technology in the Balance? Food Security, Precaution, and the Pesticide Debate.” I’ll be discussing the problems with the precautionary principle. The full conference agenda and registration info are here.
cirby says:
Just remember that the Precautionary Principle only applies to a certain range of things.
It does not (for some reason) come into play for “natural” foods. So when Bob and Barbara Wheatgrass start raving about the interesting new fruit they love so much (recently discovered in the Brazilian rainforest), don’t expect them to be happy when you suggest that maybe, just maybe it should be subjected to the same sort of human toxicity testing as a strain of wheat that’s been scientifically bred to resist wheat rust…
October 5, 2009, 5:20 amModa says:
The Bush administration effectively applied the precautionary principle to terrorism. Quoth Cheney:
October 5, 2009, 5:40 amsubpatre says:
Will they make (prepared) transcripts available? I don’t endorse the precautionary principle, but neither can I embrace its opposite. The problem isn’t chemicals-v-nature so much as boundary sets. A new-found fruit may ultimately prove harmful, but I can decline to buy it.
Under the current regime, consumers aren’t allowed to know the components of the wheat Cirby cites; they aren’t allowed to know what pesticides were applied. It may be that determining agricultural processes —the genetics and materials used— is just too complex for consumers, but I don’t believe that. All that information is available under current regs, just not to consumers.
There are deep-rooted problems with the current alternative of, “I can spray you and your property with this new chemical as long as there’s no [evidence showing] danger or harm.” Then as research of danger emerges, the maker or user of the substance gets years to contest the ‘results’.
Studies are just now showing widespread —‘everywhere except the Yukon’— endocrine disruption in fish from pollutants, or more likely, shed estrogens. Some species react so intensely they may end up as a ‘marker’ for the chemicals.
Implications to humans hasn’t been approached, but the modern GLBT movement will have a fit if it’s even implied that human sexual preference is influenced by industrial pollutants, drug use, or poor wastewater treatment plants. Yet attraction or orientation is far short of the physical gender-bending already documented in the lower species.
October 5, 2009, 5:54 amM. Gross says:
Hope you brought a pitcher of water and some throat lozenges.
October 5, 2009, 6:38 amBuy Wheatgrass says:
I am being told that wheatgrass has 3 times the VIT C as oranges. Really???
October 29, 2009, 3:42 am