Recycling can be a very good practice. Re-using components of electronics, waste paper, and food scraps that would otherwise head to the waste stream can be a great idea. However, sometimes re-use doesn’t bring any value. Recycling bad claims and ideas about GMOs helps no one. Unfortunately, The GMO Deception is a prime example of worthless recycling.



I found out about this text from Marion Nestle’s blog. She promoted this book in a post and by blurbing for it: This week’s reading: The GMO Deception. It didn’t take me long to find more details about it at the publisher’s site, because I had already been over there that same week. Skyhorse Publishing had just published RFK Jr’s new book on thimerosal and vaccines. And I learned that they had also published Andrew Wakefield’s “Callous Disregard”. This did not bode well for my confidence in scientific rigor, of course.

Unwilling to pay for the book ($24.95 at the publisher’s site), I put my name into my local library queue and waited. My chance arrived a couple weeks ago, and I began to look over the contents. This is when I realized it was almost nothing but regurgitation.

Except for an occasional new piece, or a pre-section wrapper, the material in this tome is mostly cut-and-paste from the GeneWatch archives. That’s right–it’s largely the same material that has been widely ignored for years. It’s possible to use prior material in a thoughtful or introspective way–especially if it offers updated information, or if new and current context is added to further understand the issues and outcomes. But that’s not what has happened in this case.

And sadly, even the new pieces–which could have contained current information–are rife with errors and misinformation. For example, Ralph Nader’s foreword is essentially an anti-corporation screed. When attempting science, there was this laughable result:



“More than a decade ago, an Iowa corn farmer told me he liked Bt corn primarily because it allowed him to spend more time with his wife—meaning less time needed for weeding.”

We are perplexed about how Bt corn reduces weeding time. But similarly, Nader re-hashes incorrect or misunderstood claims of many types, none of which would be new to anyone following this topic.

Similarly, the introduction by Krimsky and Gruber offers this odd conflation and incomplete information:

In fact, there have been only two commonly applied major innovations in GMO agriculture: 1) crops resistant to herbicide, and 2) crops that contain their own insecticide. Both methods were designed to find synergies with their corporate sponsor’s existing pesticide, herbicide, and fertilizer businesses in order to maximize profits. For example, a farmer who buys Monsanto’s Roundup Ready soybeans would also need to buy Monsanto’s Roundup Ready herbicide.

Ok, we’ll note that they were unable to include the hugely successful publicly-funded papaya project that had nothing to do with these “synergies”. And in addition they are just making up the relationship to fertilizer–the 2 innovations they cite have zero to do with fertilizer. Bt crops do not sell more pesticide–that’s just completely absurd. Dog-piling on the #fail, they neglect to include the fact that Monsanto Roundup has long been off patent and is not needed for Monsanto seeds–farmers can buy this from other sources. They also wildly mis-characterize farmer’s realities about the tech agreements and seed choices. They also leave out the fact that these issues are not unique to GMOs–because that doesn’t suit the case they are making.

In the Biofortified forum I’ll provide a complete list of the chapters that I was able to locate in the GeneWatch archives, which are unevenly available. When there is no link to a site, the volume and issue details will have to suffice. You can likely get back issues from your library if you could be bothered to do so. Some of them are from as far back as the 1980s.

More recent pieces included a 2012 piece by “Pamm Larry and the CRG Staff”; Larry led the California Prop37 efforts. In this short piece, Labeling Genetically Engineered Foods in California, she enthused about their efforts to get the legislation on the ballot. The chapter’s short blurb failed to note that when voters did see this ballot initiative, they rejected it. That’s really just blatant ignorance of reality.

Curiously, the new segment introducing the “Labeling and Consumer Activism” section in which Larry’s piece appears offers this gem from Jeremy Gruber:”The US already allows “process” labels on other products. Kosher foods, for example, are equivalent in nutritional value and taste to non-Kosher foods.”

Why, Jeremy–are you suggesting GMOs are like this, and labels should be handled by a 3rd-party system as Kosher is? Perhaps we actually agree on something. Labeling GMOs is a philosophical issue best handled like voluntary Kosher labeling: Labeling. What is Kosher for a food community?

One new section, the “Conclusion: The Future of GM Food” by Sheldon Krimsky, suffered from all the same problems of outdated information, cherry-picked details, clinging to fringy scientists, and a failure to understand the scientific literature. I howled with laughter at this part:

“In 2009 de Vendomois et al. fed rats three commercialized GM maize varieties and found newly observed side effects with the kidney and liver and other effects observed in the heart, adrenal glands, spleen, and blood (hematopoietic) system.6“

Reference 6 in the Conclusion Endnotes: “A Comparison of the Effects of Three GM Corn Varieties on Mammalian Health” found here: http://www.ijbs.com/v05p0706.htm The de Vendomois team did not feed rats in this study–it was a statistical fishing expedition of previous data, which was summarily denounced by food safety experts around the world. But to see that Krimsky has no understanding of what this study comprised should certainly give a reader pause.

This text offers no new insights, it merely re-hashes decades of wild claims and misinformation, and sometimes dishes just flat-out fiction. Most of it is available in the GeneWatch archives, and the new bits are not any different than the same stuff you can find from these authors on other sites.

If you want to read a book of essays that has scientific credibility and insights from current practitioners in the fields of science and agriculture, and which was written entirely in this century, try this e-book for free instead: The Lowdown on GMOs: According to Science. That’s worth your time–and it’s free.

The GMO Deception is full of miscellaneous reused pieces that are deceptive and misleading. It is also completely stale. It’s only real value would be the cost of some recycled paper: about 2 pounds of it. Don’t waste money or time on this book.