Educational Media Reviews Online

This video focuses on the potential social and health consequences of largescale consumption of genetically modified foods. In the U.S., the majority of cotton, corn, canola, soybean and potato crops are now the result of bioengineered seeds, produced by large corporations like Monsanto and Novartis. Many of these seeds have "built-in" insecticidal properties; some of them are sterile, requiring the farmers who plant them to purchase more seeds from the manufacturers with each successive harvest.

The reaction to the use of these seeds has varied greatly in the industrialized world. While Americans seem largely unconcerned about the potential of the use of these altered seeds, citizens in the European Union, Japan and Australia have expressed wide concern, so much so that their respective governments have placed wide restrictions on the import of the seeds from their American corporate producers. At the same time, Monsanto and other biotechnology-dependent seed makers have spent millions to prevent labeling laws from being introduced or passed by Congress in this country. This video interviews a number of organic farmers and scientists concerned about genetically altered crops. One farmer put the essential objection succinctly: we may be "releasing something into nature that cannot be recalled." Already, unanticipated fallout from crops grown from seeds containing bT, an herbicidal bacterium, has resulted: they have proven to be toxic to butterflies, and the bT trait has spread outside its target crop. Skepticism about these seeds' ability to "feed the world" is widely expressed; one scientist interviewed likens the claims made for bioengineered crops to the enthusiasm for DDT use in crops forty years ago and says that "silver bullets" often turn out to be "snake oil."

Food for Thought is highly recommended for college and university libraries with nonprint collections in agriculture and biology.