Word: public
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...foodmakers can no longer count on the public's unquestioning acceptance of their products, it's not just because of activist theatrics and shrill agitprop. To be sure, it was Greenpeace that pressured Gerber to drop genetically altered soybeans and corn from its baby foods and played a key role in forcing Monsanto to halt research on its self-sterilizing "terminator" seeds. But more measured voices have expressed doubts as well. Says Rebecca Goldburg of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF): "As a biologist, I find it hard to oppose genetically engineered crops or foods per se. [But] I also think...
...Chicago the Food and Drug Administration, acknowledging growing public concern, held the first of three public forums on g.m. foods. FrankenTony showed up, along with a covey of kids dressed as monarch butterflies, feigning death before a mock cornstalk--an allusion to the discovery by scientists last spring that, at least in the lab, pollen from g.m. corn can kill the butterfly's caterpillars. Not to be left out, Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman was said to be considering the appointment of a panel of experts to advise him on the pros and cons of biotech. And in the surest...
With billions of dollars at risk, the biotech industry has begun to fight back, forming corporate alliances and launching a major p.r. effort that includes lobbying, new research efforts to still public fears and TV, radio and newspaper ads. It is also beginning to listen more. "To brush off concern [about g.m. crops] as unfounded is to be arrogant and reckless," says DuPont ceo Charles Holliday Jr. And even though it gave FrankenTony the cold shoulder, Kellogg's is already phasing out genetically modified products in Europe--not, it insists, for safety reasons but just to please consumers...
...regulators have approved dozens of genetically modified plants for human consumption. But if public pressure grows, it may be forced to go slower in the future. One possibility: the FDA could begin applying to g.m. foods the powers it already has to regulate food additives. As EDF's Goldburg explains, the proteins produced by new genes are in a sense additives as well--"and while food manufacturers intend food additives to be safe, every now and then they screw up." Even more likely, food producers will respond to the changing public mood by labeling their products as g.m.-free...
...public-health community must find a way to pry apart the beauty and disease-control facets of the obesity debate, as raised in the article "Will We Keep Getting Fatter?" [SPECIAL REPORT, Nov. 8]. Actress Camryn Manheim is overweight and lovely. So is my wife. No one wants a nation of size-8 robots. I'd settle for an effective battle against extreme obesity (starting in infancy) and getting everyone into exercising more. That should improve health without terrorizing the merely plump or pinning our hopes on a magic pill. CHRIS FOREMAN Takoma Park...