the late environmentalist, author, & philosopher
Seeds of Freedom charts the story of seeds from their root at the heart of traditional, diversity-rich farming systems across the world, to being transformed into a powerful commodity used to monopolise the global food system. The film highlights the extent to which the industrial agricultural system, and genetically modified seeds (GMO) in particular, has [...]
Árpád Pusztai is the pioneering biochemist who first alerted the public to the health risks of consuming genetically modified food. After immediate and widespread praise for his findings, he was summarily dismissed from his post at the Rowett Institute of Nutrition and Health—his career in tatters. Who was behind this silencing of public-interest science? With [...]
Edward Goldsmith interviews Percy Schmeiser, the Canadian farmer who risked everything to challenge GM giant Monsanto. Interview conducted on 1 May 2004. Background: For 40 years Percy Schmeiser grew oilseed rape on his farm in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. Usually, he would sow each year’s crop with seeds saved from the previous harvest. In [...]
There is an increasing tendency to blame human ills – physical and psychological – on ‘defective’ genes. But is it our genes that are defective? Or is it rather the pathological environment in which we live? Deprived of community, eating nutritionally impoverished foods, surrounded by industrial pollution . . . the raw conditions of life [...]
Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez interview Edward Goldsmith for the “Democracy Now!” programme on Pacifica Radio, USA. Broadcast 30 April 1999. The original audio can be found here. Background: In September 1998, The Ecologist produced a special issue called “The Monsanto Files: Can We Survive Genetic Engineering?” exposing the genetic engineering giant’s chequered history and [...]
In this introduction to “The Monsanto Files”, The Ecologist‘s special issue on Monsanto, Edward Goldsmith engages with the problems of corporate control of the food chain as well as the potential health issues associated with genetic modification. The 60-page exposé of the world’s major biotech company was the best-selling issue of The Ecologist ever, selling [...]
A leading article for The Ecologist Vol. 28 No. 3, January–February 1979, by The Editors. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006). See ordering information for the Funbook. It has always been a major plank of those who support genetic engineering that today’s laboratory techniques are so sophisticated that the risks of [...]
