AS231: Dr. Kevin Folta, Part 2

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:30 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Atheistically Speaking. This is episode 231, and I am your host. Alright, I've got an exciting part two with Dr. Kevin Folta. It was a lot of fun. This part's even more action-packed than part one, if I do say so myself. So let's get right to that.

0:01:04 Thomas: Well, can you explain... sorry, further ignorance. What exactly does organic mean these days? And is it, does that work as a category? Is that a label that makes sense, really?

0:01:14 Kevin: Well, what it is is it's a different production method. So all it means is that you have, so when we think about the way we grow plants, we have genetics and we have the production methods. And what organic is is a production system where the land has not had any synthetic chemicals on it for three years. It's certified as organic, meaning that you can only use natural pesticides, natural insecticides. So you can use things like copper to control bacteria. You can use BT, which is the same thing that's in the GMO corn. BT is a powdered bacterial spore suspension that you can put on plants and grow them in organic context. And you're just not allowed to use synthetic herbicides or fertilizers or insecticides well.

0:02:03 Thomas: So that, I mean, is that something you would in general not really be in favor of? I mean it sounds like, well, A, it sounds like it would be more expensive than it is. But also it sounds like it's not utilizing a lot of good science that we could be utilizing.

0:02:21 Kevin: That's true, it doesn't utilize. So if it's up to me, if it is Kevin Folta planting a farm, I want the way I can grow the most stuff at the best price and the fewest inputs on my land, meaning the few chemicals and other stuff. So I will go with conventional, but I will be real careful with it and be very judicious. But there is something good about the organic production techniques, and here is the deal with that is that if we have researchers who are studying how to get by with organic amendments, organic or low, low impact herbicides, or what are you about, not herbicides but pesticides that can be cleverly concocted from natural sources, weed suppression techniques using cover crops, that's good because if we can learn how to do it in a conventional context so that we don't have to use herbicides, or we can use cover crops and rotation in those production systems, and that's a good thing. I'm on fire about supporting organic research.

0:02:25 Thomas: Mm-hmm. Interesting.

0:03:21 Kevin: That's perfectly fine with me. I'm also glad that farmers, you know, there's these organic farmers who are typically smallholder farmers who don't want to work for someone else, who have a strong commitment to trying to farm with fewer inputs. They are making a killing on producing their products, and they couldn't do it with a conventional product because you can't compete against the 8,000-acre tomato farm. But you can grow your heirlooms and have a distinct market. So my organic farmers, love you guys. Do your thing and make a buck while the sun shines here because I think it's fantastic.

0:03:58 Thomas: That's interesting. So, it's almost like the entire business model is sustained by a distinction that, in some ways, doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. I mean, I understand maybe I'm missing some things here, but it seems like we could just as easily live in a world or a country, rather, maybe, I don't know how this is worldwide, but let's say say, in the U.S., where the organic label doesn't exist, right? I mean, would we really miss it if it didn't exist? And yet that label seems to be what's pinning up this market that you're saying you're really happy about. That's a really weird situation.

0:04:36 Kevin: Well, especially because these are the people financing all the attacks against me, which is really what's interesting. But my Job is, and as much as people want to say that, I'm owned by Monsanto, Dow, and Bayer and those companies. I work for the state and my farmers in the state. And if we have organic farmers here, I want them to succeed. And I must support training students that can work in their farms and supporting research that helps them do their job better. And I want my farmers and the state to make money. And that's what gets me excited. And maybe it seems a little counterintuitive, but if there's somebody out there who's willing to pay a higher amount of money for an equivalent product that comes through a different production means, that's great.

0:04:42 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, that's really, that's really interesting. Thanks for breaking that down. So I guess I want to ask a couple clarifying things on the testing question and how prevalent Give me some sort of ballpark, again, coming from a place of total ignorance, on how many, let's say, specific GMO techniques are currently being used. I mean, is it handful? Is it thousands? Because you talked about the process being, you know, you identify a virus or something that you're, whatever it is you're trying to accomplish, you go through a process, you have to test, it takes $5 to $15 million, all that. That. So how many times has that happened? And how many of those would you say, roughly speaking, are in use right now?

0:06:11 Kevin: Well, let me break it down this way. Really four things that we eat that come through a GMO plant. Well, lemme say, there are food products that we that come from four different genetically engineered plants, so corn, soy, canola, and sugar beets. Those are the four that we're most likely to ... Well, that's it. Those are four that will eat like the cornstarch from that corn, the soybean oil from the soybeans, the canola oil and the sugar from the sugar beet. Most of that corn and soy is going to animal feed, about 90%, 80%. A lot of it goes to ethanol production. The rest of it goes towards products like cornstarch, cornmeal, soybean oil. It's all the additives that are in processed foods. That's the main thing. Hawaiian papayas are genetically engineered and is a small acreage of squash and then cotton for fiber and alfalfa for cattle feed. And the genes that are engineered, so it's really just eight different crops, four that are producing a human food product, and really three different genes. It's virus resistance in squash and papaya.

0:06:33 Thomas: And that's it.

0:06:48 Thomas: Huh?

0:07:34 Kevin: It's glyphosate resistance in corn, soy, cotton, sugar beets, and alfalfa and canola, and it's a BT, which is the insecticide or the insect resistance making a natural insecticide that's used in organic production that's in corn and cotton, right?

0:07:56 Thomas: Wow. So it's, it's really not all that much. That's, that's interesting. I had no idea. I mean, you get the impression that it's you know, uh, Dr. Frankenstein doing whatever he wants with any food all the time. It's like, so it really is just those specific things. Like however many techniques that ends up adding up to. I'm not exactly sure, but like eight.

0:08:03 Kevin: Yeah. Well.

0:08:15 Kevin: That's a, well, it is, it's eight, eight crops and three genes. We read last year they deregulated the potato and an apple, but those aren't commercially available yet, but But the apple and the potato have genes that cause them to not brown when you cut them, and also have healthier potatoes because they have fixed a toxin that naturally occurs in potatoes when you cook them. That's been taken out by genetic engineering.

0:08:26 Thomas: Okay.

0:08:44 Thomas: Oh, wow. So, we could see those hit the market at some point soon or...

0:08:48 Kevin: It Should be this year, especially in processed potatoes, like in the bags and the frozen section and stuff. But this is what's so sad about this is that, you know, we, you read about the fish genes and the spider genes and the, you know, you're, you know, all the stuff you read online, it's just not true, but what's really sad, and this is the part that really grinds my gears, is that you have potential that is in all of our laboratories, like our university laboratories, to make plants that have virus resistance for world food staples in places like Africa and Asia, cassava and banana, that can survive there and higher nutrient content for trace vitamins like B6 or vitamin A That cause people to go blind and die, and we can fix that, and We have so many, we can get rid of allergies in, uh, from peanuts and wheat and all this stuff can be done, and those technologies are arrested because of the, the fear and the difficult regulatory loop.

0:08:48 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:09:54 Thomas: Well, and you mentioned the fish gene. Okay, so that was something a long time ago. I saw some talk. You know, it might have been a little kid and it might've been Ted. Do you know what I'm talking about? People spread this and I remember thinking, this is just where I want to get my science from, a little kid who probably doesn't really know anything about it.

0:10:05 Kevin: Yep. Yeah, that, yeah. Well, and he's a, he's a sweet kid and I don't remember his name, but he, he, yeah, well,

0:10:16 Thomas: Well, sure, but I remember one thing he said was, you know, we definitely, he said something like we're using a fish, crossing a fish in a tomato, and he said it like it was obviously absurd and that we should all be horrified with that, and obviously so. And yeah, right.

0:10:35 Kevin: And that was, oh, that was Really disappointing because the crowd went ballistic. They were all cheering for him. And here's this kid who, if I had my way, I'd be teaching him science and engineering and math and really helping him be more comfortable with technology and the good things we can do to help technology help people and help our environment and help the people who desperately need food. And that's who we should be focusing on. And instead, he's propagating misinformation that his parents want him to do conduit to this audience, and the audience has eating it up and It's the kind of thing for me that it's it's like, um, it's like that old 70s commercial where the uh, Indians standing by the side of the road, and they throw the garbage out by his feet and he starts to cry. It's like, that's like throwing garbage at my feet, you know, I Mean I'm I Know

0:11:16 Thomas: Yeah.

0:11:30 Thomas: Yeah, well, I only know that because of Wayne's World. See, I'm a little too young for that, but yeah,

0:11:35 Kevin: I, and here I am with my dated reference, but, and and back then, you know, he, it's, but it was the kind thing where they had, uh, it was symbolistic, it was the idea That Here is, here's something that's very sacred to me, my land, and you pollute it. And to me, as a scientist, it's very secret to me, um, this Met this whole idea of rigorous testing of ideas and then backing up our claims with evidence, and then especially, uh, him, that, that guy, I can't remember his name to save my life, but him or um or Rachel Parent in Canada, who's also, um, you know, a young woman who's wonderfully well-spoken and certainly very articulate, and I just wish that they would have a pro-science message that would inspire other kids to also be interested in science rather than afraid of it.

0:11:44 Thomas: Yeah, Right, right, but okay, so well put, but I do have two questions on that. So, it sounded like, okay, my impression back then was, well so what if they're putting a a fish gene and a tomato. I don't understand why that would necessarily be good or bad, but I understand, you know, it's so weird because there's almost a religion around the world, natural, a word natural. And there's, there's you know of course maybe there's something in Christianity that would, would suggest that we shouldn't be tampering with these things. I'm not sure. But secondly, it sounded like you said that wasn't even happening, that we weren't even using fish or spider genes or whatever it is. So which is it? Are we using any of those? And does that that make sense? And even if we were, would it be bad?

0:13:06 Kevin: Well, that's true. So that comes from a paper that was done in Thailand, where people thought they could use an antifreeze protein from the Atlantic Cod or something to put that into strawberries so that they would survive freezing. And experiments were done. It never worked. But the meme was born. And even if we did it, it wouldn't bother me. If you compare your genes in your body against the genes of a fish, you probably would find that you're about 90% similar or 90% identical. I mean, we share a lot of the same common guts. We're all animals. Even you in a plant or you in an bacterium have recognizable elements in our genomes. We're also very similar in that regard.

0:13:58 Thomas: What are you saying? We evolved from a common ancestor or something crazy like that?

0:14:03 Kevin: That's exactly what I'm saying. And as we evolved from that common ancestor, the elements there in that process simply were modified genetically, right? Evolution has been an amazing genetic engineer. It has shaped the way genes work. And all genetic changes, all of our variation that we see, everything that's the difference between you and me and the difference between you, me, and a pineapple, all of that variation came from mistakes, mistakes came from errors that happened in DNA replication or mutations or errors that happened that somehow conferred a selective advantage. And meaning that, you know, the evolutionary story, right? The old Darwin story. And that's so fascinating that we are just the endpoints of millions of years of mistakes.

0:14:13 Thomas: Right. Yeah. Right. Absolutely. I love it. But you are blowing my mind that here there's all this crap I've heard about a fish gene. I've even defended It sort of, you know, in my understanding of evolution, I'm a big fan of, Dawkins' books on evolution and others, and I like to think of myself as more informed than the average person on it, maybe. Maybe, but I was saying a similar thing. Like, well, it's just, you know, if we took a fish gene, it's not like there's anything distinctly fish about it. It's not, like, you know, necessarily you would be able to smell it or something, be like, ah, that's a fish gene. You know, it seems absurd that we react so weirdly to that, but then I come to find out we're not even doing that.

0:15:35 Kevin: Well, not in a commercial way. It was done experimentally in one failed paper in an obscure journal from, I Think it was Thailand. And uh and you know, so but that's all it takes, you know, and that's what's so, that's what's sad about this is that the anti-GM world, they key off of the ick factor and they try to influence the moms and the people in the middle who don't know one way or the other and are just concerned about their food and want, want healthy, safe stuff for their families, and they scare them. And I like to think that the way we're going to win their hearts and in mind, because this is the way it'll be in 50 years, because it's good technology and it's not going away, is how can we use hopeful messages to talk about how good this technology is and what are the wonderful things we can do to help people.

0:15:37 Thomas: Oh, my gosh.

0:16:27 Kevin: That's where I want to be. I want a farmer in Uganda to be able to grow the crops he wants to grow or she wants to grow, as it frequently is, and have the best technologies at her disposal, because they don't have pesticides, they don't have insecticides like we have, and for them to have a plant that would protect itself, and those exist, and it's not just the US labs and this kind of claims of modern colonialism, blah blah blah, techno-colonialism. These are Ugandan scientists, Ugandan labs, Kenyan laboratories, which are among the most sophisticated in the world, that they're creating these technologies for their people. And Western activists are standing in the way of that. It amazes me.

0:17:18 Thomas: Gosh. Yeah. Sorry, I still can't get over the fish gene thing not exist. I cannot tell you how, well, you would know. I mean, you'd be likely far more familiar that how rampant that misconception is. And it just goes to show, like you said, that's what's going on here. I means, it's pretty much all misconceptions, right? I mean I did want to ask because earlier on you did say you like to talk about the pros and the cons of GMO technology. We haven't gotten to those, I don't think, that I remember. What are some of the downsides that you were kind of alluding to there?

0:17:57 Kevin: Well, the Major downside is that we've relied on a good technology exclusively, and its overuse has led to some problems. So a great example is that when you have a plant that resists herbicide, and a farmer can simply go drive a tractor over a sprayer and treat everything with herbicide and your crop grows through and the weeds die. Now when you do that over and over and again and again, Darwinian evolution tells us that some plants will manage to mutate and survive and get around it. So you have weeds that are now resistant to the herbicide that previously were not. And it's a growing number. And in some places, it's an severe problem.

0:18:45 Kevin: So that's one problem. The same is true with the plants that produce their own insecticides. You can identify pockets of plants or areas where that no longer works as well. And so what you see is the downside is that exclusive use of the technology. It's not the technology itself. It's more the exclusive use of the technology has led to some problems. Now we need solutions. Other issues are all social issues, issues, things like do you kind of give a limited number of companies the ability to sell a technology that it keeps out the little guy? Do you, by having technologies that are, this is coming up as a problem, that the technology worked so well for so long that you can't buy non-GMO cotton seeds or cotton plants.

0:19:40 Kevin: You can't buy non-GMO corn seeds very easily. And now that the technology is showing these problems with weeds and whatever, there are some farmers that would like to switch back to conventional and can't find a source of seeds, or at least it's limited. So those are the major problems. No problems with human health.

0:20:00 Thomas: But so you don't see those problems as big enough to scrap the whole project, obviously.

0:20:07 Kevin: No, not at all.

0:20:08 Thomas: Are there potential, because the of super plant thing sounds, you know, super resistant weed sounds scary enough. Are there proposed solutions, are there, you know, what's, what's happening with that? Oh,

0:20:21 Kevin: Well, sure. And super weed is how they call it in the activist literature for hyperbole. And, oh, they do use that, though. And the funny part is, you know, they're not really that super. They're resistant to one herbicide.

0:20:27 Thomas: I just made that up. I was, yeah, that's, yeah, yeah, Yeah.

0:20:37 Kevin: So it's not really so much super, but, right, there's still lawnmower

0:20:38 Thomas: I could probably, I could probably stomp on it and it would die, right? It doesn't. It's not killing humans yet, is it?

0:20:47 Kevin: Sensitive, even though it's herbicide resistant. And you think about weed control on places like organic farms where it's all done mechanically or by hand with groups of migrant workers. You know, this is actually a pretty cool technology, this glyphosate. The problem is when you rely on one technology. Now, back in the 90s, you know, Monsanto Company even has it in writing that it's unlikely that there will be resistance. And all of the scientists said, no way, this will be resistant in five years. Well, it took 15 before you saw a lot of it. Every herbicide we've ever created has shown some sort of resistance eventually to it. But really what should have been done is, back in the mid-90s when they were releasing this, they should have released glyphosate-resistant and 2,4-D-resistance or glufosinate or other chemistries.

0:20:50 Thomas: Okay, so you do like two at the same time or something so that they, is that what you're saying?

0:21:44 Kevin: Well, you could do two at the same time would be good. The problem with two at the same time is that you're putting two into the environment at the same time. Like, if it was up to me, I would rotate them. I would use one one year, use a different one the next year. And that way you're only using one herbicide at a time, but you're getting control from two separate chemistries to get around evolutionary pressure.

0:21:51 Thomas: Oh, I see.

0:22:09 Thomas: Makes sense. Yeah. So it doesn't sound like a life ending, a human threatening thing to have weeds that are resistant to one single product. It is made out to be a lot scarier than it actually is, as it sounds like with all these things.

0:22:25 Kevin: But one thing we've learned as scientists is that we have to communicate the downsides when we see them. And that is the main downside that we see in the literature and the one main downside we hear about from farmers. And if we don't talk about that, and if we're all rah-rah technology, we don't come off as being very believable. And I think it's really important for anybody in the communication space to avoid that advocate label to thoroughly discuss. This is the downsides as we understand them.

0:22:57 Thomas: Yeah. Well, one thing I said on the other show was that I just wish more people, I guess, like you were doing this? Or maybe they are and we're not hearing them. Maybe it's... What do you think's going on? Is it just so much more attractive? Well, maybe. Is Food Babe so much more attracted physically? What is it about the pro-science message or something that it really seems like it's having a hard time? What do we need to do as a society here? Here.

0:23:25 Kevin: Well, yeah, you know, Vani Hari certainly is more attractive than me. I'll give her that. She was, Yeah, case closed. She was here at Florida. Actually, she's a very compelling speaker, and I've only said I've been very positive towards her in that she clearly can mobilize people, and if she used those talents in ways that rather than to increase her own brand and kind of almost blackmail companies into action for non-scientific reasons, she could do really good things like that with us to help alleviate the blindness and help produce more food in other places for people. What we're not doing as scientists is speaking to people as teachers, and we're, um, and people, I know, like friends of mine, when we, when someone says, "Well, well, what about the fish uh tomato?" And they'll say, "You know, you're an idiot, there's no fish tomato, talk to me another day." That's how we respond as scientists, or we don't respond at all, and we're condescending, we don't, we we don't come, come at them as teachers.

0:23:31 Thomas: Case closed.

0:24:31 Kevin: And we forget that these are people who just are concerned about their food. They want to feed their family something safe. And we're hitting them over the head with data. We're hitting them over their head with science papers. Instead of saying, let me explain to you how this works and look at the good things we can do with it.

0:24:47 Thomas: Yeah, I guess, man, I don't know. I still think at a certain point, responsibility has got to fall on adults to be adults, but maybe not. I don't know. It's really, it is a problem. It's like a hyper-skepticism, but just geared toward the wrong thing, or maybe it's not enough skepticism when they're looking at sources and studies and Food Babe articles and and all that. I don't know. It really is disappointing, though.

0:25:11 Kevin: You got it, though. It's confirmation bias. It is people willing to believe the things that reinforce their opinions. And people do that. It goes back to politics and climate change and vaccines, everybody digs in where their team sits. And as a scientist, my training is to not have a team. My training is we're going to strictly follow the interpretations of the data and be open to adjusting. And when they talk about politicians being weak because they flip-flop on an issue, I think that's the strongest sign of courage and independence is to be able to change your mind about something when you're shown evidence that, um, that reinforces a change necessary. And I love that I can change and not feel bad about that.

0:25:14 Thomas: Yeah.

0:26:06 Thomas: Right. So I wonder if it occurs to me maybe it's just a fundamental narrative or I don't know what I would call it. Maybe some sort of feeling or worldview that people have that they want to confirm. Because you talk about confirmation bias. I think my theory, maybe just sitting right now know, kind of armchair philosophizing about it is maybe we need to try to eliminate this idea that natural means certain things and is better, you know, like maybe that's what why it's so intuitive to say, oh, we shouldn't be using a fish tomato. We shouldn't Be, you Know, creating these these crops that are taking genes from other things and splicing because it's not natural. It couldn't it couldn't happen in nature. Is that the thing we need? To battle that sort of worldview that natural has some sort of significance, or am I wrong, is does natural have any significance to you?

0:26:58 Kevin: Well, natural is really a basis of the problem, um. In our communication here and someday have me back on and we'll talk about crop domestication and where different foods came from, what they look like naturally, what natural poisons reasons they had in them when humans first domesticated them. The bottom line is that everything we eat is nothing like it first occurred in Nature. That humans, through the process of selection, over really what has been the last 1% of human history, have radically changed how crops look and how they behave. The stories are fascinating, beautiful stories about the way that people selected in different places for the same trait that helped their people survive, and remarkably geographically separate, yet changed plants in the same way because it gave them food. And, you know, Mother Nature is not kind. When you look at, you don't have to spend more than a couple days, you knows, well, Mother Nature wants you gone. There's disease that we fought back. We have technology. We fly in a chair in the air.

0:27:21 Thomas: Right. Yeah.

0:28:07 Kevin: You know, all the things that we can can do that really defy the natural order, but that's because we can start to control that, and if we can do things that are better for the human condition, we should.

0:28:20 Thomas: Absolutely, I think so. I mean, I, the whole natural thing really, really, uh, annoys me as a as a skeptic and as an atheist because I, I just think we ought to take a look at the world and and what it is and the fact that evolution has has gotten us where we are, but it's not some sacred thing that we need to, like, evolution is not some thing where if we have a hand in it a little bit in a lab that that necessarily is an evil or something. But I think a lot of people do think that. I don't know what the origin of it is. I'm not sure if it's religion, or it might not be, because it seems to be a problem on the left, maybe even more than the right, and the left tends to be little less religious. I don't know. It's weird, though.

0:29:05 Kevin: Yeah, I think religion is more of a, you can find examples in the Bible and through other holy books of other folks that talk about, actually Old Testament, that talk about genetics, and not specifically as genetics, but they mention inheritance of specific traits and things like sheep, you know, that colors of sheep,

0:29:27 Thomas: Oh, yeah. Well, if you breed sheep while they're, you know, holding a stick in front of them, then of course the colors will come out a certain way. Is that what you're talking about? That's, yeah, that's in the Old Testament.

0:29:33 Kevin: There's a lot of Stuff. But it's the idea that humans do have some sort of control and provision over plants and animals in the way in which we control their genetics.

0:29:48 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think I'm fresh out of questions for now. I'm mainly just still amazed at the misinformation that has even someone like me who I've read a bit about this. I, you know, I'm a fan of GM technology. And I still thought we were using a fish gene. I thought we were. It seems like a good idea to me. Why not? Let's make a tomato that can swim.

0:30:17 Kevin: Do you want to circle back to labeling real quick? And here's the way that I look at this. When I look it, if you read the labeling rules and laws, proposed laws and ordinances as they're written, you see that this is legalese. This is set up by lawyers and activists, not by scientists. They want everything, so it's not even plants that are really GMO, meaning made by recombinant DNA, or gene splicing. These are plants that, in some cases, where you have an extra set of chromosomes. So I know Maui and maybe even Vermont has now gotten rid of seedless watermelons. Oops. And the other thing that's, it

0:30:20 Thomas: Oh, sure. Sure.

0:31:03 Thomas: Well, sorry. So those are, so you're saying those weren't GMO technologies per se. Was that done through some other method?

0:31:11 Kevin: Was done through what, what they call polyploidization, meaning you can use certain chemicals to induce an extra set of chromosomes. And then when you use those in breeding, you produce sterile offspring. So when, like, let's just say, for example, a seedless watermelon or seedless bananas, which, which all of them that we eat in the store are those all have an extra set of chromosomes, and it makes them sterile. Those have been outlawed by a number of the uh labeling, or not law, they've been uh, they will have to be labeled under many of these ordinances, even though they don't contain any genetic engineering.

0:31:33 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Oh man. That's crazy. And, and bananas is not like, I mean, with watermelons, I guess there's another option, but with bananas, there isn't, right? I mean, we're not going to switch to seeded bananas.

0:32:01 Kevin: You wouldn't want to, it's 90% of the stuff in a seeded banana is taking up that pulpy space, and they're hard as rock and ununiform. But the other big problem with the labeling laws, as they're written, are the exemptions. And so every state would have different exemptions, things they would allow, things they wouldn't allow. Cheese is made with a GMO enzyme that is made in, usually it's, I think it's now a camel gene and a fungus that is used to create an enzyme that's used to curdle milk. It's 94, 95% of our cheese production, including cheese from Vermont, but

0:32:02 Thomas: No.

0:32:42 Thomas: Oh,

0:32:42 Kevin: But they will not label cheese, because, you know, that wouldn't be good for Vermont, right? So they they

0:32:48 Thomas: So it's more of a political thing.

0:32:50 Kevin: Give it an exemption, but on the other hand, the people of New Hampshire may say, we want to know what's in our cheese, we demand to know, it's our right to know, so they put the cheese uh GMO label on their cheese. And now California says, well, no, we want to know, and then Wisconsin says, no, we don't want it on our cheese. So now you see the problem, you have 50 different states with 50 different laws, maybe 50 different labels. Um, the logistical nightmare that'll create is going to be pretty insane. The other big issue is, if I'm a farmer and I'm growing 80% of my GM crops for cattle feed, because, because it saves me money, it's safer for me and my family and my land, and it's convenient and it works, I'm not going to suddenly shift to conventional because there's a labeling demand.

0:33:43 Kevin: I just am not going put my corn products into the human food chain. Now you have a supply and demand issue, that's just going to drive up the products, the cost of those products, the things like the soybean oil, the soy products, the corn starches, the things that they're just going to send 100% into your gas tank or into a cow. And that means less for humans, that means a bigger burden on the poor, and that, that's where I really draw the line. So those are the folks I'm looking out for. Well,

0:34:15 Thomas: Right. And I did see a, I do remember another TED Talk, apologies, I don't remember the name of who did it, but someone said, I think it was a journalist maybe, was saying the, you know, the benefit is just so huge and it's being stopped right now. It's really depressing. I mean we could we could feed so many more people. And it's one of those things where if we're coming in this country, I think we're Coming from a place of real privilege. And we're sort of letting that privilege get in the way of helping a lot of other people. It seems to me.

0:34:48 Kevin: That was when I really started the back out of the labeling discussion, because I was on a panel to discuss GMO labeling, and um, we were on, the on the stage and taking questions from the audience, and back and forth, back and forth, and a gentleman stands up in the audience, and he said, he says, I mean, I won't say his real name, but he says, you know, I'm from Uganda, and I'm here watching, I'm hier in America, in a very privileged nation, watching people on a stage argue how we are going to separate perfectly good food from perfectly good food, with a label with a decoration on the box, and he says, my people just want good food. And to me, that, I just, I, I like melted and I, I, I mean, I almost, I almost like cried, because of that, because he's right. You know, we're, our eye is off the ball, we're, we're so busy bickering about a decoration on a box that gives no information, that we're not solving the problems that we need to be solving.

And what we should be doing is taking the folks on the left who claim to have the hearts and the voices of the angels, right, on their side, the folks on the right who claim to be doing the right thing in the name of their religious convictions or in charity, and say, look at all of you, you guys have all got it wrong. We got to save this planet. We got to feed the people.

Why can't we get on the same page and use the best technologies and get it done, and let's stop arguing about what the science says, and let's talk to scientists,

0:35:23 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, man.

0:35:34 Thomas: Yeah.

0:36:24 Kevin: And let's go forward, and let's do something to help everybody, and that's where we really need to be.

0:36:30 Thomas: I couldn't agree more. I want to thank you so much for coming on. Is there anything else that you would like to say that maybe we didn't get to?

0:36:39 Kevin: No, I think that's pretty good, but I might just mention that I just did a TED Talk last week that showed up online somewhere, and actually, I

0:36:48 Thomas: Oh, did it? I actually saw that you did that. I Googled it. I couldn't find it, but that was two days ago, I think. So, okay.

0:36:54 Kevin: Think You've got to go on YouTube. I don't know if it's a TED sanctioned version. Somebody else put it up. I don't know who put it, but that's there. And then the other things that are really helpful, if you're interested in the topic, I did two discussions on Talk Nerdy with Cara Santa Maria, and those were very fundamental, back to the beginning, very basic discussion about genetic engineering and its applications in crops, and we talk about the natural thing there. And you can reach out to me anytime on Twitter, I'm I'm at Kevin Folta.

0:37:27 Kevin: The podcast I do is called Talking Biotech Podcast, and every week we talk about either a genetic engineering solution or a traditional breeding and where our food and our crops come from. And that's a really great resource. And if you have questions, send an email anytime at kevinfolta at gmail.com. I answer emails every single day, probably between 10 minutes and 2 hours, depending on the news and what's happening. I'm always happy to help resolve questions for people, because the only way we're going to be able to get these innovations in the hands of people that need them is to have us all on the same page about the communication.

0:38:07 Thomas: And he makes a small commission from Monsanto for every email answer. Those two things combined. No, I'm just teasing. I really think it's excellent what you're doing, and I wish more people were listening. I wish more people were like you and getting the information out there. It's really cool because, man, I wish we could change people's minds on this because you said it best. I mean, or maybe the gentleman from Uganda said it first, you know, it's crazy. So thank you so much. Thank you for being a resource and just coming on the podcast right away when I reached out. I really appreciate it. And I definitely also will be sure to have plenty of links in the show description to all your various things that you mentioned. So thanks so much, Dr. Kevin Folta.

0:38:15 Kevin: Awesome.

0:38:53 Kevin: Thank you so much.

0:39:11 Thomas: Alright, that does it for another episode here at Atheistically Speaking. I really enjoyed that one. Again, another big hearty thanks to Kevin Folta, who so shockingly promptly came on the show. Really promptly, just like I emailed him, he mailed back, and then bam, we were recording. It was really cool. I love that enthusiasm. It's probably because of all the dough he gets from Monsanto. They probably have him on a retainer to do any shitty podcast that calls him. Him. So, I hope we made him some giant Monsanto dollars. All right, thanks for listening. I've been Thomas Smith. This has been Atheistically Speaking, episode 231, and you have been a wonderful audience. So I will see you on Thursday.