BOP 2005 Still Photo Winners > Nature and Environment Picture Story
- 1st Place
- Ren?e C. Byer, The Sacramento Bee
SEEDS OF DOUBT - GMO FARMER: Fifth generation farmer Erik Freese, 33, harvests genetically engineered corn at his farm in Dixon, CA on Wednesday September 24, 2003. Freese likes farming the genetically engineered corn because there are less weeds and it is easier to harvest. This gives him time to spend with his family. "I have the opportunity to be a husband and dad and all the good stuff hat goes along with life, other than being married to my job," he said. (STORY SUMMARY BELOW AND WRITTEN SUMMARY WITH ENTRY) SEEDS OF DOUBT The uncertainty of biotechnology: A decade since the debut of gene-spliced food, biotechnology is a dominant presence in world agriculture. But the distribution of biotech foods is uneven. Dancing around deeply divided opinions over the technology's health and environmental safety, and over its social and economic effects, the global food industry approaches genetic engineering with a double standard. In the United States, a land of seemingly infinite grocery choices, food purveyors rarely make distinctions between what's genetically engineered and what's not. Moving wherever chance takes them, engineered crop genes are biological hobos. Bound up in pollen, they ride the wind, catch rides from insects. Bundled inside seeds, their horizons expand. But nothing sets them free like human error. No matter the kind of mishap-a spilled bag of grain, a mislabeled packet of seed-an accident is an opportunity. In Saskatchewan there is no organic canola anymore. The fields were invaded by genetically engineered canola from the wind. Farmer Arnold Taylor has to patrol his buffer zone. "The whole countryside is contaminated," said Taylor. Defying state, national and cultural boundaries, biotech crop genes are showing up, uninvited, all over-from rural gardens in Mexico to organic farms in Canada, even on barges of corn that's "GM-free"-not genetically modified-floating down Midwestern rivers. Phil Thornton, owner of a grain elevator in Hard
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