Understanding GMOs and the Future of Food

Investigate the complications, misinformation, passion and confusion around GMOs, sustainable farming, and the future of food, with Neil Tyson, Chuck Nice, plant geneticist Pamela Ronald, and Scott Hamilton Kennedy, director of “Food Evolution” which Neil narrates. NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free. Find out more at https://www.startalkradio.net/startalk-all-access/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk and I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And I'm also the director of New York City's Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. And I've got with me my co-host Chuck Nice.

• 0:34Chuck Nice?

  Hey.

• 0:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck it baby.

• 0:35Chuck Nice?

  How are you Neil?

• 0:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're still tweeting at ChuckNiceComic.

• 0:36Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 0:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Love your stuff.

• 0:37Chuck Nice?

  At ChuckNiceComic, thanks.

• 0:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Love your stuff. I see you in weird places, but the weird fun places all the time on TV.

• 0:42Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 0:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's great.

• 0:43Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 0:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You should just show up in places.

• 0:45Chuck Nice?

  That's pretty much my whole career, weird fun places on TV.

• 0:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like, where's Waldo? It's like, where's Chuck today?

• 0:50Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 0:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So today, we're talking about the science of GMOs.

• 0:55Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 0:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa.

• 0:56Chuck Nice?

  Whoa.

• 0:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a whoa. It's not a wow, that's a whoa.

• 0:59Chuck Nice?

  Is it me or did all the air just get sucked out of this room? What just happened?

• 1:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're featuring my interview with film director Scott Kennedy. And he directed the documentary Food Evolution.

• 1:13Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 1:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And just as a point of disclosure, I lent my voice to the film.

• 1:19Chuck Nice?

  You are the narrator.

• 1:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I narrated the film. I didn't write it, I assisted in some sentences, just for clarity.

• 1:27Chuck Nice?

  Well, no, that's cool.

• 1:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's his project and he found GMO scientist and...

• 1:32Chuck Nice?

  Well, no, your voice lends a certain credence to the subject matter because you're a well-known scientist and science educator and everyone knows your voice.

• 1:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, when I read the script, I said, okay, he's trying to get the truth out there. And that's all any scientist tries to do. Establish what is objectively true and share that.

• 1:52Chuck Nice?

  Wait a minute.

• 1:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whether or not it agrees with any of your prior philosophies, that's all I'm saying.

• 1:56Chuck Nice?

  I heard what you guys were doing was trying to get that fat grant money so you could live it up and make it rain.

• 2:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 2:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All the people living in mansions from grant money.

• 2:07Chuck Nice?

  Right, exactly.

• 2:10Chuck Nice?

  Who that National Science Foundation, they're crazy with the money.

• 2:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Crazy money, crazy money. My NSF yacht, yes. So GMO, of course, is the abbreviation for genetically modified organisms. And you know, it's not an acronym, just to make that clear.

• 2:25Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 2:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  An acronym has to be pronounceable as a word.

• 2:28Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 2:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So NASA is an acronym.

• 2:30Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 2:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  GMO is just an abbreviation.

• 2:31Chuck Nice?

  Right, because if you pronounce it, it'd be like.

• 2:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I don't claim specific expertise. I have general knowledge, but not specific expertise. And so anytime we're in that situation, we bring in someone who's got the expertise.

• 2:44Chuck Nice?

  An expert.

• 2:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So joining us by video call today is our guest, a plant geneticist, Pamela Ronald. Pamela, welcome to the show.

• 2:54Speaker 02

  Hello, thanks for having me.

• 2:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, so you study rice genetics at UC Davis, is that correct?

• 3:01Speaker 02

  I do.

• 3:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, I thought at UC Davis, they just make wine. There's a huge wine school there at UC Davis.

• 3:06Speaker 02

  Well, when you're doing a lot of research, you need to drink a little bit of wine now and then.

• 3:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's the relationship among the schools of study.

• 3:14Chuck Nice?

  I like the way you guys roll.

• 3:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you're a co-author of Tomorrow's Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food. Did I get that right?

• 3:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right. It's a book I wrote with my husband, who's an organic farmer.

• 3:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, all right.

• 3:29Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wow, so you're a plant geneticist. He's an organic, you're like the Romeo and Juliet of biology. It's pretty cool.

• 3:40Speaker 02

  Well, we're still alive, though.

• 3:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good, that's an important difference.

• 3:45Chuck Nice?

  That's an important difference, right. You guys had a happy ending, I see.

• 3:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So why don't we just start with basics here and just tell us what is a GMO and how do you create them?

• 3:55Speaker 02

  Well, as you said, it's abbreviation for genetically modified organisms. And, you know, the term isn't really so useful for advancing discussions about sustainable agriculture. And that's because the term seems to me means something different to everyone. And the Food and Drug Administration has stated that it's scientifically meaningless. And that's because everything we eat, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, has been genetically altered in some manner. And so, for an example, some foods have been developed through a process of chemical or irradiation mutagenesis, which introduce random changes in the genome.

• 4:37Speaker 02

  Some are developed through conventional breeding or hybridization. And genetic engineering is a technique where you could take a gene from any species and put it into a plant. So you could take a gene from a virus, for example, and put it into a plant.

• 4:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so what you're saying is, something I've known for a while, but it's good to hear it just sort of out of the horse's mouth here, that you, you know, we've been modifying organisms ever since the dawn of agriculture.

• 5:05Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, there, there are no herds of wild milk cows wandering the countryside. They, we invented a cow for our purposes, to get meat and to get milk. And, and we, we cultivate, we use the word cultivate, but it's really you're genetically changing corn from whatever cavemen ate to these big old sticks of corn that we now munch on. So this is true for essentially every food in the grocery store, essentially. Is that correct?

• 5:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's correct. And genetic engineering and another approach, genome editing, these are more modern tools, but we've been, it's been about 10,000 years of history and there's been changes along the way. Mendel discovered the genetic basis of inheritance. Farmers started mixing two species together through grafting. There's mutagenesis, hybridization. So there's many different types of techniques. And genetic engineering has been around for 40 years and is one of the newer techniques.

• 6:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Scott Kennedy, okay, as a documentary filmmaker, I, I think generally documentarians lean left, politically left. Would you agree with that? Yeah, for the most part. Yeah, for the most part. And he makes a film that is not anti-GMO. So I had to ask him, so I've got, I interviewed him, just for this purpose. And so I had to ask him, what was he thinking? As someone who generally leans left in his politics and in his thinking, and definitely as a documentarian. So let's check out what he said.

• 6:36Speaker 03

  We wanted to make a film, ah, there's so many reasons why we wanted to make this film. One of the biggest ones was relieving anxiety, right? I've seen so many of my friends, so many of my neighbors, so many parents and mothers that have their shoulders like this, I know you can't see me on radio, but they have their shoulders up in their ears about food and where are they getting their information from, and they're freaked out.

• 6:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's anxiety?

• 7:00Speaker 03

  Anxiety, yeah. And should we have that anxiety, right? That's the first question.

• 7:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Anxiety about food?

• 7:05Speaker 03

  Should we have anxiety about food, right? And when we kept doing the research, the overall science and data said we are living, we could not be living in a safer time for our food, more abundant food, more nutritious food, available to more people than we are living in right now. And that's not being communicated by some of the smartest people that have the ear of, especially in a country like the United States, have the ear of the media. There's fear all over the place. Chemicals and pesticides and all of these things. Are some of those things in the food system? Absolutely, but risk assessment. So that was one of the biggest motivations.

• 7:48Speaker 03

  Can I, can we make a film that talks about food and science and safety and sustainability, looking towards nine billion people screaming at us by 2050? Are we gonna make our food system more sustainable and do it in a way that doesn't just give a hall pass to big food and big government and these other vague terms that are out there? That have data that exists to say, we need to be concerned about those things. Big profits and big greed can lead to problems. Does that mean the world is upside down and I shouldn't trust anybody and I shouldn't trust food and I shouldn't trust my government? No, that's what we found.

• 8:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Pamela, what's our evidence that a genetically modified food stuff is, is safe? Because that's been a big issue out there, a big concern.

• 8:40Chuck Nice?

  And can we genetically modify food to lower anxiety?

• 8:47Chuck Nice?

  Hey man, while we're at it, why don't we get to it, right? Clean it all up.

• 8:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 8:53Speaker 02

  Well, every crop must be looked at on a case-by-case basis, whether it's genetically engineered or developed through mutagenesis. But what we do know is that every major scientific organization in the world, including the National Academy of Sciences, the European Food Safety Authority, and many other organizations, have concluded that the process of genetic engineering is no more risky than conventional breeding. And in fact, genetic engineering has been used for 40 years. It's been used in cheeses, in medicine, and in crops. And there hasn't been a single case of harm to human health or the environment.

• 9:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this distrust, this anxiety, I always wondered where it came from. Do scientists need better marketing people? I mean, I don't know. So I asked Scott. I asked him, where does he think this anxiety comes from? When normally, these are people that would otherwise trust scientists and whatever is the consensus of observations and experiment. So we chatted about that. Check it out.

• 10:02Speaker 03

  We're living in an age of distrust. And in my simpleton, historian way, I go back to Watergate as being the beginning of modern distrust, right? We have distrusted each other since caveman days, and we can get into that. But the effect that Watergate had, two effects that Watergate had, was seeing the ruthlessness of money and power and politics. How far they can go. We're like, oh, we didn't trust politicians a little bit, but this was another level. The second one, which is very interesting with the internet, is who saved us from what could have been the outcome of Watergate? Woodward and Bernstein, two journalists.

• 10:45Speaker 03

  Now, cut to 2016, and the journalists that are on the internet, some of them brilliant and doing hard work and getting us a piece of information that the New York Times will never get to. And then there's a bunch of quacks that think they're Woodward and Bernstein trying to save the world and point out corruption. It's like they want to find the next controversy so they can go, "See corruption."

• 11:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They have to find the controversy.

• 11:09Speaker 03

  They have to find it.

• 11:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whether or not it's there.

• 11:11Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 11:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Interesting analysis.

• 11:15Speaker 03

  And that anxiety, I'm surprised a lot of these people just even go outside. You know, if you follow through, you know what I'm saying? If you follow through on the level anxiety they have, I'm like, so why aren't you under your bed right now? Because I would be if I believed what you believe.

• 11:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You'd be in your closet.

• 11:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't, I don't get it. You know, the unknown unknowns and all of this. I'm like, I, okay, there are tons of things that we don't know about. And there are, thankfully, there are many, many more things that we do have good information about. And we do know that if you're choosing to eat a traditionally produced vegetable, they would call that big ag, first an organically produced vegetable, which is more important? And my friend and Dr. John Swartzberg at the Berkeley Wellness Letter, somebody tried to communicate good science, said, it's much more important to eat the vegetable than determine between those two vegetables, right? Eat the vegetable, eat the frozen vegetable, eat the canned vegetable, eat your vegetables. Sorry.

• 12:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've got some buttons there, okay.

• 12:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Pamela, do we just, do we just eat our vegetables? Let's solve all the problems?

• 12:25Speaker 02

  It'll solve a lot of problems. It's not always easy to do. I have a 16-year-old daughter, getting her to eat vegetables is not so easy. And then there's places in much of the world where children don't have access to vegetables. So, but if you can eat your fruits and vegetables, that's, that's important. But still, you know, I know, because of my husband, that farming is challenging, whether it's a big farm or a small farm, farmers face a lot of challenges and they need the best tools available. So all farmers, whether you're an organic farmer or a large conventional farmer, you need to have access to genetically improved crop varieties as well as good farming practices and government policies.

• 13:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If I understand this correctly, is it possible to be an organic farmer of genetically modified foods?

• 13:15Speaker 02

  Okay, that's a great question. So according to the National Organic Program Standards, if you want to be certified organic, you cannot grow genetically engineered crops. However, you can grow crops that have been developed through mutagenesis or hybridization. You can buy your seed from Monsanto. You could do pretty much everything in terms of planting genetically improved seeds, except you cannot, for example, plant the genetically engineered papaya that I know you're going to talk about on your show and be certified organic.

• 13:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they're distinguishing genetic engineering, which happens in a laboratory, from the genetic changes that were brought about through crossbreeding and the history of this exercise going back to the dawn of agriculture?

• 14:00Speaker 02

  Well, that's partly true, but a lot of crops that organic farmers and other farmers grow have been developed in the laboratory. So it's not necessarily a laboratory step. There's not really a scientific reason for excluding genetically engineered crops from organic agriculture, but there's a historical reason.

• 14:17Chuck Nice?

  Is that history, the fact that plant geneticists stand over their creations and say, "It's alive"?

• 14:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So part of it is this fear that GMOs are bad for you, right? And I asked Scott, because there's a study in which rats were fed GMOs and they developed these massive tumors, and these were heavily cited. And so I asked Scott, because he went there in the film, about this relationship between the fear of health risks and ultimately we just wanted to ban the stuff altogether. Let's check it out.

• 14:56Speaker 03

  That is the Seralini study, an incredibly, incredibly influential study that just happened to drop three weeks before the vote on labeling GMOs in California. Just happened to come at that same time. And sadly, the

• 15:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Food labels.

• 15:15Speaker 03

  Food label.

• 15:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nutrition label.

• 15:16Speaker 03

  Yes, of them. It dropped at the same time and they were hoping that it would affect that. But I digress, forgive me. The Seralini study was done in France by a group of scientists and on the surface, they have the credentials to believe them as scientists. And they said that they fed their rats GMO feed, which is too vague to begin with, and the GMO pesticide Roundup. I don't know why you would feed Roundup to a rat anyway. But the, and they got these tumors. The problem is, is the rats that they use have a propensity to getting tumors if they live as long as two years.

• 16:00Speaker 03

  So they did do that over two years and they had rats with huge tumors. So the people that looked at the study, scientists who looked at the study, which is they vetted it and that's what we do with science is that we have

• 16:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's how it works.

• 16:14Speaker 03

  That's how it works. Thank you. Please tell us how it works. Why tell us how

• 16:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One scientific result is not the truth. It needs to be verified.

• 16:22Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 16:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By disinterested parties.

• 16:24Speaker 03

  And when those disinterested parties looked at the paper, they found that it was, did not hold water, that the science was just not valid and these rats got tumors too quickly. There was other problems within the study and it was, the paper was retracted, thankfully. So the, the other problem with having the paper retracted is the, you can't retract the image of those rats, right? Those images.

• 16:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't unsee the pictures of the rats.

• 16:52Speaker 03

  That's exactly right. And incredibly, incredibly powerful. You know, if somebody had said, if you brought up

• 16:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These tumors are like half the mass of the rat itself.

• 17:00Speaker 03

  Which is another horrible part that I, I didn't realize in looking at them initially.

• 17:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where's PETA when you need?

• 17:06Speaker 03

  Right. No, no, but that's, but that's right, Neil, that when I talk to other scientists, that, that there are other scientists, if they had rats that got tumors, they'd have euthanized those rats long before they got to that size. So I don't, we can't say hard evidence that those scientists waited to get those tumors larger, but it sure

• 17:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For the photos.

• 17:27Speaker 03

  That's right. That's a shame. I mean, it's just, that's not the world I want to live in.

• 17:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Pamela, that study was retracted, or redacted, is that correct?

• 17:37Speaker 02

  It was retracted.

• 17:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Retracted, that's the word. But I'm told that you had a study retracted as well, is that correct?

• 17:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, we retracted two studies and, you know, no one likes to make a mistake, especially a scientist. But in, you know, if you make a mistake, you have to fix it. And in our situation, we discovered that one of the papers that we had published had a serious error. And so, we made the decision to retract it, because you don't want that sitting around in the scientific literature. And, you know, I ended up being very fortunate. I had a very, very hard-working, dedicated, scientific team. And we were able then to go back and find out the correct result.

• 18:25Speaker 02

  And we published that a couple of years ago in Science Advances.

• 18:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so that's the noble pathway here, the self-correcting system that is science, and why science distinguishes itself from anything else that's going on out there. Well, we gotta take a quick break. When we come back, more on GMOs and what role they play, what people think they play, or should play, or don't play. And we're featuring my interview with Scott Hamilton Kennedy and my guest Pamela Ronald. Then StarTalk returns.

• 19:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk. I got Chuck Knight.

• 19:03Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 19:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck E. Baby, and we're talking about GMOs and their benefits. And the debate surrounding them. I've got via Skype Pamela Ronald, Pamela. She was also featured in the film. So Chuck, a quick fact about Pamela Ronald.

• 19:17Chuck Nice?

  What is that?

• 19:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Our producers found her on the internet, thinking she'd be a great addition to the show, because she's given TED Talks and has got a huge website on this stuff. And they didn't even know she was in the film.

• 19:29Chuck Nice?

  That's pretty cool.

• 19:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so she's arrived by natural causes.

• 19:32Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 19:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we got her for this interview that I have with Scott Kennedy.

• 19:37Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 19:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who is the co-writer and director of that film, a film that I also happen to have narrated.

• 19:43Chuck Nice?

  Mmm.

• 19:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you know.

• 19:43Chuck Nice?

  Yes, yes. The smooth, mellifluous, silky tones of Neil deGrasse Tyson. Ah, come for the documentary, stay for the ear sex.

• 19:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So let's go, let's pick up my interview. Uh, just to find out, funding is an issue. People want to know where you got your money to do your thing.

• 20:03Speaker 03

  Right.

• 20:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So let's get some insights on that for the film that he produced.

• 20:07Speaker 03

  Food Evolution.

• 20:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Food Evolution, let's check it out.

• 20:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For any documentary that has social conscience, one needs to always ask who's funding it.

• 20:17Speaker 03

  Right.

• 20:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you made a film that is at worst neutral to GMOs, but at best fully supports GMOs. And we want to know who funded you.

• 20:30Speaker 03

  Sure, I will adjust that description in the way that you've adjusted that description, my friend. And the fact that, uh, full, full disclosure, which has already probably come out in this interview, that you are the narrator of, uh, of, of Food Evolution, that you weren't supporting the film. You are supporting a film that is trying to get science communication correct. So we did not set out to make a pro-GMO movie. We set out to make a clear data, clear science communication film. And we were using the GMO struggle as a way to look at that. So back to funding. I was approached by IFT, the Institute of Food Technologists.

• 21:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's such a thing.

• 21:11Speaker 03

  There is such a thing and it does.

• 21:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Food technologists.

• 21:14Speaker 03

  Like GMOs, it might not be the best name as, you know, the Organic Growers Association or something like that. It is a group of mostly food scientists, people that work in food and science and food safety around the world.

• 21:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So did they approach you?

• 21:28Speaker 03

  They approached me, this is the first time. I've always found my subjects.

• 21:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're, you're, you're a documentarian.

• 21:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you're, you're minding your own business. Got your own agendas and then they knock on your door.

• 21:38Speaker 03

  That's right. And how cynical was this liberal documentarian when they first contacted me? I was very cynical, it's like IFT, Institute of Food Technologists. But they were, and they came with a very clear but broad description of a film that they wanted to make. They wanted to make a respected film, that's why they hopefully contacted me. You guys can decide if that was a mistake.

• 21:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll be the judge of that.

• 22:00Speaker 03

  And, uh, and they contacted us and they said, they said, we want to make a film about food and science, looking at the, the problems we're going to be facing with the population going to nine billion by 2050. By some estimates, people say we have to make, we have to produce more food in the next 34 years than we have in the last 10,000. Those big questions. So.

• 22:24Speaker 03

  When they contacted me, subject matter sounded fantastic. And bra, too big, but let's go do the research and see where, what film we could find in there. But the cynical liberal documentarian in me thought, Institute of Food Technologists, it sounds like industry, it sounds big, it sounds like, you know, something that I might not be able to trust. Are they contacting the liberal documentarian just to get my opinion? I thought they were like sucking my brain and then they'd go off and make an industrial. And then, meeting after meeting, Skype interview and face-to-face interviews, I was like, my god, these people want to make a film. And most importantly, I put on the table very, very early, you do realize if you want to make this level of a film, I have to have final cut.

• 23:08Speaker 03

  I have to have final cut anywhere, I'm going to say no. But you realize as a film, if I don't have final cut, neither of us win. I will be disrespected as a journalist and you will just be looked like you're making an industrial. And they agreed to it.

• 23:21Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so where does the money come from? Because, um, what, I don't...

• 23:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, this is, this is, so Pamela, you're familiar with this institute, I presume? Is that correct?

• 23:32Speaker 02

  Well, you know, when Scott approached us, Raul and I also were skeptical. We didn't know if he was funded by the organic industry or seed company money. And so we also were hesitant, but we became convinced, well into it, that this was a serious filmmaker and team and that they absolutely wanted to get the science right. So that really impressed us a lot. Because I have to say, it's a little bit unusual.

• 23:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you're familiar with the organization that did fund him?

• 24:02Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, the National Food Institute...

• 24:04Speaker 02

  No, I had never heard of the organization until Scott told us about the funding source.

• 24:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so who funds your research?

• 24:12Speaker 02

  Well, my research for the last 20 years has been funded by federal agencies. So those include the National Institute of Health, US Department of Agriculture, the Department of Energy, USAID, National Science Foundation.

• 24:27Chuck Nice?

  These are all organizations I have heard of. Okay, so Pamela, with... When you say, "I am putting out a paper, a peer-reviewed study." I look at you and I go, "I agree with that."

• 24:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know where she's coming from.

• 24:42Chuck Nice?

  I know where you're coming from. But when you say that, "I'm coming from the McDonald's Food Safety Inspection Company," or the mess, whatever it was, I think that that can engender suspicion, is all I'm saying.

• 24:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I did look up their website.

• 24:58Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 24:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they look pretty legit. I mean, there's no agenda I could see on the website other than the urge to want to feed all the people who are going to want to be fed as we go forward.

• 25:09Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 25:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, just check, the website is very, in fact, it's boring on some level.

• 25:13Chuck Nice?

  Alright.

• 25:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's just, there we are, we're just trying to make food, best we can. That's all.

• 25:19Chuck Nice?

  That's it.

• 25:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's it.

• 25:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very, very simple.

• 25:22Chuck Nice?

  I feel better about them now.

• 25:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, okay. So Pamela, I mean, I want to hear you just say this. We know it's true because we've heard it. But why do we need GMOs at all? But I know your answer, but I just want to just hear it. What is the need for?

• 25:36Speaker 02

  Okay. So it's not that we need so-called GMOs, but we need to advance sustainable agriculture. And there are many important tools that we need. And as I mentioned before, we need ecologically-based farming practices, but we also need seed. That seed could be developed with many approaches, but for particular, there's some problems that have no real solution except genetic engineering. So the example, classic example, which is in the film, is papaya.

• 26:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So let's pick up my interview with Scott Kennedy about that papaya example that you just raised. Here it is. What happened with the Hawaiian papaya?

• 26:19Speaker 03

  The papaya industry in Hawaii was thriving. And then a terrible virus came along, the ring spot virus came along and started to wipe out papayas. Didn't just wipe out papayas on one island, they moved the entire industry to another island. And it jumped through insects. It was spread to the next island. And they were going away. People thought the industry of papayas in Hawaii was going to go away. And nothing could stop this spread. They used chemical pesticides, they tried organic methods, all of these things. None of it worked. Until they found a scientist named Dennis Gonzalez, who grew up in Hawaii and was educated at Cornell University, who had a

• 26:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which has a huge ag

• 26:58Speaker 03

  Cornell?

• 26:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 26:59Speaker 03

  Yes, Cornell and UC Davis, both amazing ag schools.

• 27:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, hu- huge ag school at Cornell.

• 27:04Speaker 03

  That's right. And, and, but he grew up in Hawaii, which is interesting thing that he had both of those. And he was, he'd become a genetic engineer, and he'd seen the technology used before, and he had this amazing idea, what if through genetic engineering, we can inoculate the papaya against this virus? Like our vaccines, right? No controversy in vaccines, we'll come back to that later.

• 27:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's your next movie.

• 27:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's the next movie. It's, it's subtext within this movie. So, and it worked, it took a long time, but

• 27:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How long?

• 27:33Speaker 03

  Seven years.

• 27:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 27:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, about seven years. And he tried, and he tried, and he tried again, and it worked. And the papayas were delicious, and he gave the papaya seeds away for free to, for, to the farmers. And he basically saved the industry. And now the industry's thriving, and they ship millions of pounds of, millions of tons of, of papayas around the world. So, and nobody knows that story, right? You know, if you had a GMO conversation with your friends, mo- most people that have a conversation with their friends on Facebook or face to face at a cocktail party, wherever they are, and they talked about GMOs, it would be all about Monsanto and evil and, and poison, and none of them, very few people would know the story of the papaya.

• 28:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, if I remember correctly, Hawaii banned GMO.

• 28:20Speaker 03

  Later. Much later.

• 28:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How can they ban GMO, knowing that it saved their papaya industry?

• 28:26Speaker 03

  Well, Neil, that's one of the reasons we made the movie. They started by banning, they succeeded in banning GMOs on the island, and then they grandfathered in the papaya. Which completely undercuts their whole reason for banning GE technology, in my mind. If I came to you, Neil, and I said, I'm gonna ban all GMOs on an island, and I convinced you that, that I should, and I said, oh wait, but one other thing, I'm gonna, I'm gonna grandfather in this one GMO, the rainbow papaya, wouldn't you go, well, why'd you scare me about the GMOs in the first place? So they didn't even realize that that undercut their argument, or they spun it around and said, "It's too hard to do." And I go, "Well, but wait a minute. Should I be scared

• 29:11Speaker 03

  or shouldn't I be scared? Is the technology worthy? Isn't the technology worthy?" So that was, that's the opening to our film, is talking about the complications, the misinformation, the passion, and the confusion around the GMO conversation as told through the banning of GMOs and the saving of the papaya industry through GMOs.

• 29:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pamela, do you have other success stories like that? So, quick success stories that are not widely discussed or thought about?

• 29:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's a serious insect that can destroy an entire eggplant crop in Bangladesh if it's not controlled. An eggplant is the most important vegetable in Bangladesh. So to control this disease, farmers spray chemical insecticides two to three times a week. But we know some insecticides are very dangerous. So there's, the World Health Organization reports that 300,000 people die every year from overuse or misuse of insecticides, mostly in less developed countries. They don't have safety measures that they can take. So Bangladesh

• 30:26Speaker 02

  and Cornell scientists decided to try to control this insect using a genetic approach that builds on an organic farming strategy. So organic farmers will spray a pesticide called BT on crops to control various types of insect infections. And they use it because

• 30:49Speaker 02

  it's not harmful to humans, or wildlife, or fish, and in fact, it's less toxic than table salt. But the problem is in Bangladesh, it's very difficult to get this insecticide. It's expensive, and it doesn't- Prevent the insect from getting inside the plant. So what the Bangladeshi and Cornell scientists did was they took that gene from the bacteria and they entered it directly into the eggplant. And it's been really very effective. In the last three years, farmers that are growing this eggplant can reduce certain insecticides dramatically, often down to zero.

• 31:31Speaker 02

  And they could self-decede and replant it the next season. It's a public domain seed.

• 31:39Chuck Nice?

  Wow. You know, another little-known success story, Pamela, is not to knock the papaya in Hawaii, but right here in New York, there's a guy named Gray who engineered a papaya to become a hot dog, and it's delicious.

• 31:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Grace Papaya. Were you saving that one up for this moment?

• 32:02Chuck Nice?

  No, it just popped in my head. I don't know. I had to get it out.

• 32:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Grace Papaya. All right. You go to Grace Papaya to get hot dogs.

• 32:09Chuck Nice?

  That's what you do. You go to Grace Papaya.

• 32:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No one buys papaya at Grace Papaya.

• 32:12Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 32:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. I think you get a papaya drink or something. So, more on GMOs and the future of food when we start talking. We're back on Startalk, and we're talking about the future of food, possibly enabled by GMOs.

• 32:35Chuck Nice?

  Hmm. Not my food.

• 32:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You did some head action on that. You could felt that over the radio. His hand was moving.

• 32:46Chuck Nice?

  That's kind of how people get.

• 32:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're featuring my interview with a documentarian, Scott Kennedy, who produced the film, produced and directed and co-wrote the film Food Evolution, a film that I narrated and a film in which appears our guest we have today, Pamela Ronald. Thanks, Pamela, for being on this.

• 33:06Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 33:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's go straight into my next clip here, which thinks about the developing world and what the relationship with GMOs is to that. Let's check it out. In researching food evolution, what did you find was the biggest difference between how GMOs were perceived or received in the developing world versus here in the land no plenty?

• 33:27Speaker 03

  It's an excellent question. I would have to adjust it, though, because the perception was pretty similar, sadly. Perception was out of whack in both places. The need was greater on the surface in the developing world. But I don't, I want to be, nuance is our friend, right? The nuance of that is, on the surface, the need for, say, a genetically engineered fix to the banana wilt problem in Uganda that's wiped out 50% of the bananas is much more important than the use of genetically engineered corn and soy and maize in the United States and other developed countries.

• 34:10Speaker 03

  We can look at the data and see that our food system is better off, more sustainable, less toxic, healthier, many other positives because of those use of genetically engineered seeds in the United States as well. But on the surface, you can't compare our need for corn and soy to a staple crop in Uganda that could, you know, that affects 14 million people who eat bananas as one-third of their caloric intake.

• 34:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So in one of the stories of the film, there's a genetic fix to this banana blight that creates a blight-resistant strain.

• 34:49Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 34:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And now the crops are back as they once were.

• 34:53Speaker 03

  Well, they're still in development. It's not accepted yet. The fix is there, but the political, that's the comparison I was making, but the conversations being had in the United States and Europe are affecting Africa.

• 35:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why?

• 35:05Speaker 03

  In terms of fear. The activists are getting there. The activists are going around and handing out flyers and getting on the radio, saying that GMOs can cause cancer in rats and infertility and autism and just terrible, terrible fear-mongering without science to back it up. But when that gets, you know, when you hear that and somebody says it and you have another seed that you can use, this is where it gets really tricky with bananas. If you had another fix to the banana problem in Uganda, then you could look at that as an option, but there is no other fix to stopping this virus. It's wiping out the bananas. There's not an organic fix, it's not a traditional fix, there's no spraying that's done anything to help us. So if you don't have an answer, this is one of the most frustrating things when we talk

• 35:47Speaker 03

  to activists in Africa and we said, "So what are you doing? How do you feel about GMOs?" And they would give some standard answers that we've heard all over the world. "Now what are you doing for farmers that need help with this banana problem?" And they go, "Well, we're talking about this and we're looking at ways that that can happen." As Mark Lynas says, you know, "You can't eat adjectives." You know, you can't... They were trying to say all these other ways of doing something and there was no there there in the way that they were helping, they were helping farmers. And I, and again, these are people that I think are well-intentioned. I will give them the benefit of the doubt that they are well-intentioned, but they are, they're so hung up on thinking they should be afraid of this technology and getting

• 36:29Speaker 03

  information from people that they respect and getting the wrong information that it becomes very, very dangerous, so.

• 36:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so Pamela, the, this banana blight, is that, is that a, some kind of fungus or virus or insect? What was that?

• 36:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a very serious bacterial infection.

• 36:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 36:50Speaker 02

  Caused by bacteria.

• 36:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 36:52Chuck Nice?

  That's, that's ugly.

• 36:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We could get some ointment, fix that right up, though.

• 36:55Chuck Nice?

  I was gonna say, yeah.

• 36:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right at the pharmacy.

• 36:56Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's, that's all you gotta do. Isn't there a banana-free clinic somewhere?

• 37:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's where all bananas go.

• 37:05Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 37:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so, I'm just curious, how many examples of this exist out there that are unresolved, that are awaiting the attention of genetic engineering?

• 37:20Speaker 02

  There are many, many issues, which is what keeps plant pathologists like myself employed and breeders. And there are, so on my husband's farm, for example, he has problems with a very serious organism called symphylons. It infests much of his field and they can't plant anything in that part of the field because it munches on almost anything he will plant. And a conventional grower will use methyl bromide, which is highly toxic. So that's an example where both an organic grower and a conventional grower really need some new tools. And this is not new.

• 38:01Speaker 02

  We see that the pest and disease populations shift over time. And in fact, with climate change, we're expected to see even more quickly moving epidemics. So as scientists and agricultural scientists and farmers, we really need to continue to innovate to try to control these diseases without using toxic compounds.

• 38:25Chuck Nice?

  Quick question. Do we have any idea as to how many species we have lost in recorded time due to blights and infections? Because I think that would be a valuable arrow in the quiver of this conversation. Like, look at all of these species that have been lost, and this is what we can do to save plants today.

• 38:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you actually say arrow in a quiver?

• 38:52Chuck Nice?

  Did I say that? Did I just say arrow in a quiver?

• 38:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you talk like that up in the hood?

• 38:55Chuck Nice?

  Oh, my God. Let me tell you something. Now I know why I got my ass beat all the time.

• 39:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Growing up. So, yeah, so let me restate that in simpler terms. What crops have been lost from our portfolio of feeding because a solution was not arrived at on time of any kind and thereby reducing the amount of food we have to feed our population?

• 39:23Chuck Nice?

  Show off.

• 39:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 39:26Speaker 02

  Oh, no, these are both good questions. So when we think of extinct species, usually we're thinking of the entire global ecosystem. And a lot of those species go extinct because of development or hunting, that type of thing. So a farm is a completely artificial environment. And farmers are taking care of the crops. They're hopefully planting some kind of biological diversity. So if a single crop goes down, they might have some alternatives. But it obviously hasn't always been successful. So the, one of the very famous examples is the Irish potato famine about 150 years ago.

• 40:05Speaker 02

  It's estimated that a million people died, a million more people came, emigrated, including to the United States, and it changed the course of history. So Obama's great-great-great-grandfather fled the Irish potato famine.

• 40:24Chuck Nice?

  Wow. I didn't know that. That's a great little piece of history right there, especially since Obama was born in Kenya.

• 40:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Pamela, what about these auxiliary other issues that people want to raise? I've only heard snippets of it, so I might get some of this wrong. So you buy my seeds and you make a crop, and now your crop fertilizes some other farm, and now they have the resistance that my seeds had. But now, but I patented my seeds, can I go after them and get money? What's the legality of adjacent farms when you cannot stop where the spores are going?

• 41:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, so there's, in the less developed world in many places, for example, Bangladesh, I work on RISE, so much of our work is in Bangladesh or India. In the developing world, there aren't, isn't this kind of seed industry where you buy the seed and industry is trying to protect the seed? So it's different in the less developed world. In the United States and Europe and other developed countries, there's a seed industry, for-profit seed industry, and they sell their seeds. And often, they make a lot of money on hybrid seed, which organic farmers are also allowed to buy.

• 41:48Speaker 02

  So the issue of pollen flow, I don't think there's too many examples where, actually there's not really any examples, as far as I know, where some pollen has flown onto another crop and then the farmer gets sued and it's just because it's sitting there. Examples we've seen, there's a Supreme Court case Bowman versus Monsanto, and in that case, the farmer actually wanted the Monsanto seed and he got it from a grain mill and planted it and sold it. So it's actually when somebody takes a patented seed and sells it, that's when issues come up. And that's the same whether it's Plant Variety Protection

• 42:31Speaker 02

  Act. There's many different types of patents.

• 42:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It wouldn't have to be food at all. It's patent infringement. Right, right, right.

• 42:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's relevant to all kinds of seed. It's not specific to genetic engineering. And I think there's a lot of confusion about that.

• 42:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, Scott, Scott Kennedy's comes from a highly sort of radical liberal family lineage. And his father, in fact, was active in the civil rights movement. And just to round out my understanding of who he is as a person, we chatted a bit about his father, so let's check it out. Can we presume his legacy, sort of doing the right thing, taking on the struggle that others have failed to win, that some of this has rubbed off on you?

• 43:15Speaker 03

  That's a very nice way of putting it. I, yes, did that influence, has that always influenced my work? Absolutely. My father was a trial lawyer as well, and he was a storyteller as a trial lawyer. Very good storyteller, right? He was telling a story to the jury to let them see where he thinks they should go in their, in their journey. Did he influence them in, in his storytelling? Absolutely. In terms of food evolution, my father was concerned at first when he heard about me making this film because he was influenced by the same bad information that's out there, you know? Neil Young saying things about poor Monsanto farmers without a great deal of information.

• 43:58Speaker 03

  And he thinks, oh, my God, I know you're not being funded by Monsanto, Scott, but why are you making a film that says anything positive about GMOs? I said, Dad, take the journey with me. So, and he did. He became, he got to see some rough cuts. My father passed away in January of 2016, and I miss him dearly. And he did get to see several rough cuts of the film, and he became a GMO activist. And he really was won over by this. And he had seen this before in what the two of us came to call the limitations of well-intentioned liberals.

• 44:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What a phrase.

• 44:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, the limitations of well-intentioned liberals. So, bottom line with my father, one of the ways I describe his work, and many have described his work, is that he would take on cases and clients that others would see as possibly unworthy, controversial. And in that way, I'm very proud that we took on the GMO struggle because, like you started the conversation, what was I thinking? There's a lot of people that have avoided this conversation that know the nuance, you know, and they don't want to deal with it because most people come out battered and bruised. And I'm probably going to come out battered and bruised, but I found the subject worthy enough to try and tell this story.

• 45:18Speaker 03

  Fade in, and the cats in the cradle and the silver spoon, the little, I'm sorry.

• 45:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The father's son.

• 45:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was very touching.

• 45:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Touching, right, right. And when I conducted that interview, it was, his father had died within the last, you know, year.

• 45:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it was still with him.

• 45:42Speaker 03

  And his father was Atticus Finch, so that's a big deal. It's a big deal.

• 45:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Pamela, what, do you have strategies in mind to try to rectify the public attitude that so permeates the dialogue?

• 45:56Speaker 02

  I think we need more of both of you, for one thing.

• 46:00Speaker 03

  She just included me to be polite.

• 46:05Chuck Nice?

  That was so kind of you to include me to be polite.

• 46:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Kind but obvious. Yeah, go on.

• 46:13Speaker 02

  We appreciate getting the science-based information out. And I believe that there's just been... This whole discussion about genes in our food is a complete distraction. Really, and one of the most pressing challenges of our time is how are we going to feed the growing population without further destroying the environment? And so, really, we need to think in terms of sustainable agriculture and use all appropriate technologies to help farmers, help consumers afford the food, help the poor and malnourished, which are often forgotten in the discussion.

• 46:51Speaker 02

  And think about how we can reduce toxic inputs, foster soil fertility, and conserve land and water. There's a lot of really important questions. And I'm afraid sort of this discussion about genes in our food is really a distraction.

• 47:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Pamela, if your organic, growing husband one day ever goes missing, are you a primary suspect?

• 47:22Speaker 02

  No, my husband, as a farmer, most farmers are very open to new technologies. They spend hours looking at seed catalogs, looking for genetically improved varieties. There's probably many organic farmers that would like to try some of these new technologies, but they're prohibited because of the National Organic Program standards. So I see organic farmers to be more like scientists than politicians. So I think it's really sort of in the marketing and political realm that you get so much misinformation.

• 47:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And plus, in the end, you have shared goals, and that's what really keeps you married.

• 47:58Speaker 02

  We absolutely have shared goals. We want to grow food in an ecologically based manner.

• 48:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well Pamela, thank you for giving us the last word on genetic engineering and the future of food. So Pamela, so thanks for being here and Food Evolution is in theaters now. I mean, it's obviously, it's a documentary, so you gotta find the...

• 48:19Chuck Nice?

  Well, it's not in many theaters.

• 48:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, you find the Art House theaters.

• 48:23Chuck Nice?

  Right, exactly.

• 48:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You should be able to just check it out. And I'm told in the fall it will land on Hulu, so then you can hit it directly.

• 48:31Chuck Nice?

  Very cool.

• 48:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've been listening to Stark Talk and I've been your host Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astro physicist Chuck Nice as always. Thanks for doing this and as always, I bid you to keep looking up.