It’s been a disappointing week for food safety. The Food Safety Modernization Act is stalled in the Senate until after Thanksgiving — and the amendment banning bisphenol-A from baby bottles has been quashed by the chemical industry. Meanwhile, the FDA seems set to approve genetically modified salmon, sidelining government fish experts who should be consulted.
Even the Onion has caught the bad-food bug. Check out the latest episode starring crotchety crank pundit Joad Cressbeckler, who’s just heard that genetically modified potatoes have been approved (they’re actually being planted in the E.U.), and fears that this interference with their DNA will cause some “wrath-minded taters.” To find out “what these sorcerers are doing,” he talks to a “silvertongue,” Robert Salkin from the Center for Bioethics.
Salkin makes such straightfaced, sane points about why GM potatoes are worrying, even if they’re not out to get us, that I thought he must be a real dude — but he’s just an actor.
http://www.theonion.com/video_embed/?id=18433
