Food Evolution

Abramorama | Release Date: June 23, 2017

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Terra-istNov 16, 2017

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Unfortunately, this documentary could really use an impartial editor. It is overly long, repetitive and self-indulgent. It came across as propaganda. It is a pity because I expect GMOs hold great promise, but I doubt this will change minds. For that to happen the benefits need to speak for themselves and be overwhelmingly better than the potential problems. I don't think GMOs have found their killer app yet, but they may be close.

Far too long was spent opposition bashing and on the safety issues. Yes they need to be safe but much more they need to be beneficial. You had to wait till near the end to really hear about the benefits. The most important application to me was the use in bananas, because bananas are typically propagated as clones at it is not possible to fight disease by conventional breeding. This was not explained. Also, it is a staple for many people. But it looked like a tiny trial which had not been tested as a crop. So it's probably not ready for prime time. The main benefit they focused on was papaya in Hawaii, but the main beneficiaries of this are the papaya growers, so this will be less persuasive to a public who may already be in conflict with industrial farming.

Another major problem with the film is that it bought into the anti-GMO movement's characterisation of GMOs as one thing. The first mention of not treating it monolithically was the Kenyan parliament saying they will examine it on a case-by-case basis - hooray! Now if the film had taken that approach it would have been more convincing. There are legitimate criticisms of the GMO industry and some of the most damning were not mentioned which seems disingenuous. People have been harmed by terminator genes and having organic crops polluted by wind pollination from GM crops 2km away, and then prosecuted for 'theft'. I was startled to hear the mosquitoes had been engineered to produce scorpion venom. Maybe that's perfectly safe but I don't know enough to be able to tell. It must be possible to cause harm through GE, so I don't see how you can make a blanket judgement that it's safe any more than you can condemn it all as unsafe.

I think that if the GE industry had taken some sensible precautions then the public backlash may have been prevented. For example, maybe germline engineering should have been embargoed for a long time (as it is in human research), or at least wind pollinated species.

I hear they are producing a short version of the film - good, I expect that will help. I think this is a great example of why you need a producer over the top of a director, or we'd all have to sit though directors' cuts.… Expand

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