Why Genetically Engineered Foods Should be Labeled: Gary Hirshberg at TEDxManhattan 2013

Gary Hirshberg is Chairman of Stonyfield Farm, the world’s leading organic yogurt producer, and Managing Director of Stonyfield Europe, with organic brands in Ireland, and France. Gary serves on several corporate and non-profit boards including Applegate Farms, Honest Tea, Peak Organic Brewing, Late July, The Full Yield, SweetGreen, RAMp Sports, Glenisk, the Danone Communities Fund and the Danone Livelihoods Fund. He is the Chairman, CEO and Co-founder of Chelsea’s Table Cafés, a natural and organic fast casual restaurant firm. In 2011, President Obama appointed Gary to serve on the Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations. He is a Co-Chair of AGree, an agricultural policy initiative formed by the Ford, Gates, Kellogg, Rockefeller, Walton and other leading foundations. He is Chairman and a founding Partner of Just Label It, We Have the Right to Know, the national campaign to label genetically engineered foods, and is co-author of Label It Now — What You Need to Know About Genetically Engineered Foods. He is the author of Stirring It Up: How to Make Money and Save the World.

Gary has received nine honorary doctorates and numerous awards for corporate and environmental leadership including a 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award by the US EPA.
Previously, he was the Founder of Climate Counts, Director of the Rural Education Center, the small organic farming school from which Stonyfield was spawned and Executive Director of The New Alchemy Institute — a research and education center dedicated to organic farming, aquaculture, and renewable energy. Before that he was a water-pumping windmill specialist and an environmental education director with the US Fish and Wildlife Service. He also authored books on wind-power and organic gardening.

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)
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24 thoughts on “Why Genetically Engineered Foods Should be Labeled: Gary Hirshberg at TEDxManhattan 2013”

  1. Hey, just as a note on the cited study on about GM related pesticides in the circulation of pregnant women, I gave it a read. It's method was flawed quite a bit, such as not recording the diets of the participants, using an assay (the technique to detect their pesticide of choice) that picks up not only on the one pesticide protein they were searching for, but also on a range of other related proteins and even fragments of once intact proteins that have been destroyed by digestion. They also failed to note how the protein they were looking at is found naturally on organic and conventionally farmed food, purely since the bacterium that produces the toxin is naturally occurring in soil.

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  2. I see why this Ted talk was organized independently. This shit wouldn't pass any scrutiny. I can detect BS almost every sentence.

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  3. TED talks is officially in bed now with the biotech firms and the pharmaceutical industry. There will be NO honest science at TED in the arena of vaccines, GMO and many other criminal undertakings. They dug their grave, quite a few years back.

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  4. Once again, we have astoundingly unscientific and emotionally biased retorts coming from the pro-GMO camp. They are hoping that all these paid shills will somehow turn the tide of public opinion in the favor of GMO's? Not likely. The educated public (okay, that is a small percentage of people, but these people are quite active on formulating public option and making public policy decisions) know this is absolutely swill. The preponderance of hard science is solidly against big AG and all of its products. vA lot of misinformation and outright lies being rebroadcast here.

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  5. Comments never cease to astound me… The guy is just suggesting that we label GMO's and, as a person who actually cares about what I put into my body, I'd also like to know. Clearly other countries do it and he makes a case (whether biased or not) as to why it should happen when I can't think of any reason why we shouldn't.

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  6. yes, label it. transgenic​ traits are a tool in the toolbox for breeders, farmers and consumers to overcome many of the challenges facing our food infrastructure. which includes resistance to disease, nutrient bioavailability, yield, and stress tolerance to name a few. label it and own the benefits the technology brings.

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  7. Religious concerns? what has religion anything to do with GMOs? So does the same go with vaccines? because it is not "natural"? maybe these "religious" people should go live in a cave, since almost everything we use today is unnatural lol. no offense to religion. but please keep it outside of progress

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  8. haha modifications in nature happens ALL the time, he is clearly uninformed on the topic. I am quite disappointed, why didn´t they put an expert on the stage? this is just false advertisement!!!

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  9. Non gmo food producers have something to be proud of so they should put big, obvious NON – GMO labels on their products. Lots of folks young and old have bad eyesight these days and really need to find the higher nutrition NON – GMO very easily. This will no doubt give our freedom of choice back to us and boost NON – GMO sales to boot ! PROBLEM SOLVED !!!!!!

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  10. So much derp in one talk. This is pathetic. He spews every single lie from the Big Organic marketing machine.

    This person stands to personally profit from demonizing a perfectly safe and well understood technology.

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  11. When you look on a package of frozen peas, does the label state what variety, (genetic variation), of peas is in the package? No. So why are you expecting anything different to happen now? If you understand genetic engineering it is just a change in agricultural procedures that is happening, as opposed to parthenocarpy, hybridization, etc., so why has this method created so much fear, other than that for some reason organic agricutlural methods are feeling fear at the introduction of this new method. If you aren't insisting that your carrots be "nantes", or your peas are "little marvel," please explain to me why you suddenly need to know when it comes to this method of production? What, exactly, do you think the difference is?

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  12. Apparently this will be the only guy TED talks allows to talk about GMOs – it's now another BANNED TOPIC with these folks……so sad………………They have now banned talks on GMOs, ALTERNATIVE HEALTH, FOOD AS MEDICINE/ DIETARY CHANGES to help autustic children, ADHD in children, allergies……………etc. TED is sickening, sadly…………..

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  13. A quote by Ken Roseboro:  "The introduction of genetically modified crops has corresponded with increasing monopolization of seed by biotechnology companies and higher seed costs that have led to tragedies in some countries, while pushing out conventional, non-GMO seeds, and reducing farmer seed choices. These impacts are being seen in the United States, Brazil, India, the Philippines, and South Africa, and even Europe.

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  14. 'Science' is strictly in the eye of the beholder and the hand of the research 'funder'.. Science (scientists) will come up with any result that will get it increased funding.  And big FOOD (i.e. Monsanto) and Big PHARMA pay a LOT to get the 'research results' that favour their product planning. I don't want GMO crops in my food. I don't want to drive past fields of GMO crops. I don't want to see a control of 'seed' so that people have to pay each year to purchase seed for a 'GMO' crop rather than being able to harvest and sow seed as they have done for thousands of years – i.e. pretty naturally.  I don't want to see a world that is 'scientifically' redesigned for some purpose we are told is this.. but is really 'that'.  And Ted Talks are all about the 'that'….Nice packaging though… lots of well groomed people speaking in nice edible sound-bytes.

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  15. It's promising to look at the trends when it comes to people changing their minds. So many start by thinking gmos are scary. Then they look at the science and find that it is safe. I've seen this happen in myself and many others. You never hear about people who start out thinking that g of are fine and then the evidence leads them to think it's dangerous.
    You have to love the girl guides for refusing to bow to a petition asking them to not to use gmos in their cookies. They looked at the science and realised how harmful it would be to allow pseudoscience to win.

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  16. GMO's are banned in 38 countries for a reason, they are not safe. GMO's cause disease in animals and humans. Monsanto lies and lies.

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  17. Why would you bother with this after the GMO debate ended? The May 16 2016 NAS study was definitive and Obama's GMO disclosure law ended the labeling movement. Wake up and smell the coffee.

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