A friend alerted me to the Ask Force, hosted at something called the Public Research and Regulation Initiative. According to the site, “On this ‘ASK-FORCE’ page, PRRI publishes frequently asked questions that refer to publications that are either not supported by properly peer reviewed scientific research.” Breathless with excitement, we hurried to the section on agriculture. What a terrific list of topics, to whit:
- Biofuels: what will the positive and negative impact be?
- Is co-existence between organic farming and GM crops possible
- Will GM crops end small scale farming?
- Did GM Crops cause health problems for the farmers?
- Were the Indian farmers committing suicide because of GM crops?
- Are GM crops are less well adapted to the local environment than local landraces?
- Are GM crops an economic desaster?
- Do GM crops cause higher pesticide and herbicide usage?
- Do GM crops cause new pests?
- Does GM crop planting create super weeds?
- Do GM crops decrease the yields?
Alas, the answers to these frequently asked questions remain “under development”. Like you, dear readers, I’d be delighted to read those answers. But there’s no RSS feed, and I’ll be blowed if I am going to return to the site every day to check. A word to the wise, Emeritus Professor Klaus Ammann: get a feed.
I noticed later that one can get a feed from a bulletin board hosted by the European Federation of Biotechnology, which raises another question. Why duplicate the content?