Of the five predictions for 2018 that I’m going on record with, this is easily the mostly likely to leave me with egg on my face. But what’s the point of making predictions if you aren’t willing to put something on the table? To be clear, I’m not predicting the end of anti-GMO activism, but rather its ability to be taken seriously in mainstream venues.

Here I lay out how the landscape has changed since 2009 and how recent anti-GMO campaigns show a movement running out of issues and credibility, especially as the mainstream press has embraced gene editing and synthetic biology (especially for making plant meats). Meanwhile as I laid out in a previous prediction, a new wave of biotech crops and products is going to change tired old narratives that formed the bedrock of anti-GMO rationalizations. I believe we will end 2018 with the anti-GMO movement mostly relegated to the fringes from whence they came.

...

A lot had changed. Industry control over biotech research had changed; in fact, it had never been as chilling as the SciAm editorial had made it out to be. The EU had released a major report summarizing the findings[PDF] of the €300 million they had spent over two decades researching the impacts of biotech crops. Biofortified had created the GENERA database of the relevant research. Two major literature reviews had been added to the scientific literature. Nathanael Johnson has published his landmark series “Panic Free GMOs”. The Séralini rat study debacle had given the anti-GMO movement a huge black eye. A scandal that led Keith Kloor to add the anti-GMO movement to his science denial beat:

I used to think that nothing rivaled the misinformation spewed by climate change skeptics and spinmeisters.

Then I started paying attention to how anti-GMO campaigners have distorted the science on genetically modified foods. You might be surprised at how successful they’ve been and who has helped them pull it off.

I’ve found that fears are stoked by prominent environmental groups, supposed food-safety watchdogs, and influential food columnists; that dodgy science is laundered by well-respected scholars and propaganda is treated credulously by legendary journalists; and that progressive media outlets, which often decry the scurrilous rhetoric that warps the climate debate, serve up a comparable agitprop when it comes to GMOs.

In short, I’ve learned that the emotionally charged, politicized discourse on GMOs is mired in the kind of fever swamps that have polluted climate science beyond recognition.

more...http://fafdl.org/blog/2018/01/25/death-throes-of-the-anti-gmo-movement/