New Report: Who's Afraid of GMO's? The Promise and Perils of Genetically Modified Crops

Genetically engineered crops are rising by 20 percent, part of an eight-year trend. These crops covered 200 million acres, an area the size of California and Texas combined. Genetically engineered crops are now grown in 17 countries, on nearly 20 percent of the world’s 3.7 billion acres devoted to food crop cultivation. In China, which trails only the U.S. in biotech research funding, half of the country’s farm fields could be growing genetically modified crops in a decade. And, though only a handful of GM crops (corn, cotton, soybeans, and canola) account for the vast majority of acreage planted, several dozen new biotech crops, including raspberries, lettuce, and peanuts, are in development. Despite this remarkable growth, persistent concerns over the technology’s economic, social, environmental, and public-health impacts cast a continued shadow of controversy over GMOs. And perhaps no place is more emblematic of that clash, or more appropriate as a setting to reflect on the competing claims, than the University of California, Berkeley