Genetically Modified and Irradiated Food: Controversial Issues: Facts versus Perceptions - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Veslemøy Andersen graduated from the Department of Microbiology at the University of Oslo, Norway. She has been working as a microbiologist at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Oslo, Norway, at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, and at the University of Applied Sciences in Eindhoven, The Netherlands.

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Not only the general public, but particularly also politicians and opinion makers judge the safety and desirability of technologies on information that comes free from many media, often provided by self-proclaimed experts. Few people take the time and effort to check the facts. The result is often that beneficial technologies are dismissed while these benefits have the potential of increasing the standards of living. While in some parts of the world the benefits are seen and the technologies accepted and applied, on other parts they are not, even in cases where these technologies have the potential of solving huge problems.

The use of genetically modified (GM) food and the use of irradiation to preserve food are heavily emotionalized and in parts of the world antis tend to win the battles. There are numerous reasons why this is the case and certainly part of it is that the facts are known among and understood by scientists, but those who need to know are not addressed in a proper, unbiased way.

The intention of the book is to explain the technologies in a clear way by real experts in their fields in such a way that they can be understood by indeed for general public health, but also scientific organizations, politicians and opinion makers/policy makers, realizing that perhaps the latter group have no inclination to listen to facts. The facts presented here include a massive amount of scientific evidence that these technologies are safe and can be beneficial and also all, be it very few, because hard to find, evidences that they are unsafe and unhealthy.

Because the world is facing a future with an increasing number of people, technologies are needed to ensure enough safe and healthy food for all of them and thus technologies that have the potential to dramatically increase the availability of safe and healthy food should be welcomed by everybody. This will only happen if enough people understand the subject matter and therefore can no longer easily be misled by professional antis.

The book will translate such information into understandable language without losing the scientific correctness.