Recognizing Decision Trade-offs

Yesterday we began a conversation with Dr. Alison Van Eenennaam, Cooperative Extension Specialist for Animal Biotechnology and Genomics from University of California-Davis about recent decisions of food companies to not allow the cows that produce their yogurt to be feed GMO feed — regardless of the results of a research study looking at thousands of cows which found no difference between those fed non-GMO and those that were fed GMO-feed sources. Dr. Eenennaam says it is frustrating when companies make decisions and don’t consider the consequences or trade-offs in ag production systems that come from those decisions. GMO crops allow for less pesticides and herbicides use for example. She says
Van Eenennaam: “So there are trade-offs. It is like there is this Eltopian system where there is no trade-offs and no pests either — where everyone lives with unicorn dust taking care of the problem and that is just not how agriculture works. I think that is what frustrates me because when you tie producers hands behind their backs and take technologies off the table, what you are effectively doing is increasing the environmental footprint of food production. Almost everyone wants to decrease the environmental footprint of food production. They are making decisions that go against their own professed motivations. I think that is what is really not well elaborated.”