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Talking Biotech is a weekly podcast that uncovers the stories, ideas and research of people at the frontier of biology and engineering.
Each episode explores how science and technology will transform agriculture, protect the environment, and feed 10 billion people by 2050.
Interviews are led by Dr. Kevin Folta, a professor of molecular biology and genomics.
Kevin Folta (00:21)
Hi, everybody, and welcome to this week's Talking Biotech Podcast. we've talked about different subjects in biotech over the years, and one of the places where biotech still isn't allowed is in the organic food space. And that's despite the fact that it actually could do a lot of good stuff there. And and we haven't had a lot of conversations about what is the difference between organic and non organic or conventional cultivation. The reason this is important is because.
We're seeing more and more reference to this in the influencer space. And I've noticed a rash of reports come up lately that really target conventional farming and pesticides and genetic engineering in ways that are really not supportive of agriculture in general. And this is happening at a time when we're seeing limited opportunities for food access where you now know not to eat the lettuce. And there's many things that are happening.
Which are driving these decisions. And most of it is fear-based. A lot of the old standby of you're going to eat pesticides, you're going to get cancer. So we really need to have this conversation again and remind people of of what these different production techniques are and what their strengths and limitations are. And to do this, I have my former co-host of well, actually, I was the co-host, you were the host of science facts and fallacies.
Podcast who he still does today with Dr. Liza Lockwood. this is Cameron English. So welcome to the podcast, Cameron.
Cameron English (01:55)
Hey, Kevin, thank you so much for having me. Got the band back together. It's very exciting. I'm glad to see you still doing this after how many episodes you got of this podcast now.
Kevin Folta (02:03)
500 and something, 504, I don't know, somewhere like that. And but
Cameron English (02:08)
That's impressive.
Kevin Folta (02:09)
it's in the 12th year of almost weekly podcasts. And it's getting more and more challenging to find guests. And it's, you know, which is surprising because we're in this boom of biotech. But everybody's
Cameron English (02:20)
Mm.
Kevin Folta (02:21)
keeping their cards a little close to their chest, you know, and they're not as excited to put a lot of stuff out there, especially talking about technology. Everybody wants to do an infomercial.
Cameron English (02:31)
You
Kevin Folta (02:31)
And here's
my peptide, you know. But it is really nice to talk to you. It kind of feels like old times, and you know, that's good, that's really good. And I and I still appreciate science, facts, and fallacies. It's still very good. I still catch with you and Liza every week and yeah, and just about every week. So you should check that out, everybody. and so anyway, so you know, let's talk about this. The last one you had was kind of my inspiration because you spoke a lot about.
Honda Patrick, who had been making some, you know, w kind of somewhat science based claims that kind of went a little bit off the track. And it really was a reminder that we need to revisit this topic. So could you give us a quick summary of what she said and why it was weird?
Cameron English (03:20)
Sure. So I know you're familiar with the frustration of finding topics to discuss for a podcast because you have a constant stream that needs to come out, right? You have an audience that wants to hear what you're talking about. And so a little while back I was going through Twitter looking for topics and the algorithm fed me this little clip from Dr. Patrick's podcast, which I think is called found my fitness.
this whole brand she started up like over over decade ago now where she talks primarily about nutrition and fitness and those kind of topics and that's her expertise. And in my opinion, when she talks about those things, she's she's a pretty solid resource. She's been on Joe Rogan several times. That's where I first found out about her. And I remember listening to her talk and she clearly understands the topics that are within her field. But in this clip, she was responding to
some of the criticism that would come from people like us, about the, the, the overhyped benefits of switching to organic food. And in particular, she's responding to, the claim that, switching to organic is not going to, spare you exposure to pesticides. And this is a common debate. mean, going back, we were just talking about this, Kevin, you know, when I, you know, jumped into science journalism, I don't know, 15 years ago, this was like,
The fight was it was like this and vaccines and evolution. So what everyone talked about and
Kevin Folta (04:47)
That's right.
Cameron English (04:49)
one of the one of the back and forth arguments was, you know, go organic, reduce your pesticide exposure and that's going to reduce your risk of cancer and all of these, you know, I would just call them tropes because they're not substantiated, but they're having a resurgence and that's what she was talking about. And I decided to respond to it with Dr. Lockwood, who's a toxicologist who knows this topic very, very well because
she was bringing up abstract. So in this clip, she's bringing up, you know, little, little abstract. It's a classic tactic. And she says, you know, according to this study, according to this meta analysis, you know, if you switch to, organic produce, you're gonna, there's less glyphosate metabolite in your urine. And I'm like, here we go. The greatest hits. Now that's what I call silliness or what, you know, it just, so I saw it in the clip. What struck me is the clip had only been online for like,
two hours, but when I saw it and it had over 160,000 views.
Kevin Folta (05:46)
Jeez.
Cameron English (05:46)
So it just exploded. And what that tells me is X the algorithm is feeding people this right? This is hot right now. People are talking about this coming out of COVID. People are inherently skeptical of, you know, what they consider the consensus or mainstream science. Maybe we can talk about that in a little bit. I find it confusing that people are mad about
a public health issue. And so now they're taking it out on agriculture. I don't understand that one bit, but nevertheless, she's making these claims, you know, there's, pesticide metabolites in your urine. there's a higher risk of cancer. If you are exposed to synthetic pesticides, just, can go down the list and address these as, as you, as much, in as much detail as you want to. But I just saw this and I said, you know, let's keep talking about it. I get, we're going to go back to this until people, you know,
Stop stop falling for this. It's very frustrating And I know you have young children and once I had kids this stuff became very personal to me because no it wasn't just an internet debate Because now when I go to the grocery store sometimes the stuff I buy my kids It's all organic certified, which means it's an extra two or three bucks for no benefit And so I find that frustrating and I find it frustrating that there are new parents that are being bamboozled because they get on Instagram they get on X and they go
Well, I don't want to poison my children. guess I better, you know, fork up the extra five bucks for the USDA organic certified lettuce. You know, so I see that and I just, it gets me frustrated, especially when it comes from someone like Dr. Patrick, who should know better.
Kevin Folta (07:18)
Yeah, and I I share your frustration there because my biggest concern is access. And I think that, and not for me, I'm saying for the people who are really who can barely afford the food that's there right now, for them to pass on, especially things like fruits and vegetables, because they can't afford organic, or because, like where I live, there's no organic section. You know, you get the stuff that at the grocery store by me.
that, you know, is either seconds or some stuff that was going to go bad in a large grocery store that goes down to this other one. you know, that you can get everything is on the edge of going bad. So if you buy a p bag of potatoes there, you gotta eat potatoes for a few days because otherwise they end up sprouting. I mean, it's it's the in and I I can drive. I can drive to the good grocery store. But people in that town, seventy five percent of them are on public assistance and they end up
You
know, having to buy the lowest end stuff. And if they choose to be well, if they're afraid of what's being presented in this kind of rhetoric, they're saying, well, we don't want fruits and vegetables, you know, which is the most important thing they can be eating. And even when you were discussing this the other day on your show, I think she mentioned something like carrots and other stuff that has glyphosate, but you there's very little that glyphosate is used on.
It's used on field corn soybeans, sugar beets, and canola. And if if there's any residual left over, it's exceedingly small amounts. And then if and then it would be used like in the hyp fructose corn syrup, it might be there in the corn starch, maybe, but really, really small amounts. And then they're finding it in the urine, which is where you want it. You know, and and and
And if you go outside and pee on the grass, it isn't like you write your name with your pee and you can see where the grass is dead. The levels are so small they don't even work as an herbicide anymore, let alone a person aside. So, you
Cameron English (09:18)
Right.
Kevin Folta (09:24)
know, so those are my big concerns.
Cameron English (09:28)
Yeah, you know, I, I think people with expertise who have an audience have an obligation to tell the truth. Everyone has that obligation, right? No one should be lying or if, or if you don't understand a topic, then just don't talk about it. Right. I've never publicly discussed particle physics because I don't know anything about it. Right. So I don't pontificate about it. I don't, you know what I mean? and a lot of that comes from hanging out with people like you and Liza.
Right? You like, you know, more, you probably forgot more about molecular biology than I'll ever know. and so I hang out with you guys and I learned things and I share that on the platforms that I have. And I, I, I'm, frustrated by the fact that a lot of what people discuss today, it's driven by the desire for virality. It's driven by what's trending on X or on Instagram. And that leads people, even people with credentials to say things that are just wrong. And I, I mentioned this in our discussion.
or the discussion I had with Liza is that what I'm willing to bet she did, and I'd love to have a conversation with her if she'd be open to it, but I think what she did is she was looking at what people were talking about online and she went into PubMed and she found some papers that seemed to validate the concerns that she was seeing or that were responding to the criticisms that she wanted to address. And it looked conclusive to her. Now, in reality,
And to her credit, she mentioned that some of this research wasn't very good, that it was associational or that it was an animal model or whatever. but she did that at the end, right? She didn't talk about the quality of the research upfront, which I think was telling that implies to me that she understands this better than most people. And then she put the qualifications in there after the message is on the front end, right? You know, I think that's, that's troubling and
That's the biggest problem, went into, basically she went into a field she does not understand and she started talking about the research, not realizing that, or I hope not realizing that she is promoting a very fringe view that anyone that deals with agriculture or regulatory science knows better.
Kevin Folta (11:38)
Yeah, and it's it's an interesting point because so many folks are getting out of their lane for the question of virality, all that stuff. it's important to know what your lane is, and it's also important to know as an observer of these things what someone's lane is. And you see more and more folks operating outside of their expertise or outside of their outside of their domain of expertise, as it said. And but when when we're looking at the question of of food and
and it's safety. I think we're seeing more and more examples of this, which is where that we're vilifying specific types of food or specific methods of production. I never really see much about the GMO question as much as I used to. I see that if you go on bioengineered food awareness, that's where all the craziness happens. And that seems to be pretty much sponsored by external interests. So that's admin is in Morocco.
And who knows what, you know. Yeah, I think his name
Cameron English (12:39)
Always a good sign.
Kevin Folta (12:41)
is Eugenie. You know, I have no idea. He's but it seems like they're that they have some interest in this. But it but when you look at other topics like even seedlessness is getting like don't eat seedless watermelons because the seeds are about the life force. And you know, you see all these claims that are being made online that people who don't know better are falling for. And that it's shar it's
Skewing their shopping decisions. Have you seen any other ones that particularly resonate with you that, you know, really ring a bell in the last, you know, chunk of time?
Cameron English (13:15)
There's so many goofy ones, you know, that I and they're not just about food. They're the crazy questions and they tend to be connected. Right. So it's like you don't get one bad grape. You get a whole bunch of bad grapes. Right. So you'll see people say, you know, switch to organic and also sunscreen causes cancer. And I'm like, but that makes no sense. I see that all the time. I see the ultra processed food stick all the time. Right. And
It's it's foolish because there's just a bit of truth in it, right? Like if you subsist on Doritos, you're going to have a bad time, right? You are going to at minimum, you're going to be obese and your risk for diabetes is higher. Your risk for heart disease is higher. There's truth in that. But what people focus on is, see, it's ultra processed. It's all these ingredients that you can't pronounce. And those are uber scary. Now, if you look at the peer review literature on this.
You can, you can see very clearly there's, there's almost no correlation between the nutrient content of a food and it's processing, right? And there's arbitrary, standards in here. so for example, product like milk is, is highly processed. If you look at all the steps it goes through to get from the cow to your grocery store, there's a lot that has to happen and it has to be done with precision and it has to be done very carefully, but everyone rightly recognizes that milk is highly nutritious. and you can.
give it to your kids. You're supposed to give it to your kids at an early age, you know. and on the flip side, I can take an entirely natural in quotes, natural food like almonds. I love almonds. I'll take a bag of almonds. And if I'm not careful, I can polish that thing off, man. And that's,
Kevin Folta (14:55)
Yeah.
Cameron English (14:56)
that's hundreds and hundreds of calories. And, and, and in other words, so there's no there there, right? It's, it's just bogus. So I, in answer to your question, I see
things that don't matter being used as metrics for health and nutrition. So ultra processed food, pesticide exposure, whatever. That's what I'm saying is people coming up with these substitute standards that no scientist really uses unless they're trying to go viral and so
Kevin Folta (15:24)
Yeah, and I and I've noticed that that that this has become a bigger problem. I've also seen a lot of targeted attacks on specific entities. And I don't know how much you've seen the ones on Driscolls, but there were about four reports that came out the same time on Instagram and on the Twitters and everything else that said, look at the dangers in Driscoll strawberries. another one said that there were three hundred and seventy-three.
Pesticides used hundreds, I don't I don't think there are that many. and then and then if you do the math, that strawberry is on the plant from time of pollination to harvest is probably twenty-five days. And so three hundred and seventy-three pesticides would be spraying like twenty a day, which no farmer in the on on this planet is going to do. you couldn't afford it. You know, on a strawberry thing, that's two dollars a quart.
it's it's just crazy the statements they're making. And then and then another one came out saying, well, look at the cancer rates in Santa Cruz County compared to others around it. And another one came out there all these different claims came out at exactly the same time. one which says, we found 12 pesticide residues on a str on strawberries. They tested one carton out of one store and compared it to organic where they didn't see any.
They didn't test for any organic ones because you got to use something on strawberries. I mean, whether you're copper or sulfur or whatever, Spino said, you're using something. And so this was just an this huge campaign that went out against targeting Driscolls in particular. but in in general, there's no there's no there there. But it was on you had you had Instagram reels of people taking a
quart
of strawberries and dumping it down a garbage disposal. And, you know, here you're taking food when so many people can't afford strawberries, or if they might be able to afford it, don't have access to it in their town. And, you know, and here you are dumping them down to garbage disposal. So you know, it it's that kind of stuff that really grinds my gears.
Cameron English (17:38)
But what's fascinating too, and this is not a new point, right? We're just going in circles here, I guess, because we have to the same, the same people who complain about chemicals on their food. They're using microphones. What are these microphones made out of Kevin? Right? These are made out of plastic. know, your entire existence is made possible by chemistry, right? You're, you're exposed to these constantly. People, you know, get in their cars and drive on the freeway orders of magnitude, more dangerous.
than eating strawberries treated with a synthetic insecticide. They drink booze. They'll go from don't eat these strawberries to check out my organic whiskey or whatever. I see the craziest things
Kevin Folta (18:21)
Yeah.
Cameron English (18:22)
and I think it betrays, and some people it betrays a cynicism because they do know better and then in their audience I think it just betrays a lack of understanding of risk. Intuitively we understand risk benefit when it comes to certain things.
But when it comes to these issues where our fear, where our emotions are provoked, that goes right out the window. And we go, well, yeah, of course, you know, of course the strawberries are dangerous. I can't eat the strawberries. I guess I better eat the strawberry starburst instead. You know, it's it's just, it's just wild to me.
Kevin Folta (18:55)
Yeah, yeah, very similar thought. The guy who tells me that we have to stop doing all this pesticide stuff and return to the ways of the Amish. And I said, you know, you realize you're telling me this on Twitter on your Amish computer. And
Cameron English (19:09)
Yeah.
Kevin Folta (19:15)
and you know, and the other big hypocrisy, you mentioned alcohol, which, you know, I'm a fan of. But they if that someone will tell me that they're going to avoid
str strawberry which might have a well let's let's go a better example that what was it that they tested that had glyphosate in it recently I even can't keep tracking
Cameron English (19:34)
Is it bread?
Kevin Folta (19:35)
it. Yeah the bread test in Florida which was kind of bogus. one test, no idea what was there, but they find 72 parts per billion. So 72 seconds and 31.7 years on on Dave's killer bread, which I never ate because it was really expensive. And
Plus my wife bakes everything. So, but then and but they're saying we have to avoid that bread, but then they'll have a glass of wine. So the so so 72
Cameron English (20:03)
Yeah.
Kevin Folta (20:05)
parts per billion of a of a debatable class to a maybe probable carcinogen at super high rates when you know whatever, or a hundred and thirty million parts per billion of wine.
Cameron English (20:21)
Yeah.
Kevin Folta (20:22)
of alcohol, of ethyl alcohol, which is a which is a class one carcinogen that we know causes cancer. You know, so you're and it goes back to your point about risk. We're very comfortable with that glass of wine, but freaked out about Dave's killer bread, which says killer right in the name. It's like my
Cameron English (20:38)
Right? Coincidence? I think not.
Kevin Folta (20:42)
I've had Martin's lethal bagels before, you know man. Be careful of those.
But but but that just frames that same concept of risk that we're just not sure about what it that people are so chemophobic that we let our true understanding of the risk get away from us. And and and it's I know it's how we behave, you know, if we're afraid of shark attacking us in the ocean, but you drove to the beach, you know,
Cameron English (21:10)
Yes.
Kevin Folta (21:10)
you know, after a glass of wine, you know, and and and so this is the the risk
ecosystem that people misinterpret. So you know, th that's just another thought.
Cameron English (21:23)
I was flying to work cross country just last week. And again, after having kids, I got scared of flying. It just, don't know where it came from, but, like on takeoff now, I'm like, this thing could just fall out of the sky and it's all over. You know what I mean? That thought started to occur to me, even though air transportation, it's, it's one of the safest ways to travel. If you just, if you just look at the number of airplanes that go out of every airport in the United States every day,
on every half hour, you know, it's remarkably safe. And
Kevin Folta (21:54)
Yeah.
Cameron English (21:55)
nevertheless, even even me, right on takeoff, I get scared because I'm not used to being 35,000 feet in the air. It's just intuitively your human mind goes like, I'm not supposed to be here. Right. So it doesn't. I guess what I'm saying is statistically speaking, it doesn't matter. Right. Like sometimes you just can't process that your risk is very low. One other anecdote I love
bring up in these instances is a webinar I was watching from some, you know, mothers against chemicals or, one of those, one of those NGOs and the woman starts the webinar and she goes, all right, everyone, this is going to be a really tough discussion about dangerous industrial chemicals. So pour yourself a glass of wine.
Kevin Folta (22:39)
Ha ha ha
Cameron English (22:41)
And I just, you know, I slapped my head and I'm not, I, I'm not there to participate in. wouldn't let me even if I wanted to, but I just.
It just strikes me that even the people that are leading this they just don't grasp or they're just brilliantly cynical. It's one of the two neither one is acceptable, but that's just what we're dealing.
Kevin Folta (22:58)
Yeah, that's where I mean I my my my airbag light has been flashing for about seven years in my truck. And you know, and then what am I gonna do? Go get it repaired? You know, I mean, come on, you know, so
but because
Cameron English (23:10)
You
Kevin Folta (23:10)
it's like I won't get in a wreck, you know, it but but it really does show. And the big problem for me too is just the when we start adding a price tag to the perception of risk. And we go back to our we're our first topic, this idea of organic
versus conventional. And I know that I'm a lot softer on this topic than you are because I know a lot of organic farmers. I appreciate what they do. I see them doing what they're doing and coming to a farmer's market with a great product with one hand tied behind their back. And I kind of am a little bit in awe of this because I can see I know from con from doing this conventionally how much it sucks to try to farm in Florida. You know, and all the things we have to battle in terms of pests and pathogens.
And I can only imagine the folks who are doing this organically and how much more labor it is, how much more scouting you have to do, how much more preemptive treatment you must do. And I I just see how much work goes into it. And they put a product that is on the table that is as beautiful as ours, if not better. And they charge a little more for it, and I think that's rightfully appropriate.
But what bothers me is this whole idea of the halo that goes along with it in terms of safety. Because if you compare my product versus their product, theirs took a lot more effort to make. They use very different inputs. Potentially, I use a lot of organic inputs too. But at the end of the day, someone saying that my stuff is poison and theirs is safe is really the thing that bothers me. So you know, any thoughts on that angle?
Cameron English (24:53)
Yeah. Well, few things come to mind. So the first is that the people that I really have a problem with, they fall into a category that's often called organic at any cost. And I learned that term from a great website called Ag Daily that people should visit if you want to understand agriculture. I think you've written for them on occasion to KF. Yeah.
Kevin Folta (25:11)
Sure. Yeah.
Cameron English (25:13)
Great website. It's just good for understanding these kinds of topics.
But those are the folks I have a problem with, right? They see organic. It almost has a religious connotation for them. And it's this grand struggle against corporations and capitalism. And you have to, you know, this is a David verse verse Goliath battle. And you got to you got to, you know, those are the folks that I have a problem with. I actually don't have a problem with organic food or organic agriculture. I think, as you just said, and as I alluded to at the top, you know, when I have to go buy something and I don't have a choice. Right. When the when the
food companies are so scared of a public backlash that they slap a USDA label or a non-GMO project label on everything. And my grocery bill is inflated. That's a problem. Now I've been blessed. I'm not, I'm not struggling financially. I can afford groceries, you know, not a, not a king or anything, but you know, I live comfortably. I'm grateful for that. But as you said, there's a lot of people that aren't in that,
aren't in that situation. And that's, that's what I object to. Right. It's when environmental working group comes out every spring and they say, you know, your blueberries have these many strawberry or excuse these many pesticides on them. Excuse
Kevin Folta (26:22)
Boot.
Cameron English (26:23)
me. Excuse me. Dad brain. that's what bugs me. It's, the, it's the false claims that, that are used to deceive people. Right. So if people want to buy organic, that's excellent. I'm in California, we've got all kinds of organic agriculture. I'm problem with it. It's the same thing with like, vinyl records.
I started collecting vinyl. The records today sound really, really good, but they don't sound better than Spotify. It's just they just don't write the technology for digital music. It's incredible. The quality of audio is unparalleled. Nevertheless, I still like to buy vinyl because it's a very tactile experience, you know, taking the record out of the sleeve and dropping it on
Kevin Folta (27:02)
Yeah.
Cameron English (27:02)
and hearing the needle scratch. And it's there's something to that experience. It's entirely subjective.
I'm not going to pretend that it sounds better or that, you know, I'm getting smarter because I'm listening to, to, you know, analog audio, you know, like none of that's true, but it's just the experience and I enjoy that. And I don't mind spending a 20 or 30 bucks. And actually it's often cheaper, but I don't mind spending a little extra money to own a physical record, even though I could listen to the same album a billion times on Spotify, right? It's that experience. And I think it's the same thing with organic. If people want to buy it, if you want to support a local grower who
Maybe you're just friends with, right? You appreciate what they do. I'm fine with that. It's just the deception that you primarily see online.
Kevin Folta (27:48)
No, perfect. That's a great explanation. Yeah. I mean, I I buy what looks good and what I want to pay for. And if I can support a local farm, that's totally cool. And I there's the ones that you know, I know some people who are I just love the stuff they make and they do a beautiful job here. You know, so well, let's take a break here. We'll come back on the other side of the break. We're speaking with Cameron English, who's a journalist for the well, well, give me your all your places you write for right now. It's still ACS H or
Cameron English (28:16)
Yeah, I'm the executive vice president at the American Council on Science and Health. And I do a podcast for them called the Science Dispatch. And I also do the Facts and Fallacies podcast that Kevin mentioned earlier through the Genetic Literacy Project.
Kevin Folta (28:29)
Yeah, but you guys gotta take my picture off of that.
Cameron English (28:33)
I know I gotta I gotta I gotta hit up iTunes. You're right. You're right. Thank you.
Kevin Folta (28:36)
It it's
been like it's only been like six years since I've been on there, but it's but I I do occasionally show up there, but it's kind of funny because I I listen to it and I see my picture on there. My my and my son looks at the phone and goes, Da da go, no, no, it's not da, it's Dr. Lockwood. So we'll be back with the Talking Biotech podcast in just a moment.
and now we're back on the Talking Biotech podcast. We're speaking with Cameron English. He's the associate vice president. What it was it? Associate vice president.
Cameron English (29:07)
Executive Vice President at
Kevin Folta (29:08)
Executive
vice president at the American Council for Science and Health. And also just a a very prominent writer and journalist who does a lot of work in the area of science, meeting health and society and technology. And one of the things that you know, another place I really noticed a difference is that people used to beat up in agriculture all the time. And it was mostly big ag, it was Monsanto, it was all that stuff. But now that Monsanto's been gone for eight years.
And and they're really, you know, and and the labeling question is out of the public eye, that everybody got this bioengineered label that no one understands and no one cares about. So it's a total non-issue. That, you know, agriculture in general just kind of all the genetic engineering arguments kind of slid off to the side. So did a lot of my speaking gigs. But but but but agriculture still is a punching bag.
And what's going on post COVID from your vantage point with what exactly is going on there? Like who who's causing the trouble and why are we biting the hand that feeds?
Cameron English (30:21)
Yeah, quite literally, huh? I think what happens is that people had and we've talked about this a little bit. I think people have some reasonable complaints about how the pandemic was handled. know how, how, how policy was communicated, how the vaccines were promoted. There was some hypocrisy and I think people translated.
They're justified complaints in those settings to anything science related is, is, you know, not to be trusted. Right. So, you know, I, I didn't like the COVID vaccine and therefore Driscoll strawberries are bad. Right. We just made this leap to, you know, anyone with a PhD at a, at a university is a bad person. Unless of course they're trying to sell me a water filter.
or they're trying to sell me a multi-vitamin, then they're trustworthy. But if they're part of the mainstream or the consensus, whatever, then I'm going to not only ignore what they say, but actively attack their credibility. And I'm going to call them evil on social media. And I find that most frustrating because they're just not related at all. And I think what people think they're doing is they're attacking quote unquote, big ag and they're they're attacking big food and what you do.
When you promote these anti-chemical arguments online, you're hurting the farmer, right? Like Bayer is going to survive. Syngenta is going to survive. These are, these are enormous companies. They make lots of different products. They're not, they're probably not going to go anywhere. Right. But when you say the strawberries at the grocery store are contaminated, and if you feed them to your children, their risk of cancer is going to go up by a clinically significant percentage.
You're harming the people that grow those products and farmers, their margins are razor thin. You know what I mean? It's incredible. As you were talking about with organic growers and it's true with conventional too, it's really difficult work and it's very expensive. The, you know, the machinery you need, the chemistry you need, the skills you have to accumulate over, over years, over decades. It's extensive. mean, like most people you go to work in an office or you go to work in a job.
and you get on the job training, but you don't, you don't have to learn the same skillset that growers do. And those are the people that are most directly harmed by these attacks, right? Cause you can measurably affect people's willingness to buy a perfectly nutritious, delicious piece of fruit or vegetable, you know, and that, that bugs me. It just, it's just really frustrating that,
out of ignorance, you would attack people who have nothing to do with what you're mad about. And in fact, they probably agree with you on quite a bit. You know what mean? They probably share your frustration with some of what's going on in the academy, but nevertheless, they're the punching bag for for your frustration. And that's that's outrageous.
Kevin Folta (33:24)
you I mean you take out Driscolls. So let's just use that as an example. Driscolls is not Monsanto Bay or Singenta, right? It's not a big ag company, even though it's a significantly large company. They're they are not part of the big ag complex. Now, if you manage to have a successful campaign against Driscolls and you can cut their market share and change the way people are eating their product, let's say you affect the put to the point where they don't do it anymore.
They're ex they're farming on very expensive land in California. how who do you think is gonna step into that market? Is it gonna be you know Rhonda and Dave's strawberry farm or you know, or you know, smaller producer, or is it gonna be the Seminist Bears, big BASF? Are they gonna be the strawberry folks who are gonna see that niche and capitalize on it and buy Driscoll's IP strawberry?
lines and sell them under the Bayer banner or the Singenta banner. You know, that's so it's the if you want to force consolidation, further consolidation, which I don't think is a good idea, and I've always been against, if you don't want to have further consolidation, then quit trashing the folks who are trying to trying to do this. And and just to add to that point,
This is a Driscoll's farm. They contract with growers who are good at doing what they do and those farmers grow Driscolls berries. And they do it a certain way with certain genetics
Driscolls is contracting the farmers who grow them with the pesticides that Driscolls approves, with the frequency that they approve it, with the
Amount of water and fertilizer and methods that go into those berries and the genetics that Driscolls uses. So all of that is is done by contract. And so when you say we're going to stop eating Driscolls berries or you target them or say they're toxic, you're not hurting all you may affect the big company, but you're really hitting that family farm because they're the ones who have actually been contracting by the bigger company to produce the products in that way, which is safe.
Cameron English (35:37)
We saw the same thing when the new breeding techniques started to come online when we started to see their applications in agriculture. You know, a lot of people don't realize that some of those new seed traits that were developed with CRISPR and these other technologies, those were startups that developed those tools and the way they get to market is they're sold to bigger companies. And so when they haven't succeeded, I think as well as they wanted, which is good. But when the NGOs started attacking
the new, new breeding techniques. I don't know if they knew or not, but you're attacking smaller firms, right? They come up with great ideas, but they have, you know, a small staff of scientists and a couple of administrators. They're very small companies. And so when you attack their lifeblood, you are leaving the market to the bigger firms. Now the bigger firms are good. I don't have a problem with Bayer Syngenta. They're, great companies. Sorry. That hurts people's feelings, right? But they last because they make good products.
But if your concern is consolidation or monopoly or oligopoly or whatever, whatever term you want to use or economic fascism, you know, whatever scary boogie man, if that's what you're concerned about, then you need to stop attacking the what these smaller companies produce. And that's what you see everywhere. It's very perverse. And I don't think the people on Twitter that are piling onto this and retweeting and, you know, calling people corporate shills or whatever. I don't think you realize that that's what you're contributing to.
Kevin Folta (37:07)
Yeah. So so you know, with all this said, we so we're talking about the the problem of how disinfor b basically saying how disinformation that's present inside the food space is limiting access, raising prices, causing confusion and derision around what f food is safe. All this is really the problem that we've framed. What's the solution? How do we fix it?
Cameron English (37:30)
You know, I wish there was an easy answer that we could just snap our fingers and say, ta-da. I don't think that's going to happen. I think the biggest thing is communication, right? Doing shows like this or like, you know, Rhonda Patrick, Patrick's our audience is what? 50 times mine. Probably. I don't know. But I saw that and I went, well, I'm going to respond to that. And I've got a bona fide expert who knows more about this than her. And we're going to talk about this and we're going to put out clips. Right. So if you have some expertise.
If you can string together a sentence and stare into a camera, then you should be talking about this because that's how this this changes, right? You need to get the message in front of a lot of people. And that's the key, right? You like you can influence an audience. Most people are not they're not ideologically dug in on this. And if you can communicate with them enough of them, you can influence.
how they think about these in the right way. And again, we're not saying, Kevin, you've never said this, I've never said this, you believe exactly what I say and don't ask any questions, right? You know, I I made a comment about Dr. Patrick searching through PubMed, you should do that, go through PubMed and actually try to read the paper, right? Don't read the abstract and stop when you find the sentence that validates your assumption, read the whole paper and ask questions about it critically.
Think a little bit, right? If you're on X or you're on Instagram and you see a video and it gets you riled up and your blood starts boiling, take a deep breath and go, wait a minute. Is this true? Right? Right. Before you hit retweet or before you say you're a corporate whore or whatever, you know, just think in my feelings aren't hurt. I monetize our haters, right? If you make fun of us, we will, we will profit from your mockery so you can keep doing that. It's fine. But I think that's where
where the ultimate answer is, right? You have to influence a mass audience. And I think sadly, Kevin, I, you know, I don't want this to be the case, but I think people might have to feel a little bit of pain before they go, this is a problem, right? Like, and I don't want to see this. I'm not, I'm not in any way advocating for this, but I really think you're gonna, you're gonna see the people, you're gonna have to see the people either promoting this or, or falling for it.
suffer a little bit before they realize it. And I think that's tragic because, you know, I don't want to see kids suffer. We see the same thing with the anti-vaccine rhetoric. I saw a physician who we've had on our show recently. He works as a respiratory specialist and he sees people in his clinic. They buy into the ivermectin plus this or that drug and they forego oncology, right? They, they forego cancer treatment.
And they're, they're at the end of the line, right? It's too late to do anything. It's, it's a last ditch effort. And he's like, you know, there's not much I can do for you. And that's the tragedy, right? But I think it's gonna, hopefully it doesn't come to that, but it's going to take people seeing higher prices at the grocery store and it's going to take people experiencing a little bit of difficulty. And I hope, I pray that when that comes, they go, they start looking around and they go, what the hell happened here? And then we'll be standing here going.
Come on back. It's okay. Right? Here's what you need to know. Here's why this happened, right? That you can trace this line very carefully. You scare the hell out of people and there's less food to go around. Prices are higher. You know, you, you tell people not to take medicine. There's more sickness, you know, so that, so again, hopefully it doesn't come to that, but I think it just might, you know, so we'll see.
Kevin Folta (41:08)
Yeah, it's about be rebuilding trust in institutions. And that's been so shattered since COVID for reasons we've discussed before, you know, during COVID, we were we were talking to each other a lot then. And also the question of all how it's eroded because of the current administration and the way that that's come about, really broken trust in institutions. And that's been very deliberate. And to start to rebuild the the institutions around science, the trust in science.
By talking about the good things that science does, which is the point of this podcast. And when you say, tell people, you know, stick your face in a camera and tell the story, I think there's a lot to this, and for two reasons. One is that folks who have no clue or who are making up inflammatory statements get big views. It gets shared because it appeals to the reptile brain that your food is poisoned and your kids are gonna die. So share, share, share, share, share, right? When
Fulter comes on and says, Hey, everybody, don't worry about it. It's perfectly safe. It's 18 parts per billion. They go, that's 18 billion parts per million, too many, you know, and then that's it, dead end, right? Right, right. But that's dead
Cameron English (42:16)
Boo!
Kevin Folta (42:18)
end. And so the fearful message translates to more views. And so what it means is that those of us who are advocates for science, who are talking about the ways to build trust in science, need to be more active in establishing that trust and be more active in those spaces.
And there's a lot more of us than there are of them, but there's a lot more of them than us in the spaces where people are getting information. And so what it means is if you're listening to a podcast and you hear something that is marginally clever or interesting, share it through your social media networks. And we don't do that automatically. We're not so good at sharing other people's stuff. And and I try to be.
You know, I I amplify you, I amplify Liza, I amplify Andrea Love, I amplify all I mean, all the folks who I follow who I really think are doing a great job with messaging. And so it's a question of us amplifying each other more or even participating in the space and adding your two cents of the conversation to engender more trust. So all of these things are really important and I think hopefully we will have more people in this space having these really important conversations. So
Cameron English (43:28)
Well said, as always.
Kevin Folta (43:29)
Yeah, so where
do people find you these days?
Cameron English (43:33)
I'm on X at cam J English. The organization is at a CSH org. Um, you can go to the website, a CSH.org. Um, we're very active on X. We're putting out videos almost weekly. We do a weekly podcast. We've got all kinds of written content. Um, also on Instagram at a CSH science. Um, we're doing a, we're doing a new podcast series called the mom's takeover where we get a scientist who's a mom. And then we have, we have our video reporter.
We have a science teacher, a public high school science teacher, and they come together and they're for summer, especially they're talking about sunscreen, sun safety, drowning, nutrition, all of these topics that young mothers and young parents are being exposed to. so if you have questions about that, we're tackling that. I'd love for people to benefit from that.
Kevin Folta (44:23)
Very nice. And and I've been really active on Instagram. I've been doing it took me a while to kind of get used to it and figure out how to do it. But now I can kind of hammer those things out pretty quick. So three minutes goes out really fast. I had one a couple weeks ago, get 83,000 downloads. So it's good. And I've been
Cameron English (44:39)
Yeah.
Kevin Folta (44:40)
covering a lot of topics from mRNA vaccines to vaccines for cattle, for genetic engineering, and you know, all the usual suspects. But you know, staying in my lane. I've been a little bit out of my lane in that.
I still can read a scientific paper and understand it if it's a little bit out of my lane, but a lot of stuff on on pseudoscience and cancer and how, like you were mentioning, you know, about what what you're talking about, how pseudoscience and how alternative medicine is is really wreaking a death toll. And with all the beautiful new things that are happening with cancer therapies, which are really showing promise.
The number of people who are trashing the good stuff and asking for some ivermectin bendazole, despite it being maybe the crappiest paper I've ever read. I show it in my classes. We talk about it. I go, we're gonna talk about this today. Here's how you're being deceived, and students can't believe it. Anyway, but so check it out at Kevin Fulta on Instagram. I do a little bit still on X, Twitter.
But not too much and a little bit over on blue sky, but you know, that's pretty limited just in and of itself. But Instagram seems to be the medium these days. And of course the talking biotech podcast. I still gotta do Vern Blazik again.
Cameron English (46:04)
You gotta break
it out, man. It's so funny. I get a kick out of it anyway.
Kevin Folta (46:08)
Well, so that's the ultimate answer here, folks. continue to engage and play a role in the public discussion and help clarify these issues. Remember, you're not talking to the idiot online who's making inflammatory statements and throwing throwing throwing bombs. What you're trying to do is talk to the people who don't know who to trust. And you have to try to be that person. So thanks a lot to Cam English, and we'll talk to you again next week.