Peter Pringle
Author, Food Inc.: From Mendel to Monsanto - the Promises and Perils of the Biotech Harvest
The word natural should simply mean of, from, or by nature. Some people still cling to the idea that anything wrought by nature must be good for them. This is a delusion, as any honest farmer will tell you and as nature writers since Tennyson and naturalists since Darwin have long advised. Bucolic throwbacks like Greenpeace and Prince Charles have romanticized natural into a completely unreal notion.
Alton Brown
TV host, Good Eats
Every bite that goes into our mouths has been genetically engineered, which is not to say that what we eat is unnatural. Odds are we wouldn't have broccoli if some farmers in Italy hadn't spotted a naturally occurring mutation in cabbage that they liked and cultivated. The way I see it, if something can happen in nature, it's natural. Here's the tricky part: Unnatural things can get into nature and change the order of things. Is that bad? We'll see.
M. A. Sanjayan
Lead scientist, The Nature Conservancy
Humans have always modified the natural world. In ancient Egypt, for example, selective breeding altered the genetics of livestock. But modern practices such as cloning an extinct species are different: Because the fetus needs to be incubated within another species, it's subjected to the physiology of the surrogate mother. What's created isn't exactly what once existed, and that offers an ethical dilemma.
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The Aesthetic Imperative
Is our ability to alter nature changing what we consider natural?
The Sound of Stolen Thunder
New World Disorder
The High Cost of Efficiency
