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Author Archive: Karen Batra
Karen Batra is Director of Food & Agriculture Communications, and has worked for BIO since 2008. Having lived in the Washington, D.C. area for more than 20 years, Karen has worked for four major national trade associations specializing in communications and media relations, most recently at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association.
What Karen likes best about BIO, aside from her uber-talented colleagues, is working to promote a technology that truly helps to heal, feed and fuel the world. In the food & ag sector, we aim to help farmers do what they do best – grow the most abundant, most affordable and safest food supply in the world.
Karen’s favorite biotech food is papaya, and her favorite genetically engineered animal is the spidey-goat. Karen also has two Glofish, Redfish and Bluefish, who live with their non-biotech cousin, Peachy the Snail.Latest Posts
Time Magazine Modifies the Endless Debate Over GM Crops
Bryan Walsh wrote for Time magazine about the so-called “obsession” surrounding genetically modified (GM) crops: “To environmentalist opponents, GM foods are simply evil, an understudied, possibly harmful tool used by big agribusiness to control global seed markets and crush local farmers. They argue that GM foods have never delivered on their supposed promise, that money spent on GM crops would be better funneled to organic farming and that consumers should be protected with warning labels Read More >
“Time to Call out the Anti-GMO Conspiracy Theory”
In a speech last week at Cornell University on anti-GMO conspiracy theory, Mark Lynas told audiences “millions, possibly billions, of people have come to believe what is essentially a conspiracy theory, generating fear and misunderstanding about a whole class of technologies on an unprecedentedly global scale.” Formerly a devout anti-GMO activist himself, Lynas said his activism, “which I wrongly thought of at the time as being ‘environmental’, has done real damage in the world… I Read More >
Think Organic Farming is Better for the Environment? Think Again.
The eighth annual Global Impacts Study released this week by PG Economics quantifies the environmental benefits gained from the use of biotech crops. “We’ve seen a significant reduction in the use of chemical insecticides with biotech crops,” said Dr. Cathleen Enright, BIO’s executive vice president for food and agriculture. “Since 1996 and the advent of agricultural biotechnology, farmers growing these crops have switched to more benign herbicides to help control weeds.” Enright adds, “The shift Read More >
Don’t Misrepresent the Farmer Assurance Provision
There has been quite a lot of hoopla in the anti-biotech community over a tiny provision in the spending bill recently signed by President Obama. The “Farmer Assurance Provision” protects farmers and growers when a previously approved and deregulated biotech seed becomes the subject of frivolous lawsuits. Opposition groups such as the Center for Food Safety use the judicial system to challenge USDA’s regulatory authority that governs biotech crops and to potentially halt the use of the Read More >
A Scientist Pope and High-Tech Catholicism
The USA Today ran an op-ed authored by John Rigolizzo, a New Jersey farmer and a volunteer board member of Truth About Trade & Technology: “As Catholic cardinals selected Pope Francis in Rome, we watched an ancient church at its most medieval: obedient to tradition, cloaked in secrecy, and waiting for white smoke. The papal conclave appeared positively anti-modern. Yet in another sense, the Vatican stands in the vanguard of science and technology. It’s one Read More >
