welcome to larry king now today we are talking about genetically modified organisms in our food also known as dmoz biotech foods transgenic crops genetic engineering and to some detractors as franken foods in two thousand and twelve eighty eight percent of the corn crops in the united states were genetically modified as well as ninety three percent of soy and each year the presence of g m o's in america's food supply increases is this a welcome scientific advance or a danger to our health here to discuss this issue curtis known chef new york times bestselling author t.v. personality and now restaurant tour. curtis recently opened his first restaurant

mod where he focuses on seasonal locally sourced ingredients more open to the public february first in beverly hills mary lou one of the new york times best selling author and actress currently hosts the nationally syndicated mary will hundred show a longtime health and wellness advocate she's one of the few private citizens selected to contribute to the receiving of the government's food pyramid professor goldberg is a member of the national academy of sciences and professor of molecular biology u.c.l.a. name one of the top twenty professors in the school's history he's been using genetic engineering in his research for the past three decades and my old pal john salley well as advocate t.v. host n.b.a. champion john is currently working with the los angeles school system as its health and wellness guru and will be joined as the show progresses buyer of variety of guests in other locations on both sides of the issue let's start first with with dr

goldberg professor of what is gee what is a g.m.o. we're talking about inserting genes in organisms for which essentially they weren't born with a very powerful technique but it's an old technique how old forty years forty years that we're going invented that was invented in one nine hundred seventy three november twenty third of april twenty third and its purpose was. the purpose was to originally to be able to study the genes in the biology of living organisms and it's led to a tremendous revolution in biology a tremendous revolution in biotechnology so you see no negative to it i think you know you can't always say that there's there's a negative but i think you need to take it on a case by case basis there's no question that genetic engineering over the last forty years has saved hundreds and hundreds of millions of lives in the body wooded area has it improved the food it's been tremendous improvement in agriculture

particularly in the developing world there's been tremendous studies done by the united nations in the food and agriculture organization and we modify it in order to well we've been modified foods for ten thousand years in order to in order to ingrain many say he will not necessarily make them safer although they are safer but the increased yield to allow them to grow we us to grow more and less land to reduce the amount of pesticides to reduce the amount of fertilizer to save soil and to make them more nutritionally balanced ok let's get into the panel code is what are the what's the rub look i mean as soon as you start messing around with food i think you need to have a long research process that goes into the effects of of what what we're doing with the foods when when it comes to genetically modify and the ingredients that we use i really think that you mentioned it's been happening for a long time forty years to me isn't a long time you know most of the sinner in this type of

a living longer than that and we've been eating food for centuries i think that where that research comes from is really important who it's funded by is really important you know when you look worldwide there's a sixty developed countries you mentioned the validating countries but the developed world has a very different perspective on it than what the u.s. has sixty countries throughout the world have a the. very strict restrictions or title bans on g m a and you say companies or you say there's something sinister going on here. these companies are making products that they want to be used in this well when you when you look at the labeling that you know of course the big companies that use genetically modified ingredients don't want labels because we know that fifty three percent of americans would choose not to purchase j m. products and ninety one percent of americans want labeled but would choose not to purchase it would choose not to purchase it that's right yeah i think that you cannot stop people wanting to know what's in their food

demanding more information wanting to protect their children more and the idea that there would be a company that would spend seven point one million dollars just to keep proposition proposition thirty seven off of you know the california legislature then you can imagine that they've got a vested interest in that santo it says that they don't want the labeling on their food because people feel this way you can't stop people from wanting to have the information there have been countless studies in many many many different countries about g.m.o. foods and the idea that you know certain animals whether it's hamsters whether it's pigs whether it's its rats whatever have had a very adverse effects to g.m.o. foods and so we don't want to see our kids now we are breaking down we are not as hearty as we used to be and the generation coming up is probably going to be the first generation that doesn't live as long or as healthy as their parent but we're living longer we're living longer but our kids are not and the thing is well everyone had already you know you have a chance you're out manned here i know there's

a lot of fun you're still going to europe a professor you know. is the public worried about those german. public is is really really not for probably here in california she just melts in the proposition to have us know what the label and they said no to the label they paid for us to say no we don't want people it's going to cost more money if we put labels on schools more money to the public and it's unconstitutional that was the answer if you up. oh in style you have to use a condom out of both and we're going to vote for what you have to do over there but we're not going to vote for what they're now for we're going to vote for what's or don't you impressed with this professor i want to go in there morass one of like one of those distinguished ever tells it's ok yeah but this is the funniest thing he is a professor at u.c.l.a. and he and i think you're a wonderful man i'm going to do some research and point out how i'm going to do some research on it but one of the things that i do know is that i'm seven foot and

i don't know that yao ming is from china he's seven seven and i do know to kids to get bigger and i do know that i have right now four kids at fourteen years old that are three hundred pounds and that cannot be eating healthy food right now with our i was absolutely nothing i can withstand the yeah i have it as a do it c.n.n. doesn't have anything to do achieve everything because everything nothing if you just said to me not even afford it is not him only i mean i get a record i don't know why we need other people because this panel could go for our yeah we're now joined by mark crumb packer he's the chief marketing officer of chipotle a since it was founded in one thousand nine hundred ninety three chipotle a has opened more than sixteen hundred locations and my two children go to two of them every day. ok mark you have heard the opening of the discussion what is the two pulled late position on g.m.o. this so toy stance on g.m. i was is that we don't believe there is a scientific consensus that there's

a either for human consumption or you know consumption and until we believe such a consensus actually exists in the scientific community we feel it's best not only to disclose that we have some g.m.o. as our menu but to make concern about a concerted effort to remove all of them to the extent possible for harm and. so we there's no g m o's the chip only on there are only you have to live with them well . there are there are a few movies that about you know a year ago in march of two thousand and thirteen we decided to disclose what you know most were on the menu and as we looked into it we've out of there were a couple of culprits one was a soil which is used in a few different. things that you hold water and you know usually to leave a lubricated or is in the green and something and then you know our corn and clark are here as there was some were some g.m.o. so we really politically were able to eliminate us oil and switch to some flour and

rice bran oil so that limited the g.m.o. from almost everything on the menu the only remaining items are corn flour tortillas the corn tortillas and chips are actually obviously made of corn so we're fighting not g.m.o. corn for those and there's a little bit of corn starch in the power to us so we're in the process of removing that so by the end of two thousand working respect all over really unsociable to be now in g.m. up good bob why is he and this panel wrong that's not based on science it's based on a concerted. frankly depressing anti-science campaign that's been going on for ten bucks is by who. it's been a concerted campaign by people who feel that natural is better back to nature is better organic is better and that's not necessarily true because the science doesn't bear it out every serious science academy in the world national set cademy

of science is the royal society the night a nation's food and agriculture organization american association for the advancement of science american medical association of all said that genetically engineered foods are just as safe as things as foods that are produced can vent about the american academy of environmental medicine what about some of the other countries that have gotten involved what about just seeing that we have more allergens more autism and since one nine hundred seventy three. november the twenty third we have we are become much sicker that that kind of research isn't even long enough for us to be aware is out quite as i can so i mean honestly that is the biggest bunch of nonsense well i've ever heard i think you're on the tires are saying is not found there are seventeen hundred peer reviewed publications that state that these plants are going to because they want to create a slang in their laboratory or a food food safety organization european spent a half a billion dollars over the last ten years and just published the report done by

scientists at institutions in universities all over europe they did more studies on these foods that anyone could ever imagine and they concluded that there is no documented safety hazard to genetically modified then why right is there such a problem with labeling at all well as it ok i thought i was told i'm not liar so a lot of tell able so let me just in the sense of full disclosure say that i wrote the arguments against labeling her proposition thirty seven of the california ballot being reasons why i feel very strongly about this one i feel strongly about the technology because i think we really need this technology because we feel you think if you label it people won't buy it exactly so you read what is label people react as losses in the second reason is that. you label things because of what the product hands you don't label the process and genetic engineering is a process and what we do in my lab and in literally thousands of labs across the

world is no different than what's been done for ten thousand years if i make a big tomato in my lab which i don't that if i did by adding a gene that's the exactly the same gene that was used in conventional breeding to make a big tomato you have genetically modified food absolutely no none in your restaurant that mark can we say this is a little reverse psychology is chipotle a saying we're going to be smart and say that people fear g.m.o. those so we're going to plug the fact that we don't have them or have very little of them so that more people will come to us based on their fear of the other food it's the reason we want to remove him as well i mean is that we don't agree that there's a scientific consensus that there's this there's a. study of peer review doesn't mean that is accurate we believe long term studies and we're talking about long term very long term longer than anybody here.

and so we just don't agree with the fact that there's a there isn't a scientific consensus there's a there may not be evidence of particular health really concern that doesn't mean it so all of our goals are quality ingredients and we just can't find those orders have yet to be used and really there's a lot of or frankly put in some of the lives you've cited so we're not i go to a store now i don't know if a food well if you get organic it's not the amount it's certified organic means it's not g.m.o. all right mark thank you very much monsanto as one of the biggest names in genetic engineering in our next segment will be joined by its executive vice president dr rob freely stay with us.

my marinates join me. for in-depth impartial and financial reporting commentary and for news and much much. only on the bus and only on. the. plane it was a problem very hard to make a plan to get along here the club has never had sex with the earthquake there are no let's let's play. lists. it was play.

lists . play. live. we're doing two programs on this a full hour devoted to it because it's so important joining us now in the panel remains of course is dr robert freeway's the executive vice president chief technology officer of monsanto that's a leading producer of genetically engineered seeds dr fairly is also the two thousand and twelve recipient of the world food prize dubbed by the way the nobel prize of food you are a supporter of g.m.o. foods right yeah i'm a supporter as as a science and just who's been involved with it is all career as

a dad who's got three kids and you know as a as a young man who grew up on a farm and not in the midwest and spent a lot of time thinking about agriculture and food production i think these are a really important technologies important tools as we think about food production today but even more importantly think about the challenge of producing you know twice as much food in just a few years are you saying that when monsanto that in that is you're making food how be are absolutely you know the technologies that i'm sure you've talked about with biotechnology are really an extension of the genetic modification and breathing techniques that you know man has been using since the beginning of time and we've relied on that to produce you know the better process the better fruits and vegetables that have enabled us to have that kind of choices that consumers have today and these tools that help farmers here in the u.s. and around the world and they are

a part of the arsenal as we think about producing more food facing the challenge of climate change and you know doubling the food supply how much of the market does month saddle control. you know one of the basis of being said so hard to answer is we licensed our technology to hundreds of companies in the united states and around the world and so various companies use to use some of the knowledge you we've developed from a pure seed perspective by just focus on the u.s. our market share in corn and soybeans and vegetables is about twenty five percent or so of the market how much money have you given to the united states government in order to keep supporting monsanto this g.m.o. and and how much did you spend avoiding g.m.o. labeling. a lot of questions or as a wife a lot of companies we lobby on behalf of our parmer customers to make sure that the

that you know the their issues are understood and appreciated i don't think there's anything unusual or atypical about about our lobbying efforts in terms of the of the food labeling i think those numbers are are very clear in terms of what the industry and what monsanto contributed you know both in california and by how much can house how much of an both cases because you didn't answer my first question i don't really have the specifics but it is important to be happy to follow up with wow ok i got it so why don't you kid that's like a missouri man if you like her politician a sly arson or rob what's wrong. if they label it. not a big thing in fact you know that it's a great starting point for the conversation because a lot of people think that we're against lately the reality of it is we've been very supportive of the voluntary labeling approaches that i think are really the true answer for labor and so you know voluntary labeling whether it's g.m.o.

free or organic which are two very popular labels i think it's a lot of sense and so you know the approach that companies like like whole foods or to bowl to your what we've seen recently you know with cheerios is exactly the right way to label because you know a company wants to different and support and market a product and get the marquee benefit or the perceived benefit us of a voluntary level of meat please send us with all due respect to you give it a very political onside you're avoiding the question again you saying that you're supporting positive liveline which means that companies do have the freedom to say we had g.m. i free but what you know what you know what you're a limb and i did and what you're saying is the fact that monsanto supports not liable in seven point one mt yeah right you spent a lot of money you know i got out lobbying the government saying that he doesn't want j m o's to be libeled. no it was a compulsory liveliness you know you see in prices i have plenty of time for

a bargain you know my style and. be absolutely as direct and candid is as is that so i can be because i've got a really strong passion about food and food safety as we go forward so first of all from a point of view editorial a blend which was the point that was being debated both in california and washington state were against that because as mandatory labeling is an f.d.a. decision and it every state were labeled their foods differently i think that would really hurt farmers in the transport of food and really create unnecessary cost is really not not essential because the voluntary wayman schemes for that you know we have other labeling we have other labeling for things like or be adequate have other labeling every single product that you buy since the late seventy's had some kind of label on it so why wouldn't you allowed you know g.m.o. corn g.m.o. so i am a week whatever i think and i can bring on

a season because there are people out of the dot want to buy g.m. my food so why don't they want it why the count we give them the power to make an informed the cia can make an informed decision by buying organic which is the label certified it's not on g.m.o. and i also think that this is really an arrogant conversation now going that's not on the way and everybody is just sitting here i know you think it's an arrogant conversation because it assumes that the people of california that voted no for labeling were doing it because somehow monsanto put a gun to their head now and i think they're not going to pay that dr goldberg and dr freely column are hurt by more information you're not hurt by more information because i think more information is great so why can't i know of a broader powers that are not as interested in the prevention here's the problem with the argument one can breed conventionally. a plant that might be even more harmful to you then anything that we may or may not do using modern genetic engineering like what for example no conventionally grown crops have any

testing or any regulatory oversight the policy of the f.d.a. is that conventional crops and genetically engineer crops are not any different from each other and i think as every hand we have bought by my phantom and other when i got out i got a scope so if you had on a organic food in front of or genetically modified you would choose to eat the domestically modified because you feel it's better for it no that's another question which one would you have to answered saying i'm a scientist i go by scientific data there's a process here it's not hocus pocus it's not magic anything majorly but i'm going to get a break guys going to give that homer got the two thousand and thirteen un report rejects the world population will hit nine point six billion by two thousand and fifty a robber g.m.o. crops a mansard a world hunger i think they're one of the important answers they're not the only tool but they're really critical tool and you know they've already demonstrated the

ability to reduce pesticides increase shields you know they're grown now in thirty countries around the world by kinds of billions of farmers and they are an important tool particularly if we think about producing food for a growing planet in the face of climate change and a lot of challenges or you know doubling the food civil but there i would like there's other challenges as well absolutely we have to be able to grow more food in the next fifty years than we have in the entire history of humankind and we have to do and i'm less land much less land which means we need higher yields with much less resources water but we should also be looking at what how much money the time and yeah thanks for spending on an animal game this is harmful well look i think we're saying to people don't eat g.m.o. foods. i'm saying that i don't think i've done it to my foods because i think an appropriate amount of research has been done on them let me let's say we're talking about world hunger what you're laughing but let me say this i mean if there were

doctors and they were professes that went out and said there was nothing wrong with tobacco smoke either and then we later found out that it calls cancer that's correct jane is not tobacco spoke a gene that we know the structure of is not tobacco so you have an a gene that we know we're going to your brain is going to pass this ice you know and how are we going to have that and our children i take it no i mean i need because this is a scientific greece has such as hasn't shown the g m o's can be harmful then that then this safe and i'm saying that's not the case well it is today with you then if you disagree you're disagreeing with every major scientific but by the way that's not sure what do you disagree with the national academy of science and let royal society the australian which added he made little has been told that in their life and you are right and they have and over two thousand peer reviewed experiments that have not been done by monsanto and have not been done by by syngenta been done but at least let me just address one and you disagree with the european food safety organization that said that they're perfectly safe rob is your fear is that if it's

labeled people won't buy it is that your fear no my fear is that there's been an concerted fifteen year campaign to demonize these kinds of foods and your fear is they don't buy it and so when i listen to mary lou i hear very similar things to the climate deniers of the right in face of all the scientific and on faith balance of all our society in face of all my needs is a given if they say no the climate isn't changing the climate isn't changing mix total in face of all the scientific evidence courtesan very last thing no they're there harmful there may be problems and stuff and so therefore you are wrong and i do science was about i always you know i'm on the on a reality i didn't i didn't mean what are there and what he says the design for. says proves initiate it supports the obesity has raised risen it is not over the g.m.o. and spend the past ten years fifteen years but has to do it does because if ninety

percent of didn't tell you you know you've been asked to come from ok as i explained and i'm not going to get too pedantic or too professorial great work how . to weigh the genetically engineered let's say soybean has a gene in it that in many cases a plant gene which makes the protein that you eat every single day in either organic or non genetically engineered vegetable seeds and be indistinguishable in chemical structure and therefore it's not going to have any of these effects that you have because you're eating it as it is secondly the incept resistant crops that are made which reduce tremendously millions and millions and millions and millions of pounds of best size in the environment this is something that has been used in or he enix farming for over seven years all of us that if you know us but it's sick won't eat it and now borrowing too much of you should be your friend and then absolutely has been used to argue and are charming it's so unfair there's little

forty to eighty pound bodies you know this is when i listen to this conversation. and i mean this sincerely i find it very very depressing if. the topic is thanks doctor for a week and that ends part one of a two parter of larry king. i know c.n.n. the m s n b c news have taken some not slightly but the fact is i admire their commitment to cover all sides of the story just in case one of them happens to be accurate. that was funny but it's close and for the truth from the might think. it's because one fall attention and the

mainstream media work side by side the joke is actually on here. at our team we have a different crowd. because the news of the world just is not this funny i'm not laughing dammit i'm not gonna. look. at. you guys have to be jokes well handled that i'm. your friend post a photo from a vacation you can't afford college it's different. the boss repeats the same old joke of course you like. your ex-girlfriend still pens tear jerking poetry keep tabs norrish.