Local Author Bill Lambrecht: Global Reach

“Lambrecht takes what could be a dry topic and dishes out a great read for those who wonder – or worry – what this brave new world is likely to yield.”
– THE WASHINGTON POST

Bill – no doubt, deserving of a far more respectful address given his experience and stature, but that is what I call him in our yoga class – has been a great seer on this issue of genetic engineering and its effect on our food. Sadly, the US has been lagging far behind on this key issue, comparatively light years behind Europe. The last big rise I personally recall of this issue was Proposition 37, back in 2012, when California voted on whether to require the labeling of genetically engineered food. Note that this was not a vote to ban genetically engineered food, but merely a demand that those ingredients be identified as such on the packaging. Sitting here in Maryland, it looked like it would pass, but big agro made its push and scared folks by saying that this could make the cost of food rise astronomically. Indeed, that threat was enough to kill the vote.

Bill saw all this coming decades earlier, traveled the globe researching the issue, and presented his seminal work in 2001. Had we been able to pay heed to his story and gain a greater awareness of the facts, we’d be far better off. Instead, to this day, we are still playing catch up. The mass of US shoppers purchase and ingest foods filled with genetically modified ingredients, and they haven’t a clue or simply don’t care. Fortunately, the book remains with us and serves as a most compelling presentation of this critical issue. It inspires the reader that something still needs to be done and prophetically offers how the next generation that will decide the fate of the GMO debate. That time is now…

National Reviews & Personal Email

“Dinner at the New Gene Café” received rave reviews from The Washington Post (noted above), Chicago Tribune, Publisher’s Weekly, among others. But you would never know it by talking to Bill. He is as low-key and understated as they come: a dazzling resume in journalism, and as per the yogi ethic he simply lets his work speak for itself.

That is, in part, why I truly enjoyed and marveled at this personal email Bill sent me (8/19/19), as it gives that a little peek into his world:

I read recently where Monsanto kept an enemies list over the years. I’m certain I was at the top. Back then I was working in those years in Washington for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Pulitzer family’s flagship paper in in Monsanto’s hometown. These were the “fat years” in journalism and I had license to go anywhere in the world as long as I did good work, so I traveled to 13 countries writing about the company’s powerful technology, which amounts to re-ordering the building blocks of life. Sometimes we guess right and it was my sense early that there would be political and cultural resistance. I wrote my first series in 1986, ten years before the first gene-altered crops were planted in the U.S. Everywhere I went, in Europe, India and South America, protests met Monsanto’s introduction of its technology. The company came to see me as an agent provocateur even though I was simply chronicling the resistance. I recall that in Brazil, I had a story ready to file about Monsanto achieving its first major success outside of the U.S. in a country destined to be the China of agriculture. Lo and behold, on the day Monsanto was to get its permit, a Brazilian federal judge granted an injunction and it would be another 10 years or so before those seeds got planted.

Purchase Book / About

Purchase Book: Dinner at the New Gene Café

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Bio: About Bill

Local Author Bill Lambrecht: Global Reach