in this issue:
"Is it okay to change what is a tree, what is a salmon, what is food?"

The GM debate: 'Is it okay to change what is a tree, what is a salmon, what is food?'
by Marianne Arbogast
With an estimated 60 percent of processed foods on U.S. grocery shelves containing genetically modified (GM) ingredients, the GM foods revolution -- fueled by corporations that claim to want to feed the world -- concerns everyone. In a sidebar, Arbogast interviews the U.N.'s Peter Matlon about the "second generation" of biotechnology and its potential impact on the food supply in developing countries. Also available in Spanish.

Food biotechnology: Whose values, whose decisions?
by Marion Nestle
With respect to food biotechnology, says food scientist Nestle, "the gulf of mutual incomprehension" that separates people who think like scientists from people who don't seems especially wide -- and is at the core of why such passion underlies debates about food safety.

Contributing to the web of life? An ethics of food biotechnology
by Jeff Golliher
The food crisis is part of the ecological crisis, says church environmental activist Golliher. Acting out of loyalty to "the web of life," rather than to economic institutions, might mean supporting those who really have the knowledge to feed people sustainably.

Learning from the prairie
by Scott Russell Sanders
Essayist Sanders visits Wes Jackson at the Land Institute near Salina, Kan., a place "devoted to finding out how we can provide food, shelter and energy without degrading the planet."

Exercising responsibility -- even in disputed areas
by Susan Youmans
We as individuals must exercise the "reasonable human's" measure of responsibility about technically disputed areas, says church and community organizer Youmans, noting, "We must think as a person would think when buying a car -- suspending the social nicety of assuming that rhetoric is always being used for mutual benefit."

Letters

Editor's Note

Poetry

Short Takes