Profiles


Ronald Bailey

Bailey is the science correspondent of the libertarian Reason Magazine, and an adjunct scholar with the Cato Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. The CEI awarded him a Brookes Fellows scholarship. In 1995, CEI published a book edited by Bailey titled 'The True State of the Planet' whose contributors included a who's-who of the libertarian right, including Dennis Avery of the Hudson Institute.

Bailey is also the author of 'ECOSCAM: The FalseProphets of Ecological Apocalypse', 'The Looming Trade War over Plant Biotechnology' (a Cato paper), and of articles such as 'Organic farming could kill billions of people' and 'Send in the Clones'.

During the Mexican maize scandal Bailey published an article, 'Environmentalist Bio-fraud?' whose words closely echoed the personal attacks on scientist Ignacio Chapela initiated by Monsanto's PR proxy 'Mary Murphy'. For instance, Murphy had first pointed to Chapela serving 'on the Board of Directors of the Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA)' which she labelled 'an activist group'. Murphy went on to describe Chapela as, 'Not exactly what you'd call an unbiased writer.' Bailey's Reason article described Chapela as 'a board member of the activist group Pesticide Action Network of North America' and as 'not exactly the model of a dispassionate scientist'.  (Environmentalist Biofraud?)

In another article, 'GM trade war' (National Post, Aug 9, 2002), Bailey recommends ways of forcing the EU to accept GM foods via Codex Alimentarius: 'What can Canada and the United States do to win this trade war and foster the spread of GM foods? ...All Codex standards must be agreed to by consensus of all the parties. All Canada and the United States have to do is call a halt to the precautionary principle, biotech labelling, and traceability requirements, and they'll be taken out of Codex.' He also suggests, '[The US] must persuade all the chief food exporting countries... to create a united front against the EU, leaving Europe with no sources for non-biotech feed grain imports.'  This, Bailey says, is the only way to prevent millions in the developing world from being starved.


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