Howl at the Moon HOME ON EARTH FOR
JOURNALIST, AUTHOR AND CAMPAIGNER 

Pat Thomas

Articles (Beyond GM)

This archive of investigations, reports and interviews below spans from my work with What Doctors Don’t Tell you through my ‘Ecologist years’ to some of my more recent work (see also my Blogs page) with other publications and from the NYR Natural News website, which I edit and Beyond GM campaign and its associated websites.

It does not include the large body of feature work which I did as a music journalist – work I am equally proud of but which came before the internet made archiving easier!

What Doctors Don’t Tell you re-wrote the book on how journalists should approach health. Instead of rewriting press releases, blindly following the latest fads or relying on rent-a-quote experts, the team immersed itself in the medical journalist that Doctors were – or should have been  – reading. These often tell a very different story to the PR that filters through to the media about modern pharmaceuticals.  I was a contributing editor at WDDTY for nearly a decade and editor of Proof! – the consumer magazine that grew out of the work we did there.

The Ecologist magazine, founded in 1970, was the world’s oldest and most widely read environment magazine. It was a driving force in major environmental campaigns against climate change, toxic chemicals in household products, rainforest destruction, food additives, genetic modification and much more. Its courageous, in-depth journalism provided early-warning signs for all the environmental challenges we face now and was, for decades, hugely influential in setting the environmental and green political agendas in the UK and elsewhere. The New York Review of Magazines called it “A magazine that changes people’s lives”. I was privileged to be its Health Editor and then Editor for several years before it ceased printing in 2009 and have continued to contribute ad hoc to it’s website.

My interest in a less interventionist, more natural approach to health continues to this day. NYR Natural News is the only alternative health website based in the UK. It has a growing UK and international audience of people who want good information on health alternatives and who want to understand the connections between environment and health. It is also an increasingly powerful voice in environment and GM campaigning, exposing the toxic connections between multinational corporations and political policy and their impact on human well-being.



07 Mar 2023

Gene edited foods in our shops soon? Reality vs hype

The UK government says gene editing will fill our shops with better food. The reality is more empty promises and more empty shelves. Although several gene-edited crops and a few animals have been approved for commercialisation over the last decade, particularly in the US and Japan, few have made it to market and most have been abandoned.

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20 Jan 2023

Hijacking GMO Legislation – An Open Response to Lord Benyon

This week we have had an opportunity to review a leaked letter from Lord Benyon, the Defra Minister leading the Genetic Technology Bill through the Lords. Its aim was to convince those peers who have been working hard to amend the bill that they should have faith in the government’s good intentions. Here’s our response.

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25 Jul 2019

“We Don’t Need No Regulation” – Biotech Bullies Want to Re-engineer the Law

Biotech developers in the EU are lobbying hard to rewrite or remove regulations intended to protect consumers and the environment. With a little ‘help’ from the White House and – thanks to an apathetic mainstream media  – a lack of public awareness, they could succeed. Tied up in a pretty bow of feeding the hungry […]

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25 Feb 2019

Nutrient Collapse – Why Biofortified Food Won’t ‘Feed the World’

‘Bioengineering’ nutrients into our food – a promise which so far has failed to materialise – distracts us from real issues of soil degradation, climate change, poor diet choices and lack of political will to support a right to food.

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02 Aug 2018

GM-fed Salmon Are Being Trialled in GM-free Scotland

An experiment in feeding farmed salmon GM feed is underway in the highlands of Scotland – and you should be worried. The BBC news, naturally, was the first to trumpet the benefits of the GMO experiment, claiming that the aim of the trial was to increase the nutritional value of the fish and that a […]

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14 Nov 2017

Glyphosate in The EU – What’s the Plan?

The EU has failed – once again – to agree on how to proceed with the relicensing of glyphosate, the active ingredient which underpins Roundup, the world’s most widely used herbicide. Yesterday representatives of Member States in the European Council voted on a proposal, put forward by the European Commission, to relicense glyphosate for a […]

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14 Oct 2017

Peace, Love and (Glyphosate in Your) Ice Cream

In a series of tests on Ben & Jerry’s ice cream sold in the UK and EU, worrying levels of glyphosate were found. Here’s what that means – and how Ben & Jerry’s responded and why you shouldn’t be too hopeful.

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09 Aug 2017

Of Burgers, Blood and Balderdash

It’s one of the most depressing aspects of environmentalism that pressing needs for change inevitably get turned into saleable products. As the need to reduce our meat consumption rises so too do the number of so-called ‘meat substitutes’, products which aim to get us to eat less meat while still pretending that we are eating […]

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15 Sep 2016

The Bayer-Monsanto Merger – Corporate Madness or a Moment of Possibility?

Forget reality shows. For anyone interested in the future of food – and really the future of the entire planet – the corporate theatre of the mega-merger is proving to be compelling stuff. This week Monsanto confirmed a record-breaking $66bn takeover of its GM seeds business by rival Bayer. The deal – if it is allowed to […]

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13 Apr 2016

Opening up the Debate on GMOs to the Voices of the Future

With young people speaking up and becoming more aware of food, health and environmental issues, they deserve the platform to voice their concerns and join in a wider global network of youth working for positive change in the world they will inherit. Our Food Our Future is asking kids in the Americas to send in […]

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