Vegan and conservationist Mark Tercek, president and CEO of The Nature Conservancy, the largest environmental non-profit organization in the Americas, had an interesting response this week to a question about eating meat and genetically modified foods—two of the most durable of the hot ‘foodie’ topics of the North, with vegetarian and carnivore consumers, organic and high-tech farmers, passionately entrenched in diametrically opposing views.

‘This week, I was asked an interesting question as part of the Q&A session following a talk I gave . . . .

‘To paraphrase journalist Marc Gunther, who moderated the evening: “You are a vegan. You also lead the world’s largest conservation organization. Why doesn’t The Nature Conservancy make changing people’s diets one of its strategies? Wouldn’t changes in diet lead to better environmental outcomes? And what about GMOs?”

‘Indeed, I have been a vegetarian for a long time, and I recently became a vegan. …