Genetic Armageddon, Bad Science, Worse Faith, Disease And Superweeds
Pastor Dale Morgan
Genetic Armageddon, Bad Science, Worse Faith, Disease And Superweeds
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leslie-hatfield/biotech-fail-bad-science_b_211601.html>
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If you yawned your way through science class back in school, you're not
alone. American students have lagged in the science department for
years, with fourth and eighth graders recently placing eleventh among
international peers. While this is often framed in terms of an inability
to compete in the global marketplace, it has another insidious effect:
ignorance when it comes to scientific issues that have great social and
environmental impacts, leaving us vulnerable to questionable science.
What if, while we were sleeping through class, a well-meaning but
ethically compromised teacher received funding to conduct dangerous
experiments in our presence, feed us the results, and dump the toxic
byproducts in the river next to the school?
That's kind of the state of industrial agriculture, according to a new
paper, "The Genetic Engineering of Food and the Failure of Science"
(full text available for download here) published in this month's issue
of The International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food, and
our future food supply is on the line, not to mention our health. The
sharp-witted Bonnie Powell of The Ethicurean blogged about the report
yesterday.
Even Bonnie's post is a little dense for a lay person, but it doesn't
take a rocket scientist to understand the three terrifying "red flags"
of GMO foods identified by Lotter's paper, which she breaks into
digestible bullets and that I'll chew up a little more for you:
* the introduction of "novel proteins created by accident in
transgenic foods" (leading to food allergies and toxicity, and nearly
impossible for consumers to guard against because GM foods aren't
labeled in this country)
* "the horizontal transfer of transgenes to other organisms" (the
animal equivilant of cross-pollination of GM seeds, which Powell points
out has not been studied in the long term)
* environmental side effects including breeding insects and other
organisms with greater resistance to pesticides, new superweeds, and
contaminated soil and water
So what's the benefit? Monsanto, by far the world's leading proponent of
GMOs, is currently spending millions to convince consumers that they are
the only way to feed the world's growing population. The company
repeatedly returns to its holy grail, the so-called Green Revolution,
which supposedly solved hunger in India. But in fact, just last year,
the farce of the Green Revolution was severely criticized by scientists
and experts from 57 other countries. More from Bonnie:
And in April 2008, as Lotter writes, 400 agricultural scientists and
experts in 57 nations signed a United Nations-sponsored document known
as the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and
Technology for Development. The IAASTD's final report criticized the
"Green Revolution" style of capital-intensive, high-environmental
impact, technology- and yield-centered approach of agriculture and
recommended that developing nations base their future food production
around local and regionally derived sustainable and agro-ecological
strategies. Not GMOs.
As we followed here with interest, Monsanto and Syngenta -- the two
biotechnology-industry representatives in the IAASTD discussions, who
were initially enthusiastic about convening a food production strategy
agreement for developing countries -- took their balls and went home in
January 2008, when it was clear that nobody at the IASSTD was interested
in playing their game anymore. The United States, Canada, and Australia
did not sign the agreement.
And yet, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack continues to push the
biotech agenda abroad and in the U.S. Senate, with a proposed Global
Food Security Bill that would mandate GMO research funds as part of
foreign food aid. Such requirements could trap farmers in the Global
South in a system of dependence on multinational corporations for seeds
they might otherwise have saved, and force them to buy chemicals year
after year that strip their soil of minerals and pollute their water.
The second half of Lotter's study, Academic Capitalism and the Loss of
Scientific Integrity, chronicles the questionable circumstances under
which GMO technology was given the green light. He details the effects
of "the large-scale restructuring of university science programs in the
past 25 years from a model based on non-proprietary science for the
'public good' to the 'academic capitalism' model." He goes on to
describe how dependence on corporate dollars corrupted science to do its
bidding with "deficient scientific protocols, bias, and possible fraud
in industry-sponsored and industry-conducted research; increasing
politically and commercially driven manipulation of science within
federal regulatory bodies such as the FDA; and bias in the peer-review
process, tolerance by the scientific community of biotechnology industry
manipulation of the information environment, and of biased treatment and
harassment of non-compliant scientists."
The fact that so many of our government agency employees have worked for
the very corporations they are now supposed to regulate, in the areas
they govern and that so many officials have received campaign donations
from these same corporations could account for their tendency to rely on
this dubious research, but perhaps the reason so many of them continue
to ride this precarious bandwagon is that they're not so great at
science, either. Genetic modification is hard to wrap your head around.
One would think, however, that the big-brained folks at the Gates
Foundation would have no problem understanding the science behind
biotech and the potential problems with it, but if the government and
academics are on the bandwagon and Monsanto is behind the wheel, Gates
is definitely pitching in for gas with grants to the Alliance for a
Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). What gives? Lotter and Powell both
allude, in terms of America's acceptance of this dubiously tested
technology, to our belief, as a culture, in science and innovation, and
who stands for innovation more than Gates?
But bearing in mind that we are talking about our ecology, our health
and our global food supply -- not really the kind of stuff we want to
leave to chance -- we would likely do well to follow the example of our
European counterparts, who, as Powell points out, have "tended to
operate according to the precautionary principle essentially expressed
as 'better safe than sorry.'"
In the end, Lotter says that he's not exclusively anti-GMOs, and whether
this stance is meant to temper the rocking of the academic boat (a
doctor of agroecology, Lotter has taught for years within the system
he's bucking, and is not on a tenure track) or a genuine desire to call
back only the most grievously dangerous of these technologies, it makes
sense not to throw out the baby with the proverbial bathwater. But I
would encourage consumers (and Gates, and government agencies) to err on
the side of caution as well, and to entertain the idea that real
innovation in the food and agriculture world may not be the stuff of
spliced genes, petrochemicals and intellectual property but rather a
better understanding of the nature of soil and weather and time-tested
methods of food production, like compost and worms.
Originally published on The Green Fork.