In 1999, Dick Taverne wrote an article for Prospect in which he passionately denounced the “anti-science” of a public culture indifferent to evidence and research, above all in the case of GM foods, which “act as a kind of lightning rod for the public malaise with science.” Eight years later, in our November cover story, he returns to the fray with an extended account of the ways in which public ignorance and a lack of foresight on the part of corporations have meant the proven benefits of GM food are still largely failing to reach those most in need of them.
Taverne’s is not a conciliatory tone, and his message is stark: Britain and Europe have lost the opportunity to lead the world in GM technology, and millions of lives have already been lost for no good scientific reason. In a world that will have to more than double its food production over the next half century, Taverne sees the need for GM crops as indisputable and the cult of “back to nature” as a misguidedly moralistic anachronism. Hard evidence, in other words, is the bottom line, and there is no need to dignify irrational arguments by taking them seriously. Let us know what you think here.
You can’t get something for nothing, even with gracious agro corporatism.
The silver bullet of GMOs is not sufficient for this planet to sustain itself with a population nearing 7 billion.
Science never considered only 15 years of ice core samples as confirmation of AGW; why should we accept the short-term tenure of GMO study and swallow this indiscreet journalistic promotion?
The yipping over GM foods has served to reveal the dark underbelly of the Veganist Jihad’s true agenda: Causing human starvation and suffering in the name of “animal rights”. These terrorist wingnut fanatics are all for human suffering and death, and their cultural ideal, as any number of them have stated pubicallly, is 14th Century Europe. They want mass famine. They want widespread disease. They want a two-tier society, with them as the “nobles” and all the rest of us as abused, starved, slave-in-all-but-name “serfs”.
That is their agenda and goal. Scaring the world into rejecting GM foods is just one of their means of reaching their “ideal” world. What is truly sad and frightening is how readily the Western media has bought into their lies, and helped them further their vile agenda.
“By what rationale can the technology be safe and ethical when saving lives in medical treatment, but not when used to make plants resistant to pests in order to save people from hunger?”
Answer: A simple rationale GMO food is “in the wild” whereas medical applications remain in the lab. Cross fertilization with non GMO crops (the unknown consequences and the potential loss of vital non gmo seed stocks) is the single biggest concern about GMO, not “health” as this article says.
(Oh, and Bad Karma… what planet do you live on?)
I’ll second David’s comments and add, just for the record, that I’ll probably be stealing the asinine phrase *Veganist Jihad.* It’s simply too full of humoriffic possibilities to allow it to lay fallow.
You know what? I’d like to see you say that to the face of a starving orphan? Sorry, I’d like to give you this food that might save the lives of many people, but I’m just not sure if this is good for you in the long term.
We wouldn’t want you suing us when you get sick from this stuff 50 years later, so we’re just going to let you and your family die now.
But don’t worry, we’ll be dancing over here holding concerts in your name. ‘Sides, your local warlord would probably have taken our aid away from you anyway. We just stopped a possible crime and possible disease. YAY!
Let’s ALL worry about long term damage from GMO crops when everyone in the world is fat and obese. Just because you feel guilty for living in a country that is abundant and prosperous does not give you the right to deny those things to other people in the world because there’s something wrong with being able to buy a 32 oz. big gulp for 99 cents.
I would like to take issue with Dick Taverne’s assertion that ‘The alleged risk to health from GM crops is still the main reason for public disquiet’.
I suspect that many, like myself are more concerned that the technology in in the hands of Corporate America.
I would love to be corrected on this, but I suspect that the crops being trialled in the west are expected to be much more profitable than those that would benefit the poor of the third world.
If Mr. Taverne could convince me and the public generally that the holders of the patents for ‘golden rice’ etc were altruistic, then he might overcome a good deal of the resistance to the technology.
I quite like this response to the GM carpetbaggers who want to hand over the future of life on this planet to the giant corporations as if the corporations are somehow benevolent institutions.
1. http://www.seedsofchange.com/cutting_edge/ground_breakers.asp
A quote from the founder of Seeds of Change Howard Shapiro.
“I will outyield you in any crop you want to grow, in any place you want.”
Meanwhile Naomi Klein in her new book The Shock Doctrine has given us a vivid picture of how big corporations really work in “improving the lot” of the ordinary person—and pigs are going to fly any day now. 72 million people impoverished in Russia alone in 8 years.
Speaking of holders of patents, the company Gilead Sciences,of which that well known humanitarian Donald Rumsfeld was once chairman of the board, owns the patents to TAMILFLU which helps fight AVIAN flu.
No money no cure—tough titties to you.
Similar circumstances occur all the way down the line.
Also check out the corporate attempts to take out patents on the extract of the NEEM tree in India—pure greed.
Also:
1. http://www.thomhartmann.com/unequalprotection.shtml
Plus you might find this assessment of the state of the world interesting.
1. http://www.ispeace723.org/youthepeople2.html
Excellent article. The anti-GM lobby is full of those who appear to accept as fact any number of fanciful corporate conspiracy theories and any number of laughable complementary “therapies”, but when it comes to useful technologies that can save lives, help development or save greenhouse gas emissions (such as GM and nuclear power), they require a degree of evidence that is intended simply to prevent the debate. I do not understand why our pusillanimous politicians give these crackpots such a free run.
If Prospect wants to retain the intellectual high ground, then the pro-GM Taverne diatribe affords a timely opportunity. Enough partiality is enough, it is time we debated most robustly the ethical and pragmatic distinctions between genuine open science, pseudo-science and bad corporate sponsored science. Prospect could invite leading thinkers like Vandana Shiva, Mae-Wan Ho, James Lovelock and Richard Dawkins to confront the big issues in an open debate, including the issue of spin, exclusion and erasure. Time is short and the consequences are very great. Let’s avoid posturing and get down to the real business of intelligent and balanced dialogue. Dick Taverne does not even mention Dr Shiva’s deeply relevant analyses, nor does he appear willing to discuss the difficult biophysics and legitimate criticisms of the “central dogma” of biology that a wider, more comprehensive view must include. Moreover, he cherry-picks a particular contextual perspective of Lovelock’s about organic agriculture, whilst completely ignoring his empathetic views on deep ecology. Lovelock’s clarion message is clear, we must put the welfare and planetary health of the Earth before the perceived needs of humans. Taverne does not seem to have grasped the gravity of this concept or prefers to elide it.
Corporate controlled science is completely unethical so long as it precludes or excludes legitimate criticism from without, and attempts to silence independent scientists who may reject the corporate agenda. Tenure, privilege and endowment may be “nine parts of the law,” but sincerity, independence and free thought are non-negotiable principles of an open society. Do we stand by idly as corporate bullies intimidate and pillory scientists who are perfectly entitled to an equal voice?
Why didn’t Dick Taverne mention the ‘Terminator Gene’? This was a major reason for rejecting the technology actually on offer.
There were also legitimate concerns that a useful antibiotic might be ruined by spreading resistance because it had been used as a ‘marker’. Differed sorts of opposition have been mixed up in his denunciations.
It is also untrue that anyone starves because they don’t have access to GM Technology. They starve because they lack money in a world with a comfortable food surplus.
If the technology gets developed in India and China, fine. They will favour stuff that will benefit their own farmers and peasant farmers all round the world. Not stuff that increases the power of Western corporations.
Dick Taverne writes that “the scientific way of ensuring that crops are safe is to test the product, not the process”. Actually, he is likely to be fundamentally wrong on this point. If we heed the learnings of the field of software engineering, we will see that testing the product is impossible, and testing the process may be all we have to go by.
Genes are often likened to software, for good reason. Each gene codes for a specific protein. Yet there has long been a mystery around how relatively few genes – 20,000 for a nematode worm, 25,000 for a human being – can specify an entire complex organism. Science is a long way from understanding properly how genes build bodies, but it is clear that each genome is an immensely intricate ensemble of interconnected biochemical short stories, written achingly slowly over eons, to suit the circumstances of a specific organism. Tinkering with isolated parts of this machinery, as if it were merely some sort of wiki with articles open to anyone to edit, could have consequences we are utterly unable to predict.
In software engineering, it is received wisdom that most bugs result from imprudent changes being made to existing programs. Furthermore, editing one part of a program can have unpredictable and unbounded impacts on any other part of the code. Above all, all but the very simplest software programs in practice are untestable. And so mission critical software is always verified by a combination of testing the final product and evaluating the design and development processes.
We should pay deep attention to the genes-as-software metaphor and realise that testing genetic engineering processes is always going to be at least as important as testing the product. The best reason to go slow on GM is not that it is vaguely unnatural or dominated by big business; it is because, as yet, we just don’t know what we’re doing.
I write as chairman of the Humanitarian Golden Rice Board and -
together with my colleague Professor Peter Beyer - the inventor of
“Golden Rice”.
It may be difficult to believe that the entire project is entirely
altruistic but you can find all details to prove that at
http://www.goldenrice.org>www.goldenrice.org.
Golden Rice was from its inception in 1990 hopefully to its
completion in 2012 an exclusively altruistic project. We are public
scientists deliberately using only public funding for a ten-year
scientific project with the goal of employing genetic engineering
technology exclusively for the benefit of the poor, especially those
suffering from vitamin A malnutrition in rice-dependent poor
societies. We patented our invention to be able to guarantee that
this technology is used for the benefit of the poor.
We had to accept support for our humanitarian project from industry
for the phase of product development beyond scientific
proof-of-concept because the public sector was unwilling and unable
financially to support this necessary stage of development. This
cooperation with the private sector was essential; only with such
support were we able to solve a series of practical problems for
which we as academicians did not have the necessary expertise. The
price we had to pay was to transfer the rights for commercial
exploitation of our invention. This did not interfere with our
intentions because our goal was and remains to make Golden Rice
available to the poor free of charge and limitations; there is no
possible intervention from a possible commercial use of the
technology.
Industry has actually abandoned the idea of developing a commercial
product. When Golden Rice finally passes all the necessary biosafety
regulations, subsistence farmers will receive certified seeds from
public institutions without any additional costs. They will be the
owners who will use part of their harvest for subsequent planting.
They will not require any additional agronomic input and use will be
protected by free licenses for all the intellectual property rights
involved. All this is guaranteed by sub-licence agreements signed
with public rice research institutions in the relevant countries. I
could go on but you will get the point; for more details please go to
our home page.
It is accordingly tragic that the European public supports actions
against the use of transgenic plants on the basis of totally wrongly
believing that the technology benefits big international agbiotech
companies exclusively. Those companies profit despite all the
resistance. The people who suffer badly as result of European
attitudes are the poor for whom the technology can make the
difference between life and death or severe health problems.
Ingo Potrykus
Taverne’s essay cherry-picks the facts and omits many necessary qualifications (or counter-evidence) to those he asserts. Since I don’t have all day to rebut each distortion, let me just note a few.
He says “Public discussion of GM food in the British media, and throughout Europe, reflects a persistent suspicion of GM crops.” But he ignores that current international law (ratified by the UK) REQUIRES that the Precautionary Principle be applied to GMO crops and foods (although not to conventional varieties), thus validating the public’s suspicion. I am refering to both the UN’s Cartagena Biosafety Protocol and the UN’s food safety agency, the Codex Alimentarius, which in 2003 adopted Principles for the pre-market assessment of GE foods. I know because I was involved in negotiating both of these documents. (And, both as a Professor of technology and Public Policy at the University of Washington, and as a civic activist, I have been working on these issues for the past 30 years.)
“Safety” is a conclusion on the level of risk that a society (or individual) is willing to accept. It is inherently subjective–that is why some folks do parachute-jumping and others of us don’t, even though the risk is the same for all.
Thus, it is impossible to say that the “safety” of GE foods has been proven since the legal presumption is that there is risk, since the evaluation requires the exercise of judgment, and since there is a paucity of non-industry sponsored research published in peer-reviewed journals (fewer than a dozen, according to a US study!)
Many sources demonstrate that the earth is currently producing enough food to feed all of its inhabitants. The problem is that too many are too poor to purchase the available food (see Nobelist Amarta Sen, for example). GE is NOT needed to feed the poor–social justice–an end to exploitation of populations in the global South– are.
Finally, the reductions cited in the application of agro-chemicals apparently hold only for the first two years or so, until the “enemy” organisms build up Darwinian resistance. US studies (by Benbrook) have demonstrated that then they climb again for most crops.
This essay is propaganda, and while I support Taverne’s right to free speech, readers should know how distorted his piece really is.
Although I found Dick Traverne’s piece very interesting and informative, I must applaude the comments from David Llewellyn Foster and Phil Bereano. Traverne’s article does sound a bit like a sales gimmick/advertisement.
Although Traverne goes into some detail regarding the environmental and health aspects of GM, I was disappointed that he skimmed over the monopoly of corporate giants controlling the GM seed that farmers in developing countries need. Whilst there are no doubt strong arguments for crops that have higher concentrations of vitamins and would need less fertilizer or pesticides, he fails to make any mention of the devastating effects of areas where GM crops have caused financial ruin to farmers.
In an area in India, now known as the ’suicide belt’, farmers and ordinary peasants have risked everything to buy GM seed from Monsanto, only to see the crops fail. As the GM crop does not produce more seed, the poor become dispossessed and unable to provide for themselves, and are forced to go back to Monsanto to try again. The problem with corporate domination in this scientific field, is that the motive is more frequently tied up with patents and profits, than a genuine desire to help feed the poor. If the poor farmer had control of the seed, not Monsanto, and was therefore able to reproduce the seed himself, there would be a better argument for the proliferation of GE foods.
Dick Travernes mendacious hatchet job on those who question the safety and sanity of GM food crop technology is so wide of the mark as to be risible.
It is rich that Traverne insists that those opposed to GM crops are responsible for starving millions of people around the world. In South Africa, where we have been growing GM crops for the past 8 years, and where the pro GM lobby holds sway through undermining our hard fought for democratic institutions, 40% of our people remain mal- and under-nourished.
The GM lobby recently boasted that over 50% of our maize – the local staple food – is GM maize.
The question we must ask is why we still have so many hungry people if GM technology has been so widely adopted here? The fact is that hunger has nothing to do with production volumes – even if GM technology did actually increase yields, a questionable claim in itself. Hunger is the result of a market driven commodity production and distribution system that prefers to convert food crops to fuel for motor vehicles than to feed the hungry, as presently occurs around the world. The result is that even in times of plenty the hungry starve.
It would be most revealing if Traverne could actually supply one case of a death by starvation from the 2000 Zambian refusal to accept GM food aid, or for that matter if he could demonstrate that opposition to GM crops has caused a single death anywhere in the world. His hubris is apparently boundless.
Speaking from the global South I find it ironic that a lobbyist for the developed world feels qualified to speak for us. His position is both arrogant and markedly reminiscent of the historical colonial mindset. He shares this mindset with the very same agricultural corporations that now control the GM market globally – there is really nothing to distinguish their joint and several arrogance.
Traverne is incorrect in so many of his claims that I simply do not have the space to respond to each here – I shall do so at my leisure on my website at http://www.ekogaia.org some time in the future.
But lets just deal with his wild claims about Potrykus’ vitamin A enhanced golden rice.
According to nutritional experts this genetically enhanced rice provides insufficient vitamin A to provide adequate beta-carotene to save lives or even reverse blindness and other vitamin deficiencies. If we truly wish to reduce the horrible effects of global malnutrition we should rather examine the pernicious global marketplace, where sufficient food is grown to provide a balanced diet for every human on earth. The problem is that most people simply cannot afford sufficient food or dietary variety. Thus between one and three fifths of humanity apparently do not provide an attractive enough market for those controlling the distribution of food commodities to supply.
Vitamin A deficiency can be cured far more simply and more safely than by deploying a questionable technological intervention that remains in development nearly a decade after its highly touted announcement. The reasons it remains in this limbo is because it has failed to clear globally agreed regulatory regimes which have little to do with opposition to GM food crops.
I could go on an on about Travernes flawed logic but there is simply not enough space or time to do so now. However it would be remiss of me to not remind him that he has no place or reason to force his thinking onto the global south. Colonialism has long forced its views upon us. We have – although he has apparently not recognised this - reached a sufficient degree of sophistication to invite such input from our erstwhile colonial masters when we want it. And in his case we do not.
“Seldom has public perception been more out of line with the facts. The public in Britain and Europe seems unaware of the astonishing success of GM crops in the rest of the world. No new agricultural technology in recent times has spread faster and more widely.”
One of the problems with statements like this is that the suggestion of success by citing the total acreage ignores the fact that the greatest acreage is in America where fewer than 20% of the people believe they have ever eaten genetically altered ingredients.
There has never been public discussion of these as part of a diet and they have never been tested by American regulatory agencies for safety. This has been a process of sneaking them into Americas farm and food by loopholes declaring them substantially equivalent and eliminating both safety tests and notifications for consumers.
These are not a success for anyone but Monsanto who now has patented protected, fee based seeds generating annual revenues for millions of acres of crops which were once planted with seeds that farmers could save from a previous years harvest. Now they pay a fee per seed in perpetuity as well as purchase the chemicals those seeds are designed to tolerate.
What is also striking for anyone willing to do a bit of investigation is that these have not increased yields, not decreased chemical use and find support among the group with a financial interest. A quick look at GMWatch will reveal the conflicts and ties to personal financial gains by the advocates as we see in a profile of Lord Taverne. http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=127
“Lord Dick Taverne is the Chairman of the pro-GM lobby group, the Association of Sense about Science,the Association of Sense about Science, and the author of The March of Unreason (March 2005). Although he has no background in science, his long career has taken in politics, the law, business, lobbying, quite apart from supporting biotechnology.
In April 1998 Lord Taverne resigned from Prima, as a result of lobby-firm rules prohibiting employment of sitting MPs and peers, after its merger with GPC Market Access. GPC’s clients included Pfizer, Novartis and SmithKline Beecham. Three months after Taverne’s departure his former Prima co-directors Derek Draper and Roger Liddle were at the centre of the ‘lobbygate’ ‘cash for access’ scandal .”
There is no problem with corporate spokesmen advocating for their products but let’s not pretend that a political lobbyist for an industry asserting facts that have no basis in reality is doing anything different from what he’s paid to do and sell the product by any means necessary.
Lastly for those who still like to claim that these have been tested and approved, take a look at the actual document at the FDA website, it is not true. The FDA has washed its hands, passed on offering any opinion and there is nothing but pure faith in the companies selling them. Here is a link to the FDA consultation industry cites as an “approval” but is really nothing but a liability shield. Read it.
http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~rdb/bnfm001.html
Trusting them on the safety of PCB’s and Agent Orange worked out so well for the public there’s no reason to believe this had any corrupt influence in policy creation now is there?
This debate is very messy. It is one of those debates where political lines in the North cut across and blur the outlines of the debates in the South, where the needs are most keenly felt. The way through this mess is to remember that is not so much an issue of technology but of power. Nonetheless, there are problems that need addressing:
Firstly, the world is likely to go into food fairly soon. The FAO has declared that wheat stocks are at their lowest for 25 years. Bio-fuels and climate change are likely to destabilise food supplies further.
see:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2205948,00.html
In addition to this, rising oil prices are making the chemical inputs to agriculture more expensive. This is likely to drive poor farmers further into debt, and increase the rates of farmer suicides. This is already a big social and political problem in India, and is feeding into shifts in the national politics, like a new land reform committee headed by the prime minister. India knows it might well be in for a bumpy ride.
Secondly, many countries, such as the Phillipines, rejected corporate development of GM in order to develop it publically. The resulting political economy served the poor far better than corporate-driven seeds, which are designed to extract profits from farmers, and so make the suicide cycle worse.
The opposition to GM in the North, I suspect, is an opposition to corporate power, particularly in terms of privatising the last thing we hold sacred, life itself.
So the Golden Rice initiative is a good one. The way forward is for the GM to be put under public license, and then leased out for commercial uses only for a limited period. After all, what can be said to be more our common inheritance than life itself?
So if we reformed the international frameworks on Genetic resources to make it basically a common resource, that can be leased for a limited time for commercial use, then that would support the kind of humanitarian research advocates are outlining. I imagine that is not quite what Lord Taverner had in mind…
We will need this desperately in future. The current system of international economic incentives are stacked up to starve the poor, since they have almost no purchasing power. So we also need to reform the financial system to create incentives to stabilise food supply, to avoid the social collapse that global food shortage would entail. One way to do this is to modify Carbon Trading regimes so that they give bigger shares to those who export foodstuffs that are in short supply. That way the incentives do not line up towards social collapse.
“Seldom has public perception been more out of line with the facts. The public in Britain and Europe seems unaware of the astonishing success of GM crops in the rest of the world. No new agricultural technology in recent times has spread faster and more widely.”
I see the article and quite a few “extremely concerned” citizens of the North worried about the farmers suicides and the hunger of the poor in India. When Green Revolution was pushed into India, a country with hitherto no chemical usage, they said the same thing, “to feed the hungry millions”, but the hunger could not be removed as more and more people were pushed into poverty due to various reasons (a lot to do with corporate-brainwashed policymakers in this country) while tonnes of food stocks lie rotting in the godowns of this country. not too far in the recent years.
This ‘GREEN’ REVOLUTION destroyed our soil, our rivers, and our people’s health, and finally the failed, “green” chemical fertilizers and pesticides are taking the lives of our farmers. So, this very “high brow” lobby of GM promoters now are trying to convince us that GM is the alternative to farmers to avoid pesticides!!! What a sick joke this one is.
If you are interested come and meet the farmers who are planting BT Cotton - while many have found new pests in their crops and are not knowing what to do about it. When I asked them why don’t they purchase non-bt, the answer is simple, “there is no non-bt available in the market”.
there is no non-bt being sold in the market. if anyone outthere understands how the market politics function, you will know the answer to that. the farmers choice is gone. and today in many places if the farmers wish to grow their own seed, they cannot do that, because that option has been washed away by the bloody GM seeds, which have contaminated all the non-gm varieties.
so much for peoples’ science! i will give you an example of a farmer who has planted both Non-Bt and Bt Cotton in another area (just to check things out) which stil has some non-bt varieties avaialable. (This is an interior village where Bt is just making inroads).
he has switched to using natural alternatives to pesticides like Neem two years ago. anyway, this year since everyone was speaking about Bt cotton (you should see the way they lure the farmers) he planted that variety. The Bt cotton which was “supposed to kill the pest Bollworm” was infected with the Bollworm. So what did he do? in his own words, “I sprayed the Neem extract on my BT COTTON field, and that cured my crop”. And when I asked him, “Do you really need to buy these high cost Bt seeds to avoid the pests, ” his answer was in the negetive. in many places farmers who have switched to organic farming are finding it a much better alternative to “chemical farming” and everywhere they are saying, they don’t need to use pesticides anymore, eversince they shifted to our localised traditional methods.
about food deficiency and drought resistant crops, we have plenty of drought resistant food crops in this country, which is what people ate before the Onset of Green Revolution, which emphasised that only RICE and Wheat are edible food crops!
Contrary to popular thought, Rice and wheat are not the major staple diet of Indian people earlier. Most people ate highly nutritous millets like Sorghum, pearl millet, finger millet which contain high levels of all the vitamins and minerals, which required little water and did not need any pesticides either.
Rice was never a highly nutritous food, and people knew this. It was only the “cultural indoctrination” which placed Rice as a more sophisticated food, besides its ‘easy to cook’ qualities that made people in this country shift to Rice. In addition, governments’ subsidy for rice also made it a cheap. So, the result, people are definitely malnutritious.
We don’t need GM Golden rice to improve people’s health, a seed that farmers will never be able to produce from their crop, consequently making them forever the slaves of the GM seed corporations.
So, for all those who are trying to feel sorry for us in the southern hemisphere, and want us to grow GM crops thus enslaving our farmers further, just lay off! we don’t need your “good intentions”. we are very well capable of taking our own decisions, just stop meddling in our lives!
“No new agricultural technology in recent times has spread faster and more widely.”
Interestingly, Washington University researcher Glenn Stone’s multiyear study of the behaviour of cotton farmers in the Warangal district of Andhra Pradesh, which found that seed fads underlay the rapid spread of GM (Bt) cotton there.
It’s been suggested the study may have more general relevance to GM crop adoption in the developing world, but could there be still wider lessons?
Stone’s study suggests that it’s wrong to see the number of farmers growing Bt cotton as an automatic endorsement of the effectiveness of the technology. This is because he found ’social learning’ was taking place rather than careful assessment (’environmental learning’) - ‘everyone is copying everyone else, which results in fads, not testing’.
This is totally at odds with the endlessly repeated claims by Monsanto and others that the increase in Bt cotton acres in India ‘bear testimony to the success of this technology and the benefit that farmers derive from it.’ (Ranjana Smetacek, Director of Corporate Affairs for India, Monsanto)
And we shouldn’t assume it would only be developing world farmers who are vulnerable to hype and fashion. Donald White, a University of Illinois plant pathologist, has described some US GM crop adoption as the product of ‘a herd mentality’. ‘Everyone has to have a biotech program’, he says, and this chimes in with a University of Iowa study on why farmers are growing GM soya. That study found that while increasing yields was cited by the majority of farmers in the study as the reason for planting GM soya, the research showed they were actually getting lower yields.
And this isn’t peculiar to Iowa.
It’s interesting in this context that with biotech traits, the industry has abandoned its previous practice of making its new seeds available to extension ag. scientists first to run controlled trials on and then recommend to farmers according to the results. Instead, the companies have gone direct to the farmers with their PR machines at full throttle.
Stone’s paper also contains the suggestion that this kind of agricultural deskilling may have occurred in the US over a long period, starting with the Green Revolution. He notes that, ‘In her history of maize breeding in the United States, Fitzgerald (1993) argued that adoption of hybrids led to ‘deskilling’ of American farmers, turning farmers into passive customers of seed firms. Within a few years of the spread of hybrid corn, farmers who had previously been developing landraces and collaborating with public-sector breeders were told, ‘You may not know which strain to order. Just order FUNK’S HYBRID CORN. We will supply you with the hybrid best adapted to your locality’ (Funk Bros. 1936 Seed Catalog, quoted in Fitzgerald 1993, 339).
Agricultural Deskilling and the Spread of Genetically Modified Cotton in Warangal by Glenn Davis Stone, Current Anthropology Volume 48, Number 1, February 2007 67
http://artsci.wustl.edu/~anthro/research/stone480102.web.pdf
The truth of the matter is that Golden Rice is not going to save any starving people. The protaganists for Golden Rice were behind a similar attempt in Africa to cross indigenous sorghum with an American GM sorghum which is alleged to produce a higher quantity of the single amino acid lysine (protein) and more vitamin A than the indigenous plant.
It was proved beyond all scientific doubt by a local indigenous farmer that he could produce more vitamin A and a broader spectrum and higher quantity of amino acids(high quality protein) by feeding his free range indigenous chickens with plain old ordinary indigenous sorghum grains. This included the brewers waste after making sorghum beer. To equal the protein and vitamin A content of a single egg would require a human to eat two pounds of the proposed dry(raw) GM sorghum.
Exactly the same situation would apply to Golden Rice.
The money wasted on such scientific feats as Golden Rice and Supersorghum would be better spent on training people to move away from monofood diets and creating sustainable food gardens. I have yet to see a rural homestead in Africa which does not have a few free range chickens running around. Do not be fooled by Lord H Taverne’s misguided philanthropy. He Golden Rice and Supersorghum have missed the boat.
Steve, thanks for the Reference.
I couldn’t get the link to work, but found another that worked here:
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/resolve?CA480102PDF
“Earlier this year, the then environment secretary, David Miliband, announced that there was no evidence that organic food is more nutritious than conventionally grown food.”
Interesting enough each one of us is equipped with the sufficient equipment to get this evidence: our gustatory system and the feel of satisfaction after a meal. But even if we drown our food with sauces and sugars that mascaraed the real taste of food, there are studies. Reading “The Omnivores Dilemma”from Michael Pollan, I remember he mentioning them. According to him, most of these studies are not done anymore because of the pressure of agribusinesses, that want for statements as I cited to be done without anyone with a proper mouth to say anything back.
I am not in principle against GM-crops, in the sense that it could diminish the malefices done by conventional farming in the environment. It still misses the horrifying treatment of animals, but we should not input miracle powers to this technic.
Having the banner of hunger, this article doesn’t show that GM is actually fighting it. The last time I heard news from India, poorer farmers using GM-seeds were going bankrupt. What about patenting and what does this mean for the developing countries? Or fighting hunger only relates with giving US-surplus as aid?
In the US GM-farming didn’t mean less area farming land. It just meant higher yields and lower prices to the over-fed.
If an article is coming to us with the morality high-ground, I would like to see it discussed. Trying to slander organic farming is not the way. What should be shown is that GM is not producing a new system to cheat the poor people in developing countries. That is what I would like to read about. Not propaganda.
Will GM seed be given to the poor? Will it be sold to them? Will it be traded to facilitate access to their country? Will it be used to control their policies?
The scientist may have altruistic motives, but the corporations and share holders who fund the research will not be benevolent.
The corporations have filed patents for these genetic modifications. This level of ownership is monstrous. In light of this, casting moral judgements upon those who oppose GM foods (or simply don’t want to eat the stuff) is equivalent to infantile name-calling.
Who the hell does Tom Chatfield think he is claiming that I am morally obligated to choose this food. Since when has choice become optional in the West? Even if my reasons were backward; mind you own business! If I don’t want it; I will not buy it. So it makes bad business sense to try to sell it to me. Many people have choosen not to by it. This why it hasn’t taken off. GM food is a money maker, not the salvation of the poor and hungry.
Much as I’d like to take the credit for our cover story, I’m sorry to report that my role only extends to inviting a discussion of Dick Taverne’s views. I’d hate you to think, Jonathan, that I wish to impose any moral dietary obligations upon you…
There is just too much money involved for the science not to be skewed. Heres an example that I found disturbing:
Apologies I hoped to insert this link in my comment above
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Árpád_Pusztaita
Regardless of what side you’re on of the GM issue, I implore you all to get to a screening of (or purchase the DVD for) the film, The Future of Food.
http://www.thefutureoffood.com/synopsis.htm
It’s not only scientifically well explored, but also easy to understand and tells the human side of the struggles farmers and agrigusiness face in the name of feeding the planet.
Thank you.
The frantic opposition to GM food crop technology in Europe and particularly in the UK looks to be the most shameful outburst of irrationalism in that part of the universe since the witch-craze. What is most notable is the desperate rationalizations to which anti-GM propagandists resort to keep the faith alive. Two notable examples:
(1) In the US (but also in Europe, despite all the noise) various GM food products have been widely consumed for more than a decade without one plausible case that any of these have damaged anyone’s health. (By contrast, there is some small evidence that organic cultivation methods may produce harmful products, e.g., plants with a large burden of allergens.)
(2) While specific GM seedstocks can be patented (though it is hard to protect those patents against the informal grey market organized by poor third-world smallholders), the idea of using genetic engineering techniques to produce superior crops certainly can’t be, and, in fact, that technology is affordable by private foundations and the governmental organizations of even relatively poor nations. So the mumbo-jumbo about “corporate dominance” is a fake argument.
I wish there were some easy and effective way of getting all the anti-GM yahoos to grow up and shut up.
I’m an American who once weighed in excess of 400 pounds (28 st). My diet was largely composed of industrial foods, which verly likely included quite a bit of undisclosed GM food. Besides my weight, I suffered from a constellation of other weight related illnesses.
After switching to a diet of family farmed raised foods that included exclusively grass-fed meats and organic and homegrown produce, my health improved dramatically.
I have no doubt that traditionally produced food is better, not just in terms of physical health for the consumer, but also in terms of the economic health of independent farmers.
GM foods are a corporate scam, a con job, and an immoral assault on the health of people and the planet.
Chatfield’s diatribe is itself a scandal. It is fraudulent for him to claim that nutritional safety is the leading anti-GN concern.
The main concerns are contamination of natural crops via cross-fertilisation from GM crops, and the corporate dependency that GM technology imposes on the grower who uses it.
It sucks that people place a value on alleged “natural crops” over someone else’s hunger. They are effectively saying, “I don’t believe this food is good for “the environment” so I will use the power of government to prevent by force people from growing and selling it.” That is an amoral position if human life is the standard.
The naysayer’s who claim that eliminating regulations will leave Corporate America a blank check to do whatever they want have it backwards. Force and fraud will always be against the law and in the proper realm of government jurisdiction however, it is precisely the specific power of regulation enforced at gunpoint possessed only by the government that forces business to compete in the marketplace of political favors.
It’s all a lie… Dick Taverne obviously hasn’t done his homework. GM products will not “feed the multitudes” as promised… don’t believe the hype. The biotech companies would like to force their products onto other countries, and I’m glad the other countries are standing up to them. Too bad the U.S. government doesn’t have the long-term sight to ban these GMOs, especially without adequate funding and no labelling whatsoever.
Check out: http://www.seedsofdeception.com and http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/geneticall2.cfm
Also, read about Dick Taverne at http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=127
What worries me is this sort of thing:
http://www.diggers.com.au/SeedsDesignedToDieFromMonsanto.htm
You know, I’m just gullible enough to believe al rge multinational company would do something reckless to make an ongoing profit. Cynical I know.
Anthony, there would be no need for companies to develop and market Terminator seeds if the government did it’s job and established a system for protecting intellectual property rights. Also there is no evidence what so ever to suggest that companies would hoard or “price gouge” (an economic fallacy anyway) if left to supplying the worlds seeds considering that that is where 99% of the developed world gets their seeds from now and most people are fat from all the carbs!
Chris, the burden is on you to prove the danger of GM crops and hack websites are not evidence for anything other than the fact that you are tin foil hat wearing hippy.
It is important to mention that many poor countries are also home to a great diversity of native strains of corn and other food crops that can be contaminated by GM crops. The willingness to cause damage to these important remnants contrasts their great value as a future source of genetic material for new strains. There is a reason strains of plants developed historically in specific regions survive to this day. Contamination has already been reported in Mexico.
This article does some very serious cherry picking to make its case that GM foods are panacea. At one point, it argues that chemical use is reduced then immediately turns around and touts roundup ready soybeans without once mentioning their name or their vastly increased herbicide use for a benefit in their reduced carbon footprint. I nearly got whiplash from the deceptively packaged logical 180. I did not disagree with all aspects of this thesis, but found the whole screed a wildly unbalanced presentation intended to obfuscate more than to inform.
thanks for the very interesting discussion. I’m more interested in understanding the intellectual propensities of the various sides involved. Dick Taverne appears to be considered as a very ideologically biased participant in this debate. For example, his profile on GMWatch, http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=127, has more on his detractors.
Interestingly, one of his supporters is Henry Miller, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, who writes of Taverne’s work as being part of the “most important battle of all between the forces of reason and unreason.” This makes me wary of Taverne’s work himself, that such deeply divisive language has to be called into play in talking about what he’s doing. It reminds me of all the propaganda that the tobacco companies, and the pesticide companies, engaged in to convince us that they were the ones on the side of fairness and justice and progress and their opponents were hurting their march towards providing the world with nutrition and a nice, clean high.
Dear me,
Little writer here doth protesteth much.
Many good rebuttals here, but just one more.
Capitalism with all it’s many faults, does have one redeeming virtue, that being choice. So friend T. I will make my choices of food where I wish and if I don’t like your faddish snake oil food and wish to eat food that my gut has evolved for, over the last say— 1 billion years, I do believe that should be my choice. I want to know what I am buying and I may make my stupid provincial mind up as I wish. I want labels certifying what is in my food including transgenics. It’s my business.
Boy I might be making my mind up based on the phases of the moon, that’s my business.Not yours T.
A four year Newcastle University study (still to be reviewed):
“found levels of antioxidants in milk from organic cattle were between 50% and 80% higher than normal milk.
Organic wheat, tomatoes, potatoes, cabbage, onions and lettuce had between 20% and 40% more nutrients.
But the study, which is yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, also showed there were significant variations.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7067100.stm
The underlying problem that nobody here seems to realize is that we are having too many babies…
Saving 50 million (?) lives trough genetically enhanced rice will mean 50 million more people to feed & educate. Before we do anything else we must - some how - control our devestating fecundity…
Sheri S. Tepper’s novel “Beauty” and it’s “Fidipur” ring any bells?
There is absoloutly no evidence for this rubbish. If anything all produce should be organic. this brings much higher yeilds (long term), better life for the farmers, and is easily able to feed the (growing) world.
To date, the majority of GM crops have been pesticide or insect resistant - but the promised benefits of increased nutrition, drought resistance, etc are still possible. Sadly, public sentiment against the former has stopped the latter from being developed. NGO and government money that may have been spent to solve world problems with genetic engineering is never invested - how could they, with such fervent protests against it?
I agree that multinational corporations have profit in mind - that’s what they do. Products attractive to farmers in the West were developed, while products that could benefit the poor and hungry were not. I don’t like it, but I do think it makes sense. Genetic engineering can be compared to developing a new pharmaceutical in the amount of time and money that must be spent proving safety and efficacy. Patenting allows the company exclusive rights to sell the product - a chance to recoup the expense of development. Without such protection of intellectual property, the companies would have no impetus to develop new products. It is unfortunate that drought resistant plants and AIDS medicines are researched less than pesticide resistant plants and diabetes medicine - but the companies go where the profits are.
People don’t seem to understand how companies work. I’ll be the first person to say that Monsanto and the others have had unethical business practices, but that is not cause to demonize the entire technology of genetic engineering. In short, I blame the anti-GMO activists for the lack of beneficial genetically engineered plants.
On the horizon are crops that can resist drought, can absorb high levels of CO2 from the atmosphere, can provide high levels of nutrients, can reduce yield loss due to fungi and insects… Can we as a society make the decision to move forward? I certainly hope so.
Leaving aside entirely the merits of Taverne’s arguments, the fact that Prospect would publish a lengthy and extremely one-sided essay on a contentious issue by someone intimately involved with those who stand to profit immensely from the policies he advocates, without making all this clear to readers, reflects very badly on the judgment and integrity of Prospect’s editors.
Dear Editors,
Was my recent comment criticizing you removed or refused? May I know why?
Please ignore my second post. I jumped the gun. Apologies.
I see the opponents of GM are trotting out their usual approaches to a pro-GM argument. As usual none of these approaches actually engages with the substantive arguments.
Instead we see:
- accusations of cherry picking, i.e. an admission that the points put are true.
- ad hominem attacks on the integrity of both the author and even the magazine. Perhaps GM opponents might like to cogitate on the idea people who support this technology might look for multiple ways to do so, including making money from it.
- allegations of conspiracy theories that stop alternative research being published, in light of the literally thousands of peer reviewed journals this implies a great slur on very many independent scientists who have presumably turned down these articles.
- reminders of the involvement of evil (US) multinationals like Monsanto. I note with amusement that the other evil GM multinational, Bayer, seems to escape such treatment, perhaps because it is European?
Instead, where are the peer reviewed journal articles showing GM foods are less safe than non-GM foods? Where is the rebuttal to the fact GM cotton uses vastly safer pesticides than non-GM? Where is the rebuttal to the personal explanation by Dr Potrykus that golden rice will be free to the poor? How do opponents answer the 80% of Canadian farmers who choose to grow GM canola? Are they all to be dismissed as dim witted yokels who can’t judge for themselves which varieties are more profitable to grow?
Demand for food will continue to outstrip population growth as newly emerging economies such as China and India reduce poverty. The kind of mass agriculture needed to feed the world’s increased demand for food needs high inputs of fertiliser, water and pesticides. GM offers ways to reduce these inputs as well as the possibility of health enhancing characteristics. Before dismissing GM, at least engage with the substantive arguments about what a future world without what GM can offer would look like.
I have no doubt they’re safe.
But are they food?
Do they feed me: that is, act on my body in the way that my normal proteins, fats, carbs, vits, mins and traces do?
One reason that developing countries have rejected GMO crops has nothing to do with the safety of the crops and more to do with the economics of farming. If you plant an non-GMO crop on 10000 acres and get 3 tons of usable produce you cam hold a small amount of the crop back as seed stock. Many GMO crops forbid farmers from using the product as seed stock, you have to agree to buy more seed from the manufacturer.Even if the GMO produces 2 or 3 times more food, if you have to spend money on each planting when you have no money to begin with can be a deal breaker.
Add in the fact that manufactures have tried to claim ownership of crops that have cross pollinated with their GMO product and you have a very sound economic reason to avoid these items.
I should not consume too much chocolate, coffee, crisps or alcohol, I should not smoke, I could care about the level of funghi in (organic) crops, I could be equally noisy about chemical ingredients in food or about food derived from mutation breeding, I could support public R&D of GM crops for the poor or call for a revision of the respective international IPR rules (to cut back the power to nasty multinationals from which I am otherwise happy to buy cars, electronics, software, DVDs, etc.), I should use my car less, etc. — But instead of facing real dangers or attacking other imagined (but more difficult to tackle) ones, I choose to project my angst onto a “danger” that I can fight easily and that does not affect me if I do: I simply avoid eating food derived from GM crops and feel better because I “act” and “fight” my fears (no matter if it is only a proxy). Rejecting food derived from GM crops does not hurt me otherwise, I live in society of plenty (here in the “West”). No, I even help the poor (or at least so some say)! And when I get sick and there is some medicine that involves biotech, well, this is a different story altogether - after all I can differentiate… So please leave me alone with Frankenfood - or reason, for that matter - I want to be emotional and subjective.
GM foods have been on the shelves in the U.S. now for over 10 years. I had absolutely no idea of this until about 5 years ago. The media never or hardly ever mentioned it here for years. Most of us living here had no idea that we had hormones in our milk and that we were eating genetically modified food every day. I learned it from a European friend. We were kept in the dark. Presumably because we would (maybe emotionally, maybe subjectively) vote with our wallets to NOT eat these foods. I choose to buy non rBGH-treated milk for my young daughters. There is plenty of evidence out there, actually, that these hormones in milk can be harmful when cumulative and especially on smaller bodies.
This has grown into a really worthwhile debate with plenty of good sense. It’s a relief to hear from Saraswati Kavula about what is really happening in India and the absolutely criminal abuses being promoted there in the name of patent rights. Vandana Shiva is the most articulate authority about this. The concept of indigenous knowledge is slowly being understood in the West, but the recognition of how biodiversity actually works has yet to be fully absorbed. Organic farming in this country was first inspired by Indian practices introduced by Sir Albert Howard who found himself completely persuaded as to the wisdom of these methods, during his experience as a colonial agent.
Of course, Gabriela is absolutely right. Natural foods are better for us, because they taste better and they nourish us better. Ask Raymond Leblanc! The whole basis of Ayur-Vedic medical philosophy is this natural ecological balance. It really doesn’t take much more than growing and enjoying natural food to convince any serious minded person that biodiversity supports both environmental & cultural diversity and directly aids planetary health. One wonders what sort of gardening Taverne does in his own back yard when he isn’t peddling “quasi-kosher” (??) “biotech” gimmickry.
This new reactionary species of bio-fascism is wholly insidious because it is so desperately short-sighted, profit-driven (whatever the hype) and clearly obsessed about imposing monocultural controls. As usual, the theoretical experts are telling people how to destroy what they have been doing very successfully for generations. Rather, they are actually ordering them to do so by every means at their disposal. Has the world gone completely mad? We need to be pragmatic and realistic. Jim Lovelock doesn’t believe in organic gardening, but he does believe in deep ecology, now there’s something peculiarly inconsistent about that. Could it be a gender issue Mrs Lovelock?
I would invite all your readers to consult Dr Mae-Wan Ho’s website - at the Institute for Science In Society, and check out her articles about Dream Farm 2, and the way that sustainability can be understood as an empirical biophysical process.
This article makes so many veiled, unstated assumptions about agriculture—for instance assuming that it fits with a business or industrial model—”agribusiness” is a misnomer if I’ve ever heard one. Sadly, the study used to promote GM use is fatally flawed, and our knowledge of the genome does not compare with our profound ignorance about the complex dynamics of the relationship between genes and their evolution with environmental conditions. In addition, biotech companies design their seeds to not regerminate as perennial plants next year making the milennia old practice of saving seeds obsolete—thereby depriving poor farmers the ability to control the future of their own land and crops. Agribusiness profits from selling patented seeds and the chemicals necssary to maintain these frankenfood crops. The planet is already overburdened and overpopulated—-we need to stabilize population growth and feed the population we do have with safer, natural foods not contaminated by the ignorant scientists proffering the insane idea that we can overturn centuries and millenia of inherited cultural wisdom about food.
amittebant legem naturae
I very much agree with Nick’s comment, particularly ‘we need to stabilize population growth and feed the population we do have with safer, natural foods not contaminated by the ignorant scientists proffering the insane idea that we can overturn centuries and millenia of inherited cultural wisdom about food’. Very well said.
For a little more background on Lord Dick and his support for biotech firms, please see http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=127&page=T
A response for Smith Beaumont and others who insist that there is no meaningful response to Tavernes GM science puff piece, is posted on http://www.ekogaia.org/the-real-gm-food-scandal.html
It is by no means complete - that would take a book - but it serves as a broad rebuttal of the outrageous and egregeous hype and hubris served up by Taverne and his fellow travellers.
The response has many references and links to other sources.
Comments invited.
Where does science come from and what does it build on if not “centuries and millenia of inherited cultural wisdom”? Where do today’s crops come from if not from imaginative and creative hunterer-gatherers (and subsequent generations of investigative and experimenting farmers)? Where does our modern medicine come from if not from new insights building on previous ones - thus reducing ignorance slowly and step by step? (A process that still goes on, to be sure.)
Of course scientists are ignorant - that’s why they are scientists, to increase knowledge (and thus reduce ignorance). Nevertheless many of them are probably less ignorant (in their field) than lay people and can make reliable statements on some issues… And of the few I have met, many were rather reasonable people who cared. (Of course sometimes there are also hidden agendas and personal interests involved - just as other people have vested interests, whether from industry or also NGOs: Some people live more or less well from keeping the GMO hype going…)
Finally, to put that straight, blind and undifferentiated acceptance of GMOs is certainly wrong - but so is blind and undifferentiated rejection. There are no such things like black and white in real life, it’s all shades… Assess, weight, reject one, accept the other, regulate and control GMOs (and the companies, universities and research institutes working on them).
After reading Taverne’s writing promoting GM food, my opposition to all GM technology is stronger than ever before. He wants to tell us what to eat and what to think or rather not to think because we are not qualified to do so. He hardly offers any evidence but tries to bully us into agreeing with him without thinking. Thinking is done for us by individuals with strong vested interests. Similar to those individuals who back in the 50’s predicted that nuclear power would be clean and abundant and would easily feed the world’s hunger for energy. GMOs are far deadlier than nuclear waste and the GM “science” is nonsense science.
It is appallingly misleading that some responses to this article liken GM foods to natural processes or even accelerated natural processes. GM foods involve processes and manipulation that could never occur in nature. Natural food can’t be patented so corporations pretend that their patented foods are better natural foods. It takes unbelievable arrogance and self interest to assume that they are safe after such a short experience with them. It took much longer for proof against smoking to become scientifically known and proven! It is pure hubris to attempt to add a layer of guilt to the anti GM food movement for somehow contributing to the planet’s starvation problems by opposing GM foods. The GM food as “cure” to starvation argument is simply false and unproven as many responders have already pointed out. Buying GM seeds only makes the GM companies richer since they are hybrids who cannot reproduce and require the farmers to keep buying seeds from the GM company. Just look at the GM cotton example in India where the vast majority of the GM farmers regret their decision and most are bankrupt.
As far as the anti-vegan comments, it is a simple fact that livestock contributes 18% of all greenhouse gas load on the planet, more than all forms of transportation on the planet combined (see recent UN report on Livestock’s Long Shadow). The amount of water and food resources consumed by livestock would be put to much better use by directly feeding people. As other respondents have pointed out, the earth can easily nutritionally sustain its entire population (more than four times as many if people become vegan or rarely eat meat/dairy as they did before refrigeration) and the problem today is distribution of food. If you look at the rise of heart disease, cancer, obesity and diabetes, they are not labeled diseases of affluence by accident. They are the result of the rich western diet and lifestyle. As Western “progress” expands to the rest of the world, the number of health problems increase! Is that real progress? In the developing world, most health problems are caused by water-borne pathogens which are most often the result of human or animal activities near water sources. No amount of GM foods would solve this.
Finally, we applaud the respondents who have exposed Taverne’s affiliations and background. They completely illuminate and thoroughly discredit the source. Taverne is clearly a bad salesman for those who directly or indirectly pay him because instead of persuading us, he has strengthened our resolve to fight GM foods.
What is most shocking to me is not that Prospect published this article, but that the opening magazine editorial seemed to condone and agree with it. The idea that people cannot feed themselves and need superior western “scientific magic” to solve their problems is arrogant and patronising. In my opinion GM science is bad science, and its application is wholly unethical and misguided. However, the real issue at stake here is the willingness of scientists to participate in a full and open debate. It’s one thing to defend experimental science and new ideas, but it is entirely another to ignore or exclude other scientists who happen to disagree or dispute the data. Many scientists do reject GMO’s and moreover, they challenge the central dogma of biology that tends to drive the research and development of GMO’s. It is corporate interests, and the vo