(New Beginnings, No. 13)
Published as Peter McCarthy.
Genetically modified (GM) foods have been in shops in the United States for several years while Europe has mostly been opposed to their use.
Whom can we trust about their safety?
The scientists? British government scientists for several years assured the public that BSE in cattle could not jump the boundary to other species. But it has done so, to several species of animals, and also to humans, in the form of CJD. And for many years, employees of the tobacco industry produced “scientific” findings to show that smoking had no harmful effects. Now, the American tobacco giant, Philip Morris, proclaims on its website: “There is no safe cigarette”.
The government research institutes? Recently, a British government research institute with responsibility for monitoring GM research was found to have been partly funded by a GM food company. What about ‘He who pays the piper calls the tune’?
Public relations personnel? The public relations company, Burston Marsteller, advised biotech companies in August 1997 that ‘They cannot hope to win the arguments over the risks posed by genetically modified food, including the environmental dangers’ (The Guardian, 6 August 1997), so they were advised to focus on symbols, not logic, so as to elicit ‘hope, satisfaction and self-esteem’. One of those symbols is of GM food feeding a hungry world.
In 1997, New York State found advertisements by Monsanto, a leading GM producer, to be misleading. Monsanto were forced to withdraw the terms “biodegradable” and “environmentally friendly”.
The Advertising Standards Authority in Britain condemned Monsanto’s advertising campaign as ‘confusing, misleading, unproven and wrong.’
And the public, sadder and wiser after so many denied but later admitted leaks at nuclear power stations, have good reason to be sceptical about the truthfulness of PR personnel. The commission investigating the leak at the Three Mile Island nuclear power station said of nuclear spokespersons, ‘They lie even as they breathe’. Where there is a clash between truthfulness and big money, money usually wins.
What about politicians? Can politicians be trusted to face down powerful lobbies, heavily backed by companies which have a large financial stake in a successful commercial future for GM foods? There are already close links between government and biotechnology industries in the US and Britain.
What about assurances from the GM companies? If GM food is safe, why did they for so long resist its being labelled as GM? Why did they seek to defend GM by arguments such as that genetic modification was little different from molecular modification (which occurs in cooking!), or from the cross-breeding which farmers have undertaken with plants and animals for thousands of years? The GM process involves breeding across the species boundary, for example, inserting a gene from fish into tomatoes, to name an actual instance. Why were GM soya beans released onto the market in the US after only ten weeks’ testing on animals?
What about safety? About GM food, Phil Angell, Monsanto’s director of communications said, ‘Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the FDA’s job.’ [The FDA is the US Food and Drug Administration.]
What about experimental trials for GM foods? GM sugar beet has been grown experimentally in Carlow. Can GM companies be sure that there isn’t uncontrolled cross-fertilization? Genetic transfers are likely to be self-perpetuating and self-amplifying, since genetically produced organisms will reproduce, mutate and interact with other organisms whether we like it or not.
A report by T. F. Cross and P. T. Galvin, commissioned by the Marine Institute of Ireland, The Nature and Current Status of Transgenetic Atlantic Salmon, Dublin, 1996, p.6, states that while salmon modified by growth hormone genes grew to 37 times the size of wild ones, there was ‘a disproportionate growth of the head… a dis-improving appearance and… respiratory problems.’
And where licenses have been granted by public authorities to undertake GM trials, why were GM producers so often found in violation of the safety procedures they had undertaken to observe?
Are GM food companies willing to accept responsibility for compensation of victims if things go wrong? Tobacco companies in the USA have recently had massive sums levied on them for compensation to individuals and to State governments for health care and other costs of smoking. Are GM companies willing and able to do the same, if necessary? Do they accept the principle that the polluter, not the public, should pay any clean-up bill? Can companies with such large financial investments be relied upon to act responsibly in the public interest? The late media tycoon, Robert Maxwell, once famously said at a board meeting, ‘There is no such thing as moral obligation, only legal obligation’.
The process as well as the product. It is not just the end-product of GM that has to be considered. There are also economic, social, and political processes, such as accountability, information, and democratic control that matter. There is no biological magic wand that will make it unnecessary to deal with problems such as land reform, discrimination against women or lack of access to cheap credit and basic technology.
Do GM producers accept that a side-effect of the adoption of GM farming will likely be the elimination of small farms and the depopulation of the countryside in favour of mega-farms run by multinationals? In 1998, 81 per cent of the global agrochemical market was controlled by ten companies. They bind farmers by a licensing system controlling the purchase of seeds and agricultural chemicals. They focus so much on a few crops that they threaten genetic diversity. Small wonder that GM has been described as biological warfare on subsistence farmers.
The problem for GM food producers. The burden of proof rests with GM food producers. It isn’t the responsibility of critics to prove that GM food is not safe; it is the responsibility of GM producers to prove that it is safe. They say that research has shown no damaging side-effects. That’s what was said 30 years ago by the producers of Thalidomide, the drug given to pregnant women to ease morning sickness. But we now know that Thalidomide had effects which were transmitted to the next generation. Some of the babies born in recent years to the now adult Thalidomide babies of the nineteen sixties and seventies are themselves suffering from Thalidomide-induced birth effects, such as having no arms.
And when the damaging effects of that drug became apparent, was it not the case that women who had given birth to handicapped babies as a result of taking the drug had to campaign for many years before receiving compensation for themselves and their children?
The truth is that the consequences of genetic transfer cannot be predicted.
The bottom line. If GM goes wrong and produces effects harmful to humanity, can the process be reversed? Can the harm be undone? Do we have the facts to enable us to answer those questions?
For further information read Seán McDonagh SSC, Greening the Christian Millennium, Dominican Publications, Dublin, 1999, and Why are we Deaf to the Cry of the Earth?, Veritas, Dublin, 2002.