If we are going to live so intimately with these chemicals—eating and drinking them, taking them into the very marrow of our bones—we had better know something about their nature and their power.
—RACHEL CARSON, SILENT SPRING
There are deeply disturbing parallels between the (often well-intentioned) effort to control runaway global warming through technology (e.g., geoengineering) and the effort to feed the world through biotechnology (bioengineering). Both resort to methods that attempt to address symptoms but ignore underlying causes. Both are incredibly dangerous, often born of desperation and unchecked greed.
The difficulty is that humans are inserting themselves into evolutionary processes of nature that they neither comprehend nor appreciate. To do so is a violation of the precautionary principle and is potentially reckless, immoral, and unethical—a fundamental violation of the sacredness of life. To do so merely for the sake of profit is particularly reprehensible, outrageous. To do so to “feed the world” is just a lie.
How do we know these things? Because the obvious result of such practices is to further disconnect us from life itself and to make human technology the solution to all the problems we ourselves have created.164 It is precisely this kind of self-serving striving that has led humanity—and the entire biosphere—to the brink of quite possibly irreversible disaster, including global climate collapse, which will keep unfolding for centuries and perhaps millennia, and has caused the largest mass extinction of species in sixty-six million years, wiping out as many as two hundred species a day.
The debate over the use of GMOs has been explicitly confined to two aspects, the scientific and the economic. But as Wendell Berry says, these are “only two sides of an eight-sided coin.” The economic issues are usually stated in simple terms: protecting the profitability of commodity-crop export farmers and preserving their way of making a living. The scientific issues are usually framed by the idea that any decision about GMOs must be based in science. Besides the reality that much for what passes as scientific research is nothing but corporate-sponsored propaganda, it needs to be said that science is not capable of giving us answers to the questions of how we should live on the planet. It can give us perspective, understanding, and insight, and it can produce tools, but it cannot tell us how to live. We must draw upon deeper resources for that. These are not issues that can be decided based on materialistic science or short-sighted economics alone, for the consequences of our actions here are far reaching.
GMO OMG, a documentary by Jeremy Seifert, tells the symbolic story of Haitian peasant farmers who rejected and burned Monsanto’s offer of GMO seeds after the devastating 2010 earthquake, taking to the streets ten thousand strong. It was this story that drove Seifert to explore why the reaction to GMOs was so powerful. What he discovered is compelling: “It’s such a personal and intimate threat, not only financially, but to the land, to the air, to the water and to the food—the most intimate interaction we have with the world around us. When that gets taken over and the culture associated with food is removed because their seeds are replaced with these foreign seeds, they become essentially enslaved to these companies. It touches so many areas of life and culture that it’s a very important issue to the entire movement.”165
The battle over GMOs has become emotionally charged to the point that rational debate is nearly impossible. Attempts to establish GMO labeling have been met with powerful and well-funded industry campaigns.
One of the chief (and highly cynical) arguments of proponents of biotechnology is that consumers should be given a choice and that GMO labeling has the undesirable effect of limiting consumer options—as if anyone would deliberately choose to eat foods that might be damaging to one’s health and the environment! A special food issue of Scientific American illustrates the problem. In the lead editorial, “Fight the GM Food Scare,” the editors abruptly depart from the realm of science: “Instead of providing people with useful information, mandatory GMO labels would only intensify the misconception that so-called Frankenfoods endanger people’s health.”166
They continue: “Many people argue for GMO labels in the name of increased consumer choice. On the contrary, such labels have limited people’s options. In 1997, a time of growing opposition to GMOs in Europe, the E.U. began to require them. By 1999, to avoid labels that might drive customers away, most major European retailers had removed genetically modified ingredients from products bearing their brand. Major food producers such as Nestlé followed suit. Today it is virtually impossible to find GMOs in European supermarkets.”
Polls show that almost no one will intentionally seek out foods containing GMOs. It’s clear enough that most eaters, given the choice, will avoid GMOs. General Mills recently announced that their legacy Cheerios brand will no longer contain GMOs. Whether this is merely a cynical marketing scheme or a serious move toward corporate responsibility remains to be seen.
For those of us involved in localizing the food supply, we can confidently hold to moral and ethical principles to guide our choices about biotechnology. Here is what I’ve concluded over the last several years.
We must say no to GMOs, to those who seek to use them, and to those who have become dependent on them.
We must say no to public officials, appointed or elected, who will not stand firmly against GMOs and the corporations who seek to control our food supply.
We must say no to corporations who use GMOs in their products.
We must say no to corporations who seek to own GMO patents on seeds—as if life itself could be patented and owned!
We must say no to governments who allow this to happen!