Letters to the Editor
-
Follow the Money and the Revolving Doors
I appreciate Andrew Leonard's keeping us abreast of developments relating to GMOs. It's a valuable public service. That said, I've got to quibble with the following paragraph from his recent coverage:
Denmark's rules will not satisfy the anti-GM activist or organic farmer who demands 100 percent purity or believes that inserting a gene from one species of plant or animal into another is a crime against nature. But for those of us who can live with a little imperfection in our lives, the rules, from a distance, seem like a pragmatic, sensible attempt to balance competing interests and come up with a fair solution for all.
Apparently Mr. Leonard really believes that it's possible to be "a little bit pregnant." The organic movement grew, well, organically, from the bottom up and not from the top down. How organic came to be defined was not dictated from a conference room or a government study, so it's interesting now that the government actually has stepped in to define what it means, and now that big business sees it as a lucrative market, that people feel free to weigh in on how "organic" should be defined. And, of course, those who wish to keep to the original intent and standards of organic are perceived as just being luddites or unreasonable quacks by those who are far more pragmatic and sensible and willing to redefine organic standards for ... lacking a better word at the moment ... the "organic community."
Let me be clear about my view of GMOs. I think every university in the country should have labs devoted to unraveling the secrets of and understanding our world's genetic makeup in all of its glorious complexity. And perhaps what is learned there can be translated into targeted medicines, understanding the intricacies of ecosystems, etc. The academy and its cohorts in industry should learn all that they can. But, I would draw the line at the lab door with respect to genetically modifying organisms for release into the environment. Oh well, the first Bush administration crossed that line under the unscientific rubric of "substantial equivalence" and encouraged the business community and the money-hungry university patent licensing apparatus to waste no time looking back or to adhere to any precautionary principles. Regulation of GMOs was allowed to fall between the cracks, being considered by the Food and Drug Administration to be a pesticide-related decision best handled by the EPA and considered by the EPA to be a food-related issue. How convenient. Testing on the part of industry was and has been voluntary, so that when they say that "No tests have shown that X causes Y or Z" one should not assume that any test of that scenario has been conducted at all.
So, yes, we're technologically capable of producing GMOs and after much trial and error and crapshooting coming up with an acceptable (on the surface) result, but as with nuclear technologies, the danger lies in how such technology is applied. No one knows yet, including the scientists who have created them, what the long-term consequences will be of having already allowed the planting of hundreds of millions of acres of these utterly new biotechnologies. People wrongly assume, because genetic modification takes place on a micro-scale, that it is precise both in its application and in its results. And there are conflicting studies regarding the supposed benefits (i.e. presumed reduced chemical inputs and higher crop yields) of planting the crops that have so far been greenlighted. On the other hand, a multi-decade study conducted in part by the Rodale Institute confirms the many benefits of organic production.
If your neighbor's house is painted, you should have the right to assume that your house's color will not be impacted regardless of the wind conditions. Sadly, the highest court in Canada negated such a right in the Percy Schmeiser case because the "housepainter" was a multinational conglomerate seeking to protect intellectual property that the conglomerate apparently bears no responsibility for once their product is released into the environment. Let's hope that our highest court does not follow suit. (It would be interesting to know how much of a buffer area that multinational conglomerate requires around its own fields to ensure their genetic integrity while growing its own GMO seed for sale.) So, yes, GMOs are here to stay and they will surely touch every biological area of our lives (and rightly so with respect to lab-produced pharmaceuticals), but be careful what you wish for.