Art said:
What about pointing at studies that do show problems. Like this one for example;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/gmdebate/Story/0,2763,1535428,00.html
Perhaps those experts who advocate GM crops should also educate themselves before 'running around like headless chickens' saying everything in the garden is rosy.
Of course, buried all the way at the end of the article was this comment:
Farmers in Canada and Argentina growing GM soya beans have large problems with herbicide-resistant weeds, though these have arisen through natural selection and not gene flow through hybridisation.
Here, the question one must ask is what is the real problem, the way the plant was bred (would it have mattered at all if the resistance gene were bred in by selective breeding rather than using GE?), or the environmental impact of herbicide usage? Note that GM crops don't alter whether or not herbicides are used to control weeds, they only alter when the herbicides can be used.
Agriculture is not innocuous to the environment, it never has been. By definition, we are modifying the natural environment when we employ agricultural practices to supply food. Even organic farming has an impact on the environment. Just tilling the soil an planting a non-native species alters the habitat dramatically. Selective breeding alters the plants. The use of pesticides and herbicides produce selection pressures that promote survival of insects and plants with resistance to those pesticides and herbicides. Tilling the soil provides a selection pressure for weeds that can survive having their roots uplifted, or that grow in full sun rather than shade, or that germinate later in the season. The question is not whether agriculture has an impact on the environment, it's whether there is anything special about
how the plants were bred.
One can find fault with using an herbicide resistant variety, regardless of how that resistance was obtained, because it promotes increasing the use of herbicides and any related run-off, environmental impacts on neighboring ecosystems, potentials for herbicide residues on the plants, etc. But, this doesn't mean that GE, as the method of inserting that resistance, is at fault. If, instead, a pest resistance gene is inserted, such that mass quantities of pesticide currently used can be eliminated, along with all the effects of those pesticides both on the environment and on the workers in those fields, should we avoid it because of how that gene got there? Populations of organisms are not static. This is why new pesticides are always being developed, because pest populations resistant to the pesticide emerge. This is why new varieties of plants are bred, because ones with naturally occurring pest-resistance that were selected by farmers end up unable to resist all the pests, and those pests unaffected by whatever conferred resistance increase in the population and reinfect the crops. All GE does is enable us to keep up with these changes at a faster pace, so when a new pest or new strain of that pest emerges that threatens to decimate a major crop, we aren't thrust into famine while breeding the few plants that survive the new infestation to select for resistance to that pest.
This is the problem I see...people are fearing the method, and attacking everything produced with that method under the same broad umbrella. I have no problem with a group saying, "We don't want herbicide resistant plants because it promotes increased herbicide use, which is an unreasonable trade-off for the production benefit." But, then focus on the herbicide use and herbicide resistance, not whether it got there via GE or selective breeding, or happenstance. I also have no problem if you say, "I object to allowing large corporations to patent plant products, or the genes in them." You'd have a tough battle to fight there against industry, but if the objection is that they maintain proprietary control over seeds, and produce plants that require buying new seed stock year after year, that would make perfect sense as a political battle to fight. But, would you still view GE as bad if it enabled crops to be grown in very poor soil or drought conditions, and were provided free, with viable seeds, so that people in famine-stricken regions could use their land to grow sustainable crops to feed themselves? Do you see that, like many things that are the outcome of scientific research, the method itself is not inherently bad, the objection is to how it is used and who has control of it?
Just as many of the outcomes of physics research have given us simultaneously the technology to provide energy to heat our homes in winter and powerful weapons to kill people, it is in the use, not the method, that the problem lies.
So, now that we're in the politics forum with this thread, what sort of political actions would I view as more reasonable than a complete ban on GMO crops?
1) You could request patent laws be changed, or commerce laws be changed to limit the extent to which patenting and licensing of crops can be done. For example, you could insist that if they are going to be planted outside of greenhouses and laboratories, that they be kept in the public domain. Or, you could ask that corporations selling GMO seeds can only seek damages for intentional breeding outside the license agreement with those purchasing from them, not from others whose crops are inadvertently crossbred with those in nearby farms. You could even say we need a law whereby nearby farms can seek damages from the corporations if their crops are contaminated and affect their production/profits.
2) You could focus on specific environmental risks and assess the trade-offs. If the trade-offs are unacceptable, lobby to have approval of specific GE products revoked based on the relative risks.
3) You could insist the technology be used for more altruistic reasons than making a profit; demand government funding for crop science or plant science researchers in universities (i.e., public domain) who work toward developing crops that are more nutritious, or that grow in poor soil, or the climates prevalent in famine-stricken regions.
4) You could even insist that our food supply is important enough to warrant increased funding of government research labs to perform independent testing of products prior to FDA/EPA approval; keep in mind this would be very costly as more of the technology is used, but if that's what is important to you, then go ahead and lobby for it.
None of these approaches demonize the method for the method's sake, and I think they better address the root of people's fears about these crops better than a blanket ban on everything that is GE. This is not saying that I'd join you in all of the above approaches, but I think they are reasonable arguments and approaches even if I wouldn't necessarily agree. Personally, I'd promote items 2 and 3, and oppose 1 and 4, but that's based on my priorities and interests, not whether they are reasonable to request.
Believe me, just because someone is "satisfied" doesn't mean I am. At my age, I've see lots of overly enthusiastic proponents satisfied with the latest, hottest technology and then later I've watched them try to hide in the shadows when what they believed was beneficial in reality killed or deformed people. The problem with "believers" is they can't see their own biases. I keep asking, "what's the big hurry" but nobody answers me. Really, what is wrong with a conservative approach here? In this affluent county anyway, there is no reason to rush.
