Permaculture teacher and author Patrick Whitefield has just limked on Twitter to a blog by Chris Smaje in response to the widely discussed talk by Mark Lynas on genetic engineering.
His first is that Lynas makes a false comparison between the “science” for climate change (AGW) and genetic engineering. Greens accept the science on the former but not the latter says Lynas, which Smaje challenges as a false comparison.
I agree that there is a false parallel here, but not for the reasons that Smaje gives. Greens don’t accept the “science of climate change” any more than they accept the science regarding the safety on GE: what they do generally is point to the agreed science that CO2 is having a warming effect, and translate this into the same pseudo-religious rhetoric that they use to discuss GE: humans are Bad, technology is not to be trusted, we are hurting Gaia and the Sky Gods will unleash retribution in the form of storms and famines.
Smaje is at least half-way correct on this issue- Science can show that AGW is real (although how much warming is actually anthropogenic is not so clear..) but “What it hasn’t shown – and what it can’t show – is what, if anything, we should do about it…” – exactly the point that climate skeptics have been making for years.
Smaje goes on to say “By contrast, nobody has ever questioned that GM is a viable, implementable technology – the question is whether we should in fact implement it, on which “the science” is equally as impotent in its ability to answer as in the case of climate change.”
Nonetheless, Smaje’s point is a valid one: science is good at testing specific hypotheses, such as the relative safety of a new technology, or temperature trends, but policy is not an issue for science alone. The inconsistency amongst the Greens is more that while scientists are used as authorities with regard to policy on climate change all the time, and we are told we should follow specific (or all-to-often unspecific) policy actions to deal with climate change because the science is settled, on the issue of genetic engineering- as also with nuclear power- scientist’s policy recommendations are ignored, because they are assumed to be industry shills directly or indirectly, and not to be trusted.
This is evident in Smaje’s later comment that “I accept that some people genuinely think GM does solve problems – though I suspect biotechnologists are heavily overrepresented in this particular category “- of course, biotech scientists have vested interests, in perpetuating their careers and finding and justifying their existence! Just like climate scientists, no? I mean, funny how most scientists warning about the dangers of climate change are, you know- *climate scientists* isn’t it? Even more odd, many of the most vocal proponents of small-scale organic farming are… small scale organic farmers!
Smaje accepts that GE is probably safe but links to a fine Green Herring on an activist site to sow the seed of doubt that “maybe we shouldn’t be too hasty”.
The “OMFG Viral Genes!!” story is just the latest anti-GMO meme to be doing the rounds. It is complete bunk, and the failure of Smaje to recognise this does rather bring into question his scientific understanding of the issue.
He also links to other Green Herrings, such as the super-weeds issue: but weed resistance is not an issue only of GE, and have been with us since the 1970s at least. As with so many objections to GE, the arguments apply to farming in general, including often organic farming, not just GE. (more…)
Dubbed as one of the greatest environmental mea culpa’s ever, and possibly a game-changer in the public debate on genetic engineering, Lynas bravely throws up his hands to say that rarest of things in the context of such a high-profile and contentious issue: I was wrong. Not just a little bit, but completely and diametrically wrong:
I want to start with some apologies. For the record, here and upfront, I apologise for having spent several years ripping up GM crops. I am also sorry that I helped to start the anti-GM movement back in the mid 1990s, and that I thereby assisted in demonising an important technological option which can be used to benefit the environment.
As an environmentalist, and someone who believes that everyone in this world has a right to a healthy and nutritious diet of their choosing, I could not have chosen a more counter-productive path. I now regret it completely.
Lynas says that the anti-GE movement he helped to start “was the most successful campaign I have ever been involved with” but that
This was also explicitly an anti-science movement. We employed a lot of imagery about scientists in their labs cackling demonically as they tinkered with the very building blocks of life. Hence the Frankenstein food tag – this absolutely was about deep-seated fears of scientific powers being used secretly for unnatural ends. What we didn’t realise at the time was that the real Frankenstein’s monster was not GM technology, but our reaction against it.
A few weeks ago I wrote The Truth About the Terminator questioning the dubious but influential and oft-repeated claims that Monsanto’s Terminator seeds are widely used and lead directly to widespread farmer suicides in India. Yesterday it was brought to my attention that Vandana Shiva, High Priestess of the anti-GE “keep the poor poor and hungry” movement has in fact admitted in her own publication the Navdanya “Seed Kit” that so called “Terminator” technology- properly GURT or Gene Use Restriction Technology – has never been used in a commercial crop:
Terminator Seeds
Terminator seeds are genetically modified to kill their own embryos, making them sterile at harvest. This means that if farmers save the seeds of these plants at harvest for future crops, the next generation of plants will not grow. Farmers would thus need to buy new seeds every year.
After studying these seeds, molecular biologists warned of the possibility of terminator seeds spreading to surrounding food crops or to the natural environment—the gradual spread of sterility in seeding plants would result in a global catastrophe that could eventually wipe out higher life forms, including humans. Since 2001 there has been a de facto worldwide moratorium on the use of terminator technology. {Emphasis added}
Note that she repeats the lie from her 2000 book Stolen Harvest that sterile seeds could spread sterility…through seeds. So we have a situation whereby a whole movement made up of organic farmers and permaculturalists (as well as others like “alternative health” practitioners, who we should not expect too much of anyway) who one might expect to know something about the basic facts of life such as how baby plants are made, believe this, and other nonsense about GE technology, and campaign vigorously for complete bans on the technology as a result, even on occasion going so far as to pull crops up and oppose scientific trials on the basis of a non-existent threat from a non-existent trait.
This curious phenomenon is something to take deep inside and meditate on for a while. There is nowt so queer as folk, as my mother says.
The Truth About Terminator Seeds. There aren’t any, not in any crop anywhere. Yet this myth/untruth/lie is perhaps the most frequently repeated by anti-GE activists.
the minute seeds stop being the seeds of renewal and starts being the seeds of death- like the terminator technology, creating sterile seeds, patented technology that makes it illegal for farmers to save and exchange seed, we get scarcity, that is why a quarter million Indian farmers have committed suicide. We’ve got to save the seeds of life…the seeds of freedom.
Why? My guess is, it sounds scary. “The Terminator…” it sounds just so unnatural, and, well terminal. Combined with the political implications- heartless money men using science fiction-type technology to force thousands of poor farmers into debt slavery (Ill come back to the suicides claim), taking over the seed supply, controlling the world’s food production, threatening to wipe out humanity…. you can just hear the throaty Evil Laugh in the background. What’s not to like?
Shiva’s picture of the nasty capitalist mega-villains Monsanto screwing the bejeezus out of both the defenseless farmer AND Mother Gaia herself has proved very effective at garnishing opposition to genetic engineering which, don’t forget, has been hitherto effectively banned from Europe and much of Africa.
But Shiva is not anti-capitalist. What she is really doing is protecting vested interests which are themselves just as much capitalist as the biotech companies she fights. Here she is hand in hand with Billionaire New Age King of Woo Deepak Chopra. They are pals you see; they share the same commercial interests. As discussed before, the mega-billion multi-national global capitalist alternative “health” industry is one of the big backers of the anti-GE movement.
Queen of Poo meets King of Woo: Shiva and Chopra…together..
As opposed to the life proliferating activities of cow dung, GMO seeds are “terminator seeds designed to be sterile, in a deliberate creation of food scarcity for profits,” says Shiva, who has worked with and defended the rights of farmers to store seeds for three decades…
The technological science so highly prized in our civilization has another side.
“Yes, it has given us important tools,” Chopra acknowledges, before he goes on to enumerate the ugly side of “fragmented science,” such as global warming, ecological destruction, mechanized death, nuclear weapons, GMOs, and pesticides. “Together they are risking our extinction as a species,” he says.
What are Terminator seeds exactly? The correct term is GURT or Gene Use Restricted Technology, and there is no doubt that one of the idea of developing them was to facilitate seed patents, to make money in other words, or recoup investment if you are slightly less anti-capitalistic. The technology developed by the USDA in conjunction with Delta and Pine Land company in the 1990s, who were awarded the patent in 2005; Delta & Pine were acquired by Monsanto in 2007. Due to concerns that this might lead to dependence by small farmers, Monsanto agreed not to use GURT, instead requiring farmers to sign declarations that they will not save and replant Monsanto’s seed. (more…)
First tweet I read this morning was from the Journal.ie with a story about renewed activist opposition to the GE potato trials that Teagasc have recently been granted a license for:
GREEN PARTY COUNCILLOR Malcolm Noonan is one of a number of people involved in raising a legal challenge against the EPA-approved Teagasc genetically modified (GM) potatoes trial.
I believe that this decision will do untold damage to Irish farming just at a point when it was showing signs of real recovery. Overwhelming scientific evidence is showing that GM technology is of no real benefit to sustainable agriculture or food security. Consumers in the EU have rejected it outright and we should be paying attention to their needs rather than the interests of large industry players
Now that statement “Overwhelming scientific evidence is showing that GM technology is of no real benefit to sustainable agriculture or food security” needs some unpacking: what does he mean by “sustainable agriculture?” What doe he mean by “food security?” But by any reasonable definitions of either, his statement is surely false, as shown in the links from my last post we know that the vast majority of scientists attest to the safety and usefulness of the technology.
The Green Party has been invited to work alongside other national groups such as the Irish Organic Farmers and Growers Association
Via the IOFGA website I found this interview with IOFGA’s Gillian Westbrook, John Spink from Teagasc and potato farmer Tom Keogh.
Spink carefully explained that the role of Teagasc was purely to provide information, and they had no role in producing a commercial GM potato; that these are just trials, to be done over a 4-year period with a further four years of testing afterwards; and he made the rather excellent point that if the trials showed there is an environmental hazard to growing GE potatoes here, “anyone who is anti-GM would have some very strong data to back up their arguments.”
Westbrook talked about Monsanto lawsuits in Spain and cross-pollination issues (she actually says “cross-contamination”) and eschewed the point that Spink made for her about data to support the anti- position should it emerge, instead going onto make the startling statement that
IOFGA supports evidence-based policy… say it does show positive biodiversity effects, where does it end up, because the biotechnology companies will be using this evidence as a lever to actually have Ireland look at accepting GM crops… we want quality food in this country, we dont want a race to the bottom, and that is the consumer perception of GM..
So she does not want the trials to take place because they might prove that the dreaded GM potatoes are actually OK and do not pose a threat to biodiversity, and we might have the option to actually grow them and benefit from their reduced need for synthetic sprays to control the blight, and then possibly go on to grow other GE crops with improved traits and the whole country could benefit from the enhanced agricultural sector on this island that this would result in. An extraordinarily incurious and conservative position, to say the least, as if science should not be done in case we find out that the world is really safer than we fear. Westbrook is clearly stating: no GE here under any circumstances, whatever the benefits.
In a way what the farmer Tom Keogh said was even more interesting, because he did not take an absolutist “ban the technology at all costs” position:
“we need to look at the long-term, how we will market ourselves- we need to be seen as the agricultural island, the Green Island- over-seas completely different-world population growing 15x the size of Ireland each year, while crop yields have grown over the last 50 years they have been leveling off in last 10 yrs; there are places in the world where GE is key- but not so much in Ireland where we are blessed with rich fertile soil and a climate good for high yields- we dont really need it here.”
It is hard to understand this position: one might indeed feel that the urgency for biotech in Ireland is not as great as say in Asia where they are developing Golden Rice to help tackle vitamin A deficiency, which is estimated to cause the death of some 125,000-250,000 children each year- but that doesn’t in any way explain a position that wants a total ban here, and opposes even conducting trials. Why wouldn’t Irish farmers want to reduce spraying and have higher yields due to reduced loss from blight?
“It is the consumers who tell us what to grow, and I don’t think any of your viewers want to buy GM foods” explained Keogh. But with the organic industry firmly entrenched in a “hear no evil see no evil” attitude, and volumes of misinformation being repeated endlessly about “Terminator seeds” and supposed health risks, it isn’t hard to see why the public’s attitude is wary of the new technology. If people do not understand it very well and public scientists are being opposed in doing their job, I think spokespeople like Westbrook should take some of the responsibility for that. After all, there is no good reason why GE should not be part of the quality Green food image that we would all like see Ireland continue to have; the improved traits that GE could bring could give Ireland a competitive advantage and be the envy of Europe. It is all in the marketing.
Keogh’s point about TV3 viewers not wanting to buy GM foods is also wrong. Although I don’t have a TV, I for one am very curious to try an Irish GE spud- the Teagasc trials are the first step I hope.
Apart from completely evading the relevant scientific issues Singh raises, Don makes the following extraordinary comment:
Having known you for nigh on 20 years – albeit with great gaps – I suspect that you are as temperamentally and intellectually suited to immersing yourself in organic, holistic agriculture as I am in particle physics. Your mind just doesnt work that way. That does not make you wrong or me right. Well,OK, I am just being polite but it doesn’t make you bad for being wrong…
WTF?! I mean, really, what is he actually getting at here? And what is the Bigger Picture about “organic, holistic agriculture” ?
Perhaps picking up on Singh’s admission that organics is not really his subject, Don recommends some reading:
Suggest you inform yourself a lot more before taking this any further. If you are genuinely interested in understanding what it is all about start by reading Michael Pollan, Colin Tudge and Rob Hopkins. No specific scientific work so you may not feel comfortable with it but very good cross section of the field.
Let’s have a look at what these three authors have to say on the subject under discussion:
Pollan’s 2006 book The Omnivore’s Dilemma is celebrated by foodies, and it is certainly an original perspective and well-written survey of many of the issues in food production.
But in Chapter 9 he takes a look at Big Organic and concludes
So is an industrial organic food chain finally a contradiction in terms? It’s hard to escape the conclusion that it is…. The inspiration for organic was to find a way to feed ourselves more in keeping with the logic of nature, to build a food system that looked more like an eco-system that would draw its fertility and energy from the sun. To feed ourselves otherwise was “unsustainable”, a word that’s been so abused we’re apt to forget what it specifically means: Sooner or later it must collapse. To a remarkable extent, farmers succeeded in creating a new food chain on their farms:trouble began when they encountered the expectations of the supermarket. As in so many other realms, nature’s logic has proved no match for the logic of capitalism, one in which cheap energy has always been a given. And so, today, the organic food industry finds itself in a most uncomfortable, and, yes, unsustainable position: floating on a sinking sea of petroleum.
Pollan is aware of the limitations of trying to live “sustainably”- he is accutely aware of course of how impractical it would be for him to always eat the hunter-gatherer meal he prepares for himself in the last section, because of the extreme amounts of time and work it would involve; and so ends his book with something of a lament:
..imagine for a moment if we once again knew, strictly as a matter of course, these few unremarkable things: What it is we’re eating. Where it came from. How it found its way to our table. And what, in a true accounting, it really cost. We could then talk about some other things at dinner. For we would no longer need any reminding that however we choose to feed ourselves, we eat by the grace of nature, not industry, and what we’re eating is never anything more or less than the body of the earth.
Ding Ding! Naturalistic Fallacy- sorry, Michael, “nature” does not have “grace” and does not give a wit as to whether we eat or not- we eat by dint of our own ingenuity and hard work, and famines were a constant threat until the advent of industrial food and the globalised food industry. The Malthussian fears of a burgeoning population outstripping food supply have not been realised because of technology. Any move back to nature will not only turn us into peasant laborers but will also put us right back as defenseless against the vagaries of nature and living always in the shadow of hunger.
Colin Tudge, in his 2003 book So Shall We Reap is another prominent critic of modern farming, and while convinced that its “unsustainability” could be our downfall, nevertheless addresses many of the very shortcomings of organics raised by Lynas and Singh, specifically the need for extra land:
Organic farming has much to recommend it, of course, but could it in conscience be recommended to all the world? I find it hard to see how…Manure can be polluting…could organic farmers really double their input of nitrogen, as they would need to do to maintain present agricultural output if artificials were banned? Could they double it again in the next fifty years as world population doubles? Nobody knows but the odds are surely against.
…if yield is lower farming must then occupy more space, spreading into wilderness and into marginal land that should not be cultivated at all.
Tudge correctly concludes that artificial fertiliser need not destroy soil structure or lead to polluting run-off if properly applied- thus “good farming” is always the key- and even points out that we will not run out of natural gas for manufacturing artificial fertliser- he cites a figure of only 1% of fossil fuels currently being required for this- “a small price to pay for half of agriculture’s fertility”- and that it could be easily made from solar power or biofuels(?) if needed. Although Tudge is opposed to GMOs, even he accepts that
GMOs are currently deployed for dubious economic and political purposes but the science that has given rise to them should not be banished out of hand.
Pollan and Tudge are well-known published authors on food and farming, but Hopkins, really?! There must be some mistake. Transition Towns founder Rob Hopkins would not I think qualify as, nor claim to be an expert on organics, although like the other two he is of course a strong proponent of it. Unfortunately, he has found the wet summer too much for his own garden which has been overtaken by slugs; at least he confesses to the limitations of self-sufficiency in such circumstances, but shirks the logical conclusion that it is a globalised food industry which leads to true resilience, allowing us to grow the most suitable crops in the most suitable climates and ship in surplus to where there is a shortfall.
In the same post, he challenges the genetic engineers to do something (Hopkins and most of his followers are vehemently opposed to GE):
If those people working on genetically modified crops while also claiming to be working for the benefit of mankind actually want to do something useful, perhaps they might engineer a kind of grass that you could grown in your lawn that would be more attractive to slugs than the things you actually want to eat? Or engineer a slug that prefers the boring stuff that you don’t actually want to eat (like brambles, Woundwort or bindweed) to the stuff you want? Just a thought.
More likely, it might be possible to insert slug-repellant genes directly into the plants, as the Bt pesticide has been successfully engineered into corn and cotton, thus saving vast amounts of sprays. (My comment to this effect was deleted as I am banned from Hopkin’s blog.)
(I should say that as a gardener I found most of Rob’s post quite amusing and I do sympathize, though I have not had nearly as much trouble with slugs as he describes; it’s a great gardening column, easy to forget that this is a writer who heads up an influential international movement that is opposed to modernity and influenced by quacks and other doyens of New Age occultism.)
Transition Towns, like much of the organics/back-to-the-land movements, resembles a Medieval re-enactment society, aiming to turn back the clock to an imagined romantic past of local communities growing their own veg and darning their own socks under lights powered by windmills and solar panels, while fleeing in fear, like Monty Python’s Brave Sir Robin, from the very technologies-such as genetic engineering and precision farming- that might actually improve farming and ameliorate both world hunger and some of the excesses of industrial farming.
The idea, you see is to turn everyone back into peasant farmers: organics takes a lot more labour, and for it to increase its tiny market share from just a couple of percent at present to challenge conventional farming would require the wholesale reversal of the main demographic movement from parochial country to cosmopolitan city that defined the 20th century.
So what was that “Bigger Picture” again that Don speaks of? Maybe he found it on this Biodynamic farm he visited in 2002 in the Black Mountains, where a family are using the magical methods of Steiner’s astrology and alchemy to grow vegetables on poor land where “The Soil Association wanted money to even talk to them.”
Don admits BD is whacky:
But there is an aspect of biodynamics that needs to be taken with a dumper truck of salt. This is the essential tenet that cosmic and terrestrial forces can be harnessed for the benefit of soil and plants by the mixing of certain preparations. These range from oak bark buried over winter in the skull of a domestic animal to Valerian flowers buried inside a stag’s bladder. The preparations are used in minute quantities – such as a level teaspoon to 10 tons of compost. Crazy stuff.
but cannot quite dismiss it because the farmers are “models of health and vitality” and the veg is just sooooo tasty. The whole place seems a picture of the rural idyll amongst rolling green pastures with a communal lifestyle and plenty of laughter in the fields, that many organics supporters yearn for.
But he gives it all away in the last paragraph:
Conventional farmers and growers are in a mess. I suspect that the government is incapable of understanding the problem, let alone providing any solution. The answer lies in us as individuals – gardeners or people brave enough to buy a patch of ground ‘no good for growing vegetables’. And if that is accompanied by the burial of dandelions collected at dawn or a chart of the phases of the moon, then is it any weirder than the damaging potions and incantations of scientists, ministers and so-called experts down the years?
You see Monty, the thing about science is, it provides a method for examining these things rationally, using evidence. Thus, there are plenty of other successful small farms using either conventional or organic methods that are just as successful, where the produce is just as good, the laughter just as vibrant, but without the magic, which adds nothing other than the fog of delusion and the propensity to foster the creation of cults. Biodynamics is not as Don seems to think “one step further down the organic road” -unless that road is one leading back into the Dark Ages of witchcraft and goat-sacrifice.
Betweeen Don’s tolerance of superstition, and his apparent sharing of the aims of Hopkin’s Transition Re-enactment Society, we would seem to have something closer to Monty Python rather than any useful contribution to addressing the very real issues of food and farming in the 21st century.
She kindly agreed to a short interview in which I asked her about her work, and the future role genetic engineering can play in sustainable agriculture, which you can listen to below:
Professor Pamela Ronald in her lab in UC Davis last year
Update: Post by Mark Lynas here. I had missed the start of the Twitter debate, which originated with a tweet from @GMO Pundit (David Tribe) showing that the campaign to have GMOs labeled was funded by Big Quacka.
Interesting Twitter exchange yesterday on the subject of food labeling- specifically, the campaign from the Organic movement to make the labeling of GMO crops a legal requirement.
Mark Lynas started it, arguing that the only reason to label foods containing Genetically Engineered crops would be as a “skull and crossbones” for the benefit of those who have an ideological position against GE technology- ie as an aid to a boycott movement, and suggested instead
How about a label on organic foods: ‘Warning, land-inefficient product, may cause damage to the environment’.
I prefer ‘May Have Been Sprayed With Bacterial Toxins’ on organic veggies.Truthful and accurate!
The problem with labeling is, where do you stop, and what is the motive for the label? I am all in favour of more information for the consumer, but given the well-funded campaign against anything GE, a label for that alone would simply act as a falser warning NOT to buy- without reams of peer-reviewed references and lengthy discussions around all aspects of food and farming, such a label on its own would do little to benefit the consumer.
I had been thinking about the labeling issue for a while, and wondered what sort of label might be suitable for Biodynamic crops- that is, essentially “organic” food grown by people using astrology (planting by the moon) and other esoteric practices advocated by the extremist anti-science cult founded by Rudolph Steiner:
for Biodynamic produce “warning! Grown by moon-planting fairy-worshipping whackos. AVOID
This was re-tweeted by Lynas and then picked up by John Walker, author and award-winning organic gardener:
Real grown-up stuff eh? Oh the joys of constructive debate…
who then made his own grown-up suggestion:
Maybe the real priority is to label big ag’s produce with list of pesticide residues it contains? #choice
For someone of with such a high media profile, Walker seems lamentably unaware of the issues. Astonishingly, it would appear that he has not even listened to the Skepteco Podcast on Organics.
There is actually no evidence that “conventional” produce contain harmful levels of pesticides; these things are tested very thoroughly, and it maybe even that the tiny trace residues- far below what is considered safe- that are found may even be beneficial, perhaps providing some protection against “natural” toxins and predators including cancer: this was the conclusion from Trewavas, as discussed on our podcast, who cited a longitudinal study with a very large sample of farmers and foresters, ie those groups who come into contact with pesticides the most: they were found to have lower levels of some diseases than the general population.
Organic produce can also be harmful, as the tragic case of the Organic German Beansprouts incident showed last year; should we put warnings on organic food alerting shoppers to the risks of ecoli poisoning as a result of the use of animal manures? Another organic movement bugbear- food irradiation- could save lives and eradicate the risks of ecoli – but unfortunately this technology is also being campaigned against by those who think that deadly natural toxins are preferable to minute traces of any synthetic chemical.
Walker responded:
And of course no evidence of wider effects of pesticides on environment? Is organic-bashing really useful?
Organic bashing is useful because they peddle lies about conventional farmers.
Again, this issue of wider environmental impacts is different to toxic residues, and of course all forms of farming have a tremendous effect on the environment- there is no perfect, garden-of-Eden-type way of farming that ticks all the boxes; and the original point from Lynas- that organics require more land- still stands. While an individual organic farm may take greater care to leave habitat for wildlife, more land will be needed in total- including a lot of land for all those manure-producing animals that organics rely on- and that means less wilderness habitat.
The lower yields for organics are a serious issue that need to be engaged with by its supporters- maybe it would be a good idea to put this on a label to make more people aware of it; and all this reminded me of a tweet from @geneticmaize a few weeks ago, who said that she avoids buying organic food for this very reason (though she says she is not religious about it.) With world population heading towards 10billion, there is simply no option of switching wholesale to less productive methods. They need to become more productive, and the only way for this to happen is by technology.
Which brings us back to GE. Mark Lynas offered an olive branch on the twitter discussion:
We can end this now if you agree that GM chemical-free should be considered organic.
The irony is of course that there IS already a GMO-free label- “Organic”- but that, for organics to overcome its other limitations, it could embrace GE technology to make it more viable- as proposed by Pamela Ronald in Tomorrow’s Table.
Organic food currently provides a very small part of world food supply. There is still a place for it, and hopefully for many other kinds of farming, and organics plays an important research role. But at the end of the day it is just a label, a rather arbitrary list of criteria. What is really needed is a more integrated system that is not afraid to use technology.
Too much of the organic movement is however dominated by Biodynamics (which is where organics came from in the first place), homeopathy, astrology and general woo based on the naturalistic fallacy: in reality, Mother Nature wants to Eat You.
So shopper be aware. While there is nothing to fear from GMOs, your food may have been grown by moon-planting fairy-worshipping, anti-vaccine, quacks and whackos: is that what you want for your children?
Activists from the group Take the Flour Back are planning to destroy a trial plot of genetically engineered wheat at the Rothamsted research center in the UK. Apparently there is nothing anyone can do to stop this- short of a counter-demonstration of Science Defenders, or Defenders of the Enlightenment perhaps, going there to confront the activists (which at least one Tweeter has suggested)- so the scientists have put out an appeal to the protesters which can be viewed here.
The wheat has been developed to mimic natural plant defenses by producing high levels of an aphid repelling odour, which could help promote sustainable and environmentally friendly agriculture by reducing the need for pesticides.
The activists are concerned that there could be contamination of other crops from the wheat, which is wind-pollinated; the scientists say they have taken extraordinary precautions to avoid this. However, although caution is a good idea for any new variety, the concern seems misplaced: essentially GE crops are no different from other varieties bred using traditional methods. Like the GE potato trials proposed for Ireland, these are trials- if scientists are prevented from doing their research, how can we know what risks, if any, there may be? But as also with the potato trials, the main objection seems to be protectionism: there is no more reason for “contamination” from GE crops, should it happen, to be more of a problem than conventionally bred crops- unless you have an arbitrary system called “organics” which has decided to ban that particular method of plant breeding.
“There is no market for GM wheat anywhere in the world” they claim- a meaningless statement. GE wheat is at the end of the day, just wheat- and there is surely a market for that. Most of the world is pressing ahead a-pace with GE technology as a useful tool for producing safe food with less environmental impacts, while Europe takes a more isolationist approach which will likely cost it dearly in the long run.
The world desperately needs biotech to help produce crops with less environmental impact. Unless you want to see policy decided by anti-democratic actions as planned for May 27th, and see farmers progressively lose the battle against pests and disease, please sign the petition here and add your name to the 2000+ who are showing their support for science and research.
A major new European Union study is set to examine the effects of growing genetically modified, blight-resistant potato plants on biodiversity and the environment in agricultural ecosystems. It will also see the first GM crops being grown in Ireland since the late 1990s.
In a statement issued last month, Teagasc (the Irish agricultural development agency) announced it is seeking a licence to carry out field trials of GM potatoes as part of the AMIGA consortium – a group including representatives of research bodies from 15 EU countries.
Lettice makes the very good point that in setting up these trials Teagasc is only doing the job it was set up to do:
Teagasc is Ireland’s agriculture and food development agency. Its role is to carry out research leading to a better understanding of agriculture and new agronomic techniques. To accuse such a body of “wasting” money by doing the very thing it was set up to do is ridiculous.
Indeed, if trials to see the biological impact of these crops are not permitted, how can we gather information about whether the crop is safe or not? It would appear the activists are ahead of themselves, assuming risks while trying to ban trials that would provide the evidence either way.
Lettice says that IOFGA have also jumped the gun- in a statement released last week they claim Teagasc will be wasting tax-payers money- although the trials will be paid for entirely through EU’s FP7 research programme – a €50bn fund earmarked for research and technological development. “There is no question of further money coming from Irish taxpayers.”
This will make little difference to the activists in the Organic lobby. As one of the commentators below the article notes, “You are dealing with a religion here and you can’t fight religion with facts.”
