All of the main writers on this subject identify the same five main benefits:-
- An increased tolerance to herbicides when introduced into crops would make it possible to use stronger but fewer herbicides on the weeds which grow alongside the crops.
- Crops could be made more resistant to pests and diseases, reducing the amount of pesticides needed.
- Crops could be made more resistant to the effects of environmental factors such as drought, frost or salty conditions. In the developing world in particular this would enable once unproductive land to be used for agriculture and might allow agriculture to be sustained and made more successful in spite of deteriorating environmental conditions.
- Crops could be developed with characteristic which would be of particular benefit to health, for example containing higher levels of vitamin or even vaccines against common illnesses in the developing world.
- Genetic changes to food crops could allow for more attractive products for consumers. Features such as shelf-life and flavour could be improved, availability could be extended and costs to the consumer reduced.
The key questions at this point would seem to be:-
- Is it morally justifiable for us as healthy, well-fed westerners to impose our scruples on and deny such benefits to those who often have little or no choice about the food they eat?
- By refusing to accept GM farming is progress being hampered which will bring about even greater benefits to humankind and to the environment as a whole?
4 comments:
Is it morally justifiable ...
I think before we ask this question about GM Food, we need to ask whether we can adequately share out the resources currently in the world. Am I simply being cynical in thinking that GM is simply about the rich getting richer and keeping the best for themselves?
Doubtless there are many philanthropic scientists who would see their work as improving the human lot. I do wonder whether genetically modifying humans so that they learn to share and care might be a better place to start!
By refusing to accept GM farming is progress being hampered?
But what is progress I find myself asking? Is it simply to get more, to ease physical suffering. Yes, GM is probably a good thing and as the world is constantly being changed by humankind, I doubt GM will have as profound a negative impact as the pollution and extermination that humans have already carried out. GM by all means but as I suggest above, until humans realise that resources should be for the good of all and not simply a means to gain control, power and wealth, the benefits will be reduced.
Picking up on these comments Pete, makes me think about what I have been reading for my MA re. development and progress and poverty.
When we look at the Thirld World/developing countries/The South a lot of the problems in production etc... stem from the fact that the First World/developed countries/the North have developed new technologies to aid their production and manufacturing processes and hence improve the economy for their country. The poor South are left behind as they do not have the technologies to do this to meet/address the demands and constraints in their own country.
Would GM be a parallel situation with, like you said - the rich North getting richer and the poor South getting relatively poorer. Is GM just for the rich developed world or will the technology be 'given' for use in the developing world??
Thank you, Pete and Laura for your comments. I agree with you that issues of our ability to share these technologies with those who most need their promised benefits seems fundamental to this whole argument.
Of course alongside this question is the related one about whether the technologies will actually benefit the environment, communities and people in the different areas of the developing world who might receive them. Certainly there can be no ‘one size fits all approach’. Different places and people will have vastly different needs both to each other and of course to the areas in which the technologies are being developed.
I also have a concern about an air of paternalism in this interaction between developer and potential recipient.
This is something I want to look at in more detail very soon. I will email when I post on this issue and hope you will continue in this debate. Thank you again. Helen.
This is a commendable attempt to explore a complex issue - ethically, scientifically and theologically. My starting point for comment must be broadly ethical in its outlook, informed by a very limited knowledge of some relevant environmental and socio-economic factors. I too am no scientist, but I am reasonably up to speed with key global (and indeed local) challenges such as climate change and its likely implications on human and species migration, political and violent conflict arising from increasing competition for diminishing resources, and a whole host of other humanitarian and ecological consequences. I have no truly informed knowledge about GM, only (largely media-driven perceptions). I cannot offer a theological perspective as I do not recognise a God, so my judgements (as with all considerations in life) tend to be intuitive, based on my personal ethical outlook, which is in part consciously self-determined and in part based on the influences of my life experiences, which I do not question objectively as often as I perhaps should.
On your first question, I am of the view that the inequity of opportunity which exists in the world is due to a combination of factors, some determined simply by geographic location, but in no small part the result of past and present actions by a relative minority which have had escalating and perpetuating negative consequences for others, particularly over the last century or so. I do not agree with the advancement of technology or economic systems (both of which I can't separate from the issue of GM crops) for the benefit of a proportion of a population, if this compounds the suffering and lack of opportunity of others. However, I do not hold the view that advancing the use of GM crops necessarily results in the moral scenario that your first question broaches, although history would suggest that this would be a highly likely outcome.
On the second, I do not have a definitive opinion and it is difficult to give this issue the attention and breadth of consideration that it deserves here and now. On the one hand I believe strongly that the increasingly severe consequences of climate change that we all will experience over the course of this century, coupled with ongoing, rapid population growth and increasing expectations for material wealth across the world, necessitate the consideration of new production methods. There simply will not be enough to go round if projected population and economic scenarios for the next 50 years hold true. It is already anticipated that fish stocks will have collapsed completely by 2048 and a large proportion of the world's population rely on seafood for their staple diet. Terrestrially, increasing areas of the world will become unviable as productive areas as a result of climate change, toxic saturation and soil degradation (although I accept that in the medium-term much of this will be offset by increasing productivity in other parts of the world such as the current tundra and polar regions). At the same time, we are now facing a live scenario where food for people must compete with food for cars and other transport modes (i.e. biofuels). Cars will win – there is no doubt in my mind about that!
On the other hand though, we have to question whether we (as in global society) should continue to grow our numbers to a proportion that can only be sustained through artificial means. I do not subscribe fully to the theory of Gaia (James Lovelock) but there is some inevitable truth in the fact that our population will always be limited to that which can be supported by the capacity of the Earth and that the Earth will find a way of imposing those limits. We are already in a situation of ecological overshoot, so time is running out – and fast in my view. Given that, because of ecological complexity and sensitivity, there is no way that we can be certain of the consequences of possible actions in respect of GM crops, we may actually accelerate a process which leads us towards population collapse, with unimaginable levels of suffering, the likes of which have never before been seen or contemplated. This then opens up the whole debate of societal population control, which can be a very dangerous one…
It is undeniable in my mind that, in the short term, refusing to go down the GM road will restrict societal benefits (subject to fair distribution of benefits), although I remain skeptical about the possible environmental benefits. However, in the long-term I think we simply have no idea. Does this all dissolve then, to a question of short-term vs. long-term thinking? Part of me thinks that we have only been around for a couple of minutes of the Earth’s 24 hour history, and the (biological) evolutionary process has lead to the conditions that we experience today. Messing about with that delicate balance could well have significant and unpredictable repercussions, and as there are currently more obese people in the world than malnourished, is the obvious (if improbable) solution to concentrate on the equitable distribution of what we have and are able to produce naturally (is intensive agriculture ‘natural’?!), coupled with a concerted effort to raise education standards in deprived areas of the world? Intuitively, I think so.
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