The ‘what if?’ factor. (What might we have to lose?)

With a desire to be even handed, let’s have a look at some of the main areas of concern which might lead to a view that the risks of GM agriculture outweigh the potential benefits.
Neil Messer (2006) identifies four such areas:-

• That using herbicide-tolerant GM crops might result in increased use of herbicides, resulting in harmful effects to wildlife and possibly to human health.
• The risk of GM plants cross-pollinating with wild relatives resulting in herbicide resistant ‘superweeds’ which might prove extremely difficult to control.
• The risk that foods made from GM crops might be harmful to human health either because they are directly toxic or through increased sensitivity to allergens.
• The concern that an increase in the development of GM technology would lead to increasing exploitation by the developers on those vulnerable and powerless communities, particularly in developing countries.
  

Each of these concerns might seem like reason enough for exercising great caution over GM farming. However there are two problems with all of them. Firstly the evidence to prove or disprove them is itself disputed. For example, with the issue of the increased use of pesticides The Institute of Science in Society (see Useful GM links – on right) reports findings by Dr. Charles Benbrook, director of the Northwest Science and Environmental Policy Centre, Idaho, who ‘concludes that the 550 million acres of GM corn, soybeans and cotton planted in the US since 1996 has increased pesticide use (herbicides and insecticides) by about 50 million pounds’. This increase seems to be an overall figure with some crops requiring less intervention and others significantly more. He suggests four main reasons for the rises:-

• Spread of glyphosate-tolerant marestail (horseweed);
• Shifts in composition of weed communities toward species not as sensitive to glyphosate;
• Early-stage resistance in some major weeds; and
• Substantial price reductions and volume-based marketing incentives from competing manufacturers of glyphosate-based herbicides.
  

All of the above seems very convincing, however the website ‘foodfuture’ which claims to work ‘in consultation with a panel of experts, as part of its foodfuture initiative, to provide consumers with facts and figures about genetically modified (GM) crops and foods.’ comes to very different conclusions about this question. It suggests that ‘Some studies have shown significant reductions in herbicide and insecticide usage where GM crops are grown.’ (see ttp://www.foodfuture.org.uk/factsfigs_chemicals.aspx).

Over the issue that GM crops might be harmful to human health a similar conflict can be seen. The Journal of Experimental Botany states that ‘Current GM crops, including soybean, have not been shown to add any additional allergenic risk beyond the intrinsic risks already present. Biotechnology can be used to characterize and eliminate allergens naturally present in crops’. (See- http://jxb.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/54/386/1317) however an article by Arpad Pusztai (see - http://www.actionbioscience.org/biotech/pusztai.html) claims that many studies which conclude the safety of GM crops have used seriously flawed methods of testing. Peter Pringle (2005 p.5) highlights the feeling that although there is a consensus between all but the most ‘committed opponents’ that ‘there is nothing inherently unsafe about genetically modified foods, however, there are possible hazards’. He notes that ‘transferring genes between species is an unpredictable operation that could cause new allergies for future consumers unless proper precautions are taken’.

It seems that the key to this conundrum is the phrase ‘some studies’. When considering a subject that raises such strong feelings in both those who commend and those who condemn it, research will appear highlighting both the potential gains and risks of its progress. Realistically this might especially be expected to be so if those undertaking some of the research were in a position to gain financially from further developments in the technology.

The second problem encountered when assessing the negative claims about GM agriculture is that it seems likely that the true results of Genetic Modification will only be seen when it has been allowed to be in place for a number of years. In America where planting of GM crops has been taking place since 1996, studies are beginning to be able to draw on the data and experience of those years, although the time span is still essentially short term. In the UK and most of Europe concerns have blocked commercial planting to date. The trials which were carried out were small scale and short term, not allowing for more wide ranging data to be assessed.

In the midst of such uncertainty and conflict the Key Questions at this point seem to be:-

• Is it necessary to accept an element of (properly controlled) risk in the growing, testing and assessing the safety of GM technology in order to be able to reach a conclusion about its longer term benefits?
• Who should be responsible for carrying out such research and what safeguards need to be applied to ensure their impartiality?
• Given that the long term effects of GM agriculture cannot be accurately assessed at this stage, what other ethical and even theological tools could be used to help the making of decisions about the rightness or wrongness of pursuing the use of this technology?