Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
'Sound science', risk and GM
The science, business and politics of genetic modification (GM) has been a highly
controversial field of activity for many years, with supporters arguing that genetic
modification offers huge advances and advantages in terms of securing food supplies
for the world's growing population and critics suggesting that the main driver of
GM is fundamentally economic rather than ethical. The big biotechnology corpora-
tions have invested millions and expect to make millions more with terminator
technology - that is, GM seeds that do not germinate, requiring increased sales of
specialized herbicides and pesticides, and preventing farmers from saving seeds for
next year's crop. They have done this for generations and locally harvested seeds
adapt gradually and naturally to their environment. Traditional farming methods
could be destroyed and environmental damage could occur if artificially produced
sterile genes transfer to wild plants and non-GM crops. A single-minded approach
to patenting new developments even when they are effectively based on traditional
ecological knowledge could effectively 'steal' the modest harvests of many local
peoples in the developing world (Shiva, 2000). This 'biopiracy' and the corporate
buy-out of many small biotech companies is sometimes seen as a cynical attempt by
the transnational biotech corporations to secure control of the world's food industry,
estimated to be worth in excess of $2,000 billion a year (Godrej, 2002). For Pigem
(2002), 'barcoding life reduces it to a commodity', inevitably leading to a loss of
respect for all life-forms, including our own. The issue of what constitutes 'sound
science' in such a world has consequently been hotly contested, with few firm or
broadly accepted conclusions. Environmental campaigners, including many scientists,
such as Mae-Wan Ho (1998), argue fiercely that there are so many uncertainties,
so many possible risks to the health of ecosystems and human beings through
contamination from promiscuous genes, that a principle of precaution should be
strictly applied to sensitive scientific research and development. In their submission
of scientific evidence presented in the defence of twenty-eight Greenpeace volunteers
on trial for their non-violent removal of a GM maize crop in Norfolk in 1999, a
number of scientists noted the likelihood of cross-contamination, the potential hazards
of low-dose toxicity, horizontal gene transfer and genetic alteration, and possible
effects on soil nutrient recycling and productivity (Greenpeace UK, 1999). In their
GM Contamination Register Report for 2006, the tenth year of the commercial
growing of genetically engineered crops, Greenpeace International recorded 24
incidents of GM contamination, particularly in rice and maize, making the total
number 142 since 1996. The report notes that GM contamination is a serious cause
for concern with serious negative consequences for those areas of countries choosing
to remain GM-free. Many countries do not have a system of liability for the costs
of contamination that may result from trials or clean-ups, so they may become the
responsibility of the contaminated party rather than the one contaminating.
Scientific knowledge on GM is in a constant state of development, but the problem
for many biotech companies and for science as an institution is the loss of public
trust, particularly in the UK, that has occurred as a result of the experience of mad
cow disease (BSE or bovine spongiform encephalopathy) jumping the species barrier
to produce the human variant CJD (Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease). Journalists (see, for
example, Brown, 2005) have reported many instances of modified genes from crops
being transferred to local wild plants, resulting in herbicide-resistant 'superweeds',
