The Social Vision of the Alternative Food Movement - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 534

the stage of laboratory testing. Still others are little more than ideas in the minds of
imaginative scientists, waiting for the opportunity to put them to the test. All have
this in common: they are biological solutions, based on understanding of the living
organisms they seek to control, and of the whole fabric of life to which these organ-
isms belong. Specialists representing various areas of the vast field of biology are
contributing—entomologists, pathologists, geneticists, physiologists, biochemists,
ecologists—all pouring their knowledge and their creative inspirations into the for-
mation of a new science of biotic controls.
(Carson [1962] 2002, 278)
It even appears that Carson and her associates actively sought to dissociate themselves
from the alternative food movement, which already existed then, though in a somewhat
nascent form. Carson never endorsed the movement, either in Silent Spring or else-
where. When Silent Spring was published, Marie Rodell, Carson's long-serving literary
agent and valued friend, specifically instructed the publisher to make sure that no one
placed ads in Rodale Inc. publications—then, as now, an important player in the alterna-
tive food movement (see Lear 1997, 415).
With its clarion call to develop new environmentally friendly biology-based technologies
for controlling agricultural pests, it is not surprising that Silent Spring served as an inspira-
tion for many pioneering scientists working in the fledgling field of agricultural biotechnol-
ogy. In Lords of the Harvest , a book in which he traces the origins of genetically engineered
crops, Daniel Charles highlights the views of a number of researchers in this regard:
Pam Marrone, a researcher at Monsanto during the late 1980s [says] . . . “I remember
having lunch with [then-CEO] Dick Mahoney and him saying, 'Because of parathion
[a particularly hazardous chemical insecticide], I don't ever want to be in chemicals
again. And that's why we're in biotechnology.' ” . . .
“During these years, all of us who went into biology were influenced by the wave
of environmentalism,” says Willy de Greef, who worked for Plant Genetic Systems in
Belgium. . . . “The idea was reduce chemicals with biologicals or with genetics.” Fred
Perlak of Monsanto says . . . “We were all the children of the sixties and the seventies.
We'd all read Silent Spring ; we knew the connection between 2-4-D [a common her-
bicide] and 2-4-5-T, Agent Orange.”
(Charles 2002, 25)
In a complete repudiation of Rachel Carson's environmental vision, agricultural bio-
technology is portrayed today by the alternative food movement as one of the greatest
environmental evils.
The View from India
The alternative food movement is situated primarily in the industrialized West. The
consequent lack of voices from the non-Western world does not, however, prevent this