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Report of the Church of Scotland General Assembly, 11 May 1999
42. Receive the SRT Project report on Genetically Modified Food, and recognise the potential for genetically modified crops for human, environmental and medical good, but urge HM Government to continue to adopt a precautionary approach to its deployment, in view of the potential environmental and safety impacts.
An additional motion calling for a 5 year moratorium on genetically modifed foods was rejected by a substantial majority.
43. Out of respect for the views of those who object to eating modified foods, call upon HM Government and the EU to require mandatory labelling of all foods with either identifiable traces of DNA or proteins, or whose production has involved genetic modification.
44. Express concern at the lack of public accountability of the introduction of genetically modified soya and maize into the UK and the EU.
44a. Call on the HM Government in its renegotiation of the WTO rules to insist on its right to forbid the importing of sensitive traded goods, such as GMO's and animal growth hormones, on the grounds of national ethical values or safety perceptions.
45. Urge Government, EU and private sector funding bodies to redress the bias towards western consumer foods in research and development of genetic engineering, and put a much greater priority and resources into applications targeted at food needs in marginal lands and poorest peoples of developing countries.
In view of what has happened since, it is ironic that the first main UK product, Zeneca's tomato paste, was quite well received and continues to sell well. It was sensitively introduced and clearly labelled and segregated from non-modified paste. The problems have come largely with the introduction from the USA of unlabelled and unsegregated genetically modified soya by Monsanto and maize by Novartis. These together have created a storm of controversy across Europe, and a UK consumer backlash against modified foods in general. It has led to serious disagreements between the European Commission and several member states over safety. Austria has gone to the European Court of Justice to defend its defiance of an EC order to allow genetically modified maize in its country. There have been calls for moratoria not only from environmental NGOs, but from the Secretary of State for the Environment, the Chair of English Nature (although Scottish Natural Heritage do not entirely agree) and Prince Charles, who drew widespread attention a newspaper article setting out his view that genetically engineered food represented humans going into realms that belonged to God alone - that we were playing God [ - to which SRT responded in a Moral Maze BBC Radio 4 debate.]
Long before these events, the SRT Project was already examining the issue, as part of its four year expert working group on the ethics of genetic engineering in non-human species. This unique study engaged some of the best informed specialists in Scotland on genetic research, ethics, theology, sociology, risk and public perception, and culminated in the publication in November 1998 of the book "Engineering Genesis" by Earthscan Publications. It includes several case studies drawn from plant biotechnology and chapters devoted to transgenic food, risk, underlying and social ethical issues, as well as animal genetics. The SRT Project presents this report to the General Assembly, drawing on these expert findings, but also taking account of "grassroots" concerns within the church. It is especially grateful to the Guild for the opportunity to address national representatives in September, and for the useful responses sent in from Guild members to questions SRT posed. SRT has also liaised with the parallel study by the Church and Nation Committee on the state of agriculture in Scotland.
Our diet comes from a relatively small number of the organisms available on the earth. As much as 93% of the human diet is provided by only 29 basic crop species. For thousands of years human beings have sought to improve these by identifying especially useful characteristics and seeking to enhance them by selective breeding. This is a type of genetic engineering, but the range of genes available to the breeder is mostly restricted to those which have evolved naturally within the same species or a closely related one. The advent of molecular genetic engineering has dramatically changed this picture.
Having discovered the basic concept of a genetic code carried by the DNA molecule, scientists began to find that certain sections of it had particular functions in the organism. They then found ways to snip out these individual genetic sequences chemically, and to insert them into the genetic code of a different organism, and so transfer that function to the second organism. In principle, this now means that genes could be introduced into a given crop or animal species from anywhere in the entire gene pool of microbes, viruses, plants, animals and even humans.
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Both these approaches have led to substantial reductions in the chemical sprayed on to the crops, compared with the non-modified versions of these crops, but they have also raised some problems. For example, "Bt maize" has been challenged on safety grounds in several European countries, although it has been passed by the relevant EC safety committees. A second problem is a risk that the increased use of this pesticide could rapidly lead to strains of insects resistant to the Bt toxin.
Return to Why Genetically Modified Food?
An alternative presentation could put a very different gloss on the technology. Put in the context of carrying on the trend of increasingly industrial and technology dependent agriculture, it can be presented as another dubious technical fix which hides facing up to deeper issues about how we produce our food. Unintended effects of the genetic modification might pose all sorts of unknown risks to human health and damaged ecosystems. It would narrow biodiversity to still more mono-culture crops, and widen the gap between rich and poor countries, for whom high tech solutions are not conducive to their indigenous ways of life, even supposing they could afford them. It would put ever more power into the hands of multi-national seed and chemical companies oblivious to ethical or regional sensitivities. Just as with the case in favour, there is often both exaggeration and substantial elements of truth - presentation to create a desired effect. So what are we to make of these conflicting claims?
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Drawing from the metaphors in the opening chapters of Genesis, we are a part of creation, made of dust, the same "stuff" as the earth, formed from the same chemical elements, and we share with animals and plants the gift of life, with a shared genetic inheritance. Yet we have an additional dimension, expressed by the notion of being "in the image of God", distinguishing us from the rest of creation. If this suggests special attributes, it also implies a special responsibility, in which God's image is expressed as a priestly calling in the creative, imaginative and caring way we are to act in nature, on God's behalf. As the Dutch theologian Egbert Schroten has pointed out, there is here a proper sense in which we are called to "play God".
This priestly role both encourages human technological endeavour, as a God-given expression of our humanity, and also puts constraints on it. Does it then give us license to change the creation genetically, of which we are ourselves a part? The Bible recognises many threats to human life within the created world, including famine, flood, drought, disease, earthquake and pestilence, which technology is used to address, and many ways in which life can be enhanced. It recognises using the potential inherent in the earth's minerals to produce metals and alloys like iron, steel, bronze and aluminium. In such a context, it is hard to argue that genetic engineering to help produce food falls in the negative sense of playing God - something inherently wrong, and therefore forbidden - in a way that chemical fertilisers and mechanical engineering are not. Indeed, some maintain that it is more "natural" to use genes than the use of man-made toxic molecules to kill weeds, pests and diseases.
Another metaphor in Genesis is that of creation as a garden, which humanity is called to work and to take care of. From both Old and New Testaments comes the now familiar environmental notion of stewardship - that we look after nature responsibly, answerable to God as a steward is to the owner of an estate. The context for this picture is one of relationship. We may use the creation, but what we may do is constrained by our dependence on God as creator and sustainer, by what may be permitted for good human relations, and by what is permissible to do with our fellow creatures and parts of creation, with whom we are, in Ruth Page's term, companions. For example, behind the Old Testament command "do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain" (Deut.25:4) lies a principle that while we may make use the strength of an animal, we are also to respect its needs and its intrinsic worth as a creature of God. Would genetic engineering violate any of these relationships and especially this companionship?
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A key question is whether we consider the nature of an organism to be in the exact blueprint of its genes or in a much wider concept of what, in essence, we mean by human, pig, wheat or E.coli. If a Christian understanding favours the more holisitic view, then one would object to genetic change only if it involved a profound change of the very nature of an organism or to capacities fundamental to its integrity. Thus it would be unacceptable to create a chimera, in which half the genes were mixed from two different species, or to mix the egg nucleus of one species with the cytoplasm of another. In contrast, to add one or two genes from another species would be a violation of the nature of the animal or plant, unless that particular change greatly altered some very basic capacity or property of the organism.
There need therefore be no moral objection to Christians eating a foodstuff containing one or two genes of another species, or even of human origin. Some argue that this is of no significance anyway because the "foreign" gene has been copied many times using chemicals or bacteria. This is not convincing, because most people would probably still associate the gene by its origin, and by definition its vital genetic information has not changed. The case of animal genes in vegetarian food is somewhat different, because for some people it may be important to know whether the very molecules that are eaten have actually ever been part of an animal.
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The uncertain and unforeseen aspects of genetic modification are the primary focus of concern for many people. If we have herbicide resistant crops, will the genes prove to be more mobile than expected and jump species, perhaps creating a resistant weed with a selection advantage over the crop. What will be the wider effects on the local ecosystem or the food chain for other species, or even human food safety? Once this genie is out of the bottle, it would be hard to put it back.
While the human imagination can fail to see consequences which in hindsight were obvious, it is also easy to exaggerate the risks. To date genetic modification does not seem to have led to any widespread ecological disaster. Since the early days of genetic engineering, researchers have been aware of the need for precaution over manipulating such powerful basic forces. Complex regulations were drawn up to govern what may and may not be released to the environment. Contained trials that show signs that they could cause problems if released more widely are terminated at an early stage. There are also some encouraging initial results that at least some modified crops are so far leading to the use of less chemicals on the land. Scientists are now more confident in their understanding, but they have not yet carried the public with them.
Both sides of the case are driven by powerful underlying values which are not ones the church should endorse uncritically. Christians of all people, living by the daily "risk" of our faith, should beware encouraging an aversion to risk that demands minimising every conceivable hazard, no matter how tiny the probability. We cannot demand "absolute safety" for God did not create our world with any such guarantee.
The history of technology shows that it would be complacent to imagine there could not be "the one that got away", despite the precautionary regulations. More is known about some genetically modified organisms than others, and as more are released increasingly complex ecological relationships are set up, which may prove very difficult to analyse. In a still relatively young science, it would be irresponsible to relax the principle of precaution too far. It also seems appropriate at present to concentrate on applications that are restricted in scale, and which confer strong human or ecological benefits, and to set up long term monitoring to see that there are no serious unintended effects over extended periods of time.
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The introduction into the EU of Monsanto's genetically modified soya and Novartis' maize, unlabelled and unsegregated, reveals disturbing trends about the power structures which combined to enforce these products over the head of any proper sense of public involvement. The failure of the companies to offer to segregate modified and unmodified products is now seen as an unacceptably aggressive attitude towards the public of another nation. It is the more disturbing that this came about with the express approval of the EC, more anxious to avoid a trade war than to take account of European public values. When issues as basic as food and as contentious as genetic engineering are at stake, private commercial concerns and international trade pressure seem have a disproportionate influence on a public moral issue. There is an urgent need to redress this balance, and bring the driving forces behind the research and marketing of transgenic food back into public involvement and proper democratic accountability. At present when any major change like genetic engineering is in prospect, it comes as an external factor to be explained to the public, whose only participation is to accept or reject the packet on the shelf. In a democratic society, this is an unjust necessarily crude and wasteful way to make moral decisions over food. And in the case of genetically modified food, even that choice is not adequately provided.
Given the fundamental place which food plays, there is an overwhelming case of simple justice for the mandatory labelling and segregation of all genetically modified foodstuffs. It is now widely seen as a gross public relations failure to put on to the market genetically modified versions of the very types of foodstuffs which are so widely used in food processing that an enormous variety of common food products will contain them. It has produced a predictable public backlash and some changes, but the labelling issue has still not been properly addressed. The current EU regulations stipulate that labelling is mandatory only if it can be shown the food contains foreign DNA or proteins. This is a serious failure to address the key point at issue. For many people the objection eating food where genetic modification has been involved in the process, not whether the product exceeds the current limit of detection in a genetic test. The EU has reduced an ethical issue to one of scientific technicalities and so missed the spirit of the law. A voluntary code is not enough. The risk is that as with irradiated food, the public will vote with its feet about genetically modified food, and any benefits will be lost to everyone.
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return to ethical questions
To some extent, the applications of genetic engineering have been limited so far to the areas that have been found to work technically. Some of the more desirable possibilities may still be a long way off. The other factor is money. Pioneering genetic research is expensive and requires significant up-front investment. Only applications directed to the consumer markets of the world's rich nations are likely to offer the prospect of large paybacks. There are likely to be greater financial returns in pursuing western consumer preferences, than from meeting the needs of the poor. The claim that the benefits will trickle down is largely unsustainable. The present context is of a gross imbalance in food distribution between rich and poor. Far from exhibiting the characteristics one would expect of the technological solution to feeding the world, genetic engineering research and development currently reflects exactly the same unjust distribution.
The emerging transgenic food industry thus has a question of morality and honesty to face. If it is to have credibility, it will need to show substantial investment in the less profitable business of feeding the poor, and some rather concrete manifestations of how genetic engineering is going to meet the nutritional needs of two thirds of the world.
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The underlying concerns about risk and trustworthiness of those responsible suggest a need for much greater humility and a much greater degree of public participation in potential developments. For an aspect of human life of such immediate concern to everyone as food, there is something wrong if the developments which the public are eventually offered are things over which they have had very little say in choosing. Far greater public accountability is needed in this area if the genetic engineered food is to have any future in the UK. At the moment the jury is out on this point. Zeneca's tomato paste demonstrated what can be done if sensitive marketing of a segregated, labelled product. The introduction of the Monsanto soya beans and Novartis maize show the ways in which public moral and social sensitivities can be abused by multi-national companies operating in a different culture. The country that served Britain the painful lesson of the Boston Tea Party may ironically yet face a Rotterdam Soya Bean Fest, if the public of Europe metaphorically throw genetically modified soya and maize into the North Sea, not because they do not like them, but they do not like imperialist behaviour any more than the residents of Boston did.
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