This post originally appeared in The Globe and Mail on July 7, 2003
Last month, as a side trip to an academic conference, I toured Monsanto’s massive research facility outside St. Louis, Missouri, where scientists develop and test genetically-modified crops. The science is truly impressive. And the people at Monsanto are proud of their accomplishments. The fellow who conducted our tour—a researcher himself—could not contain his enthusiasm for YieldGard® Corn Borer, Bollgard® Cotton, and Roundup Ready® Corn and Soybeans, which promise higher yields, reduced pesticide requirements, and cleaner ground water. He was a true believer.
At the end of a flashy PowerPoint show, he took our questions. His enthusiasm turned to defensiveness and frustration when he discovered that we were social scientists. What did he think of the European ban on biotech foods? What about safety concerns? What about downstream unintended consequences? Exasperated, he insisted that Monsanto’s GMOs (genetically-modified organisms) were the most intensively tested crops ever; that they had been proven 100% safe; and that the European ban had no scientific basis. It was trade protection, pure and simple, designed to keep foreign agricultural products out of the European market.
“How can you prove something is 100% safe?” I asked, not meaning to be rude, but genuinely curious. “Didn’t we think DDT and Thalidomide were safe, until we discovered by surprise that they weren’t?”
“Well, okay,” he said; “99.999 percent safe.”
That was quite an admission on his part, and I admired him for it. A true scientist never claims more than he or she can justify. Years and years of testing in the lab and in the field, he meant to say, had given us no reason to fear GMOs. If there were something to fear, odds are it would have turned up by now.
He’s probably right. The longer we go without discovering that GMOs have serious negative consequences, the more confidence we can have that they do not. We can never be 100 percent confident, but for my part, I would happily eat Roundup Ready® Corn and wear clothing spun from Bollgard® Cotton. I judge the risks these products pose to my personal health and safety minuscule compared to the risks I run every day by driving, or even just breathing, in Toronto. But what if I were more risk averse? Or what if I objected, on aesthetic or spiritual grounds, to monkeying around with genes? In either case, I would certainly be unhappy about being forced to consume GMOs because I had no way of knowing whether the products I bought were bio-engineered or not.
The political issue is coming to a head. Canada, the United States, and Australia have all challenged the European ban on GMOs as a scientifically unjustified restraint on trade. Hoping to avoid an unfavourable ruling from the World Trade Organization, the European Parliament voted this week to lift the ban, but will require strict labelling and tracking of GM crops, and will allow the 15 EU countries to set their own rules for preventing seeds from fields planted with GMOs from drifting. The Bush administration has already signalled its dissatisfaction, and seems certain to challenge these measures, too. Ottawa will shortly have to decide whether to do so as well.
It would be politically and economically tempting for Canada to challenge Europe’s new measures. The Bush administration cares strongly about this issue, and U.S.-Canadian relations are still suffering from the Iraq debacle. Canadian agricultural exports to Europe would certainly be higher without labelling and tracking requirements. But there is an ethical issue here, and it is clear: Europeans should be allowed to make their own judgments about what they consume, and Canada should not stand in the way.
EU polls show that 70 percent of Europeans do not want to eat genetically-modified food, and 94 percent want to be able to choose. Labelling and tracking requirements reflect the democratic will of Europe. Europeans may overestimate the risks; they may appreciate how small the risks seem at present but simply prefer not to run them; or they may have some principled objection to genetic modification. Whatever the ground of their reluctance, they have a right to be reluctant. We have no right to tell them that they do not.
Toward the end of our tour, my guide and I broke away from the group and had a long and interesting conversation about culture and science. “The Europeans think we just want to make money,” he said. “Of course we want to make money. But we also want to make the world a better place. Science is the way to do that, and throughout our history, Americans have always embraced it. Europeans are more skeptical.” A sweeping claim, I thought, but probably true enough—and a tacit admission that Europe’s opposition to GMOs is not merely protectionism after all. What I really wanted to ask him was whether he thought one country had a right to impose its attitude toward science on others. But I held my tongue.