What Place has GM Technology

in Sustainability?

A Case study of GM Crops and Food

An Ethical and Societal Analysis

Dr Donald M. Bruce
 Nanotechnologies
Human enhancement

Stem cells & Cloning

Human Genetics
GM Food & Animals
ethics in science and technology
Climate Change
Energy Policy
Sustainable living
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Engineering Genesis

Bruce D and Bruce A (eds)

Report of the SRT Project

multi-disciplinary
expert working group
on ethical & social issues
of genetic modification
in non-human life-forms

Quite simply, the best book on the

subject”, Tom Wilkie, New
Statesman
 Engineering Genesis: Two types of questions
• Should we Genetically Modify animals, crops, micro-organisms?
• for what purposes – food, medicine, energy, materials
• which species, which traits, which locations, what circumstances?
• with what regulations, labels, intellectual property, etc.
• GM as a Symbol of (and a portal to) many Deeper Questions :
• how far should we intervene in nature and living organisms?
• how ‘technically’ or ‘naturally’ should we produce our food
• how precautionary should we be with risks or scientific uncertainty?
• should policy be made on value-based or instrumental reasoning?
• what values drive biotechnology; are they society’s or just an elite?
• whose views should be decisive: experts, campaigners, lay people?
 GM Crops : The Consumer Revolt

Feb.1999, NGO/consumer/aid agency/media campaign against GM food

Extraordinarily effective, supermarkets withdrew all GM products

Environmental concerns -> farm scale trials, de facto moratorium

Why eat potentially risky food, of no benefit to us, if we have no choice?
Shockwave across scientific world –
that a public had overnight rejected an entire technology
developed over decades of research
Effect spread across Europe;
EC revised risk, labelling legislation
but why was USA and Canada public not equally worried?
Agriculture Environmental Biotechnology Commission set up
Belated recognition : need to engage with not merely ‘educate’ the
public
2009 2011
77% 75%
26% 32%
49% 82%
21% 26%
of global crop
 Global GM Cultivation: Growth but also Stagnation?
• Impressive year-on-year increase in acres cultivated
• 77% is US, Brazil, Argentina
• But (1) ... uptake is varied
• Europe largely resistant
• China unclear if it will go ahead with Bt rice
• India said no to Bt aubergine
• But (2) ... after 15 years almost all the acreage is still two GM traits
• tolerance to a particular type of herbicide
• one insecticide gene construct derived from natural Bt bacteria
• originally from one company (Monsanto), mainly geared towards N.America
• ‘any trait you like, provided it’s HT/Bt’?

The GM product pipeline has stagnated, despite all the promise

 Whatever happened to 2nd Generation GM?
• Despite the hype, the ‘second’ and ‘third generation’ GM products
have still not really happened, 15 years later
• Drought resistance – first variety (a maize) at last expected 2012
but developed for the USA ... not in sub-Saharan Africa till (?)
2017
• Little progress with ‘functional’ foods, nutritional enhancement, or other
consumer-related food traits
• Only 5 quality trait GM products ever commercialised so far
• Only 2 of these still marketed (one is a GM carnation)
 Whatever happened to ‘Feeding the World’?
• Many smallholders growing GM, apparently– significant resistance also
• Questions how relevant it is to most 3W
• Primarily 4 crops : not wheat, not much rice, few pulses or fruits
• Maize apart, little is available for most staple crops of the world’s poor
• A lot of GM growth (India, Africa) is cotton, or animal feed maize

• Little developed to control widespread African pests (for example)

• Golden rice the first GM product aimed at the Third World
hopes to be released in popular local rice varieties in 2012
its development was largely public and foundation
funded
• Harvest Plus micro-nutrient enhancement programme, ditto
• But getting any new variety to market, safely, takes time, testing & $$$
 Current situation for Growing GM Crops in Europe

• Experimental GM crops still researched in UK and elsewhere

• EC regulations allow 12 GM crop varieties to be sold
8 HT and/or Bt maize, 2 HT soya, 1 HT sugar beet, 1 HT cotton
• But only 2 maizes can be grown : Esp, Cz, Ger, Pol, Por, Rom, Svk
• A lot of this is for animal feed; some for human food or processing
• New approval: GM potato modified to make a specific industrial starch
• But the company BASF (Europe’s last major ag-biotech researcher)
is now pulling out of Europe : no market
 Current situation for Supplying GM Crops in Europe

• Supermarkets could offer GM food, but don’t ...

• GM bacteria widely used in cheese manufacture; not considered ‘GM’ food
• Suppliers to EU have to label ‘of GM origin’ and show traceability
• heavy penalties if even trace ‘contamination’ is found in a shipment
• all shipments of rice from China will now need analysis
• significant trade disincentive
• in whose name?

who actually wants such extreme measures to exclude GM from

imports?
• Sourcing non-GM soya & maize for animal feed is already impractical
• Sourcing non-GM soya & maize for food is likely to get more difficult ...
 Is GM re-emerging as an Issue in the UK?
• 2009 Windsor St George’s House workshop: GM issues re-emerging
• 2010 Food Standards Agency holding new public consultation on GM
• What happens if ‘GM-free’ food becomes impossible to guarantee?
• Would that matter?
• Currently, you cannot choose GM, so you don’t have choice
• If in future you could only avoid GM by paying extra, only some people
have that choice
• UK Social Attitudes Survey: public
support for GM food up a bit : 19% 2008, 10% in 1999
• Even if risk concern is lower, does the absence of tangible consumer
benefits of GM food remain the major disincentive for public approval?
• Are UK and EU consumers’ attitudes indirectly blocking local GM
development in (for example) Africa?
 Why GM Crops? A Proponent’s View

Agronomic traits
• to improve the yield of crops
• to reduce dependence on fertilisers and herbicides
• to enhance resistance to weeds, pests and disease
• to reduce the vulnerability to environmental stress
Food quality
• to increase the nutritional qualities of food
• to provide additional health/medical constituents in food
• to improve the taste, texture or appearance of food
• to improve food processing and storage
Non-food uses
• to produce novel substances (e.g. vaccines), biofuels
• in forestry, industry, flowers, environmental remediation
Instrumental reasoning based on promised benefits: many unfulfilled
 Why not GM Crops? Opponent’s View

• Continues the trend of chemically dependent, industrial agriculture

• Technical fix on problems created by industrial agriculture
• Deflects attention from deeper issues of how we produce food
• ‘Stitch-up’ between Government and commercial interests
• Runs unknown risks to human health
• Damages ecosystems by unintended effects of GM
• Narrows biodiversity with more mono-culture crops
• Widens the gap between rich and poor countries
• Puts ever more power into multi-national companies
• Provides no benefit and no choice for the consumer
Mixture of value-based and instrumental reasoning
 GM as a Sustainability Issue

• Not just a case of weighing up pros and cons

• But an examination of differing values

• Clash of cultures - industrial/State and ecological/NGO

• Clash of world views - intervention and conservation

• Inherent assumptions and ethical principles on both sides

• Many ways of framing the issue

depending on what you consider the crucial question …

• What is it we want to sustain in agriculture and food?

 GM Food - Key Value Criteria

• Scientific rationality - technological progress

• Commercial - economic growth, jobs, competition
• Theological/philosophical - is switching genes right or wrong?
• Ideological - industrial vs organic agriculture
• Risk – uncertain outcomes; when do we know enough?
• Resouce - feeding the world
• Development - global justice for the poor
• Benefits – Goals and interests of companies vs. consumers
• Trust – government, regulators, NGO’s
• Control / Participation - who decides / what criteria?
 Switching Genes Across Species
• No difference from selective breeding – or a radical step change?
• ‘GM’ happens a lot in micro-organisms, not so much in plants
• Playing God – negatively : “unnatural” / forbidden
• Tampering with nature / Upsetting ecological wisdom
• Altering distinctions made over evolutionary history
• Violates the integrity or inherent value of the organism
• Inherently riskier than selective breeding
• Playing God – positively : God invites us to intervene, within limits
• What is an organism … and does GM violate this?
• Reductionist view - genetic blueprint
• Functional view – certain vital or intrinsic functions
• Holisitic view – complementary descriptions
 GM Food - Key Value Criteria

• Scientific rationality - technological progress

• Commercial - economic growth, jobs, competition
• Theological/philosophical - is switching genes right or wrong?
• Ideological - industrial vs organic agriculture
• Risk – uncertain outcomes; when do we know enough?
• Resouce - feeding the world
• Development - global justice for the poor
• Benefits – Goals and interests of companies vs. consumers
• Trust – government, regulators, NGO’s
• Control / Participation - who decides / what criteria?
 Organic Views of GM

• Organic system relies on soil nutrients & natural systems to feed plants
to give human health ... instead of external chemicals ... or GM
• Chose in mid-1990’s to exclude GM as it continues a technological
mindset inimical to organic principles
• Natural processes better than technological intervention
• Selective breeding more natural and inherently less risky
• Positioned itself in the market in 1999 as the natural alternative to GM
• Some Points of Critique
• Need sustainable agriculture exclude all GM methods?
• Is nature necessarily better and less risky; why is selective breeding safer?
• Some things included as ‘organic’ are also used in conventional agriculture
 Can GM and Organic Co-exist?
• Issue of liability: if gene flow from GM to an Organic crop
• Loss of organic grower’s expected premium on his/her crop
• Soil Association argues for zero % GM adventitious presence
• Value-laden concepts / rhetoric :
• contamination, as if it was radioactive
• natural, as if that means it’s harmless
• GM seen as violation of purity of organic concept
• is anything in life so pure that we can demand absolute protection?
• why 0% GM and not 0% pesticide residues?

• GM grower has no right to violate organic by carelessness

• Organic has no right to demand absolute purity for a minority practice
• Moral stance compromised if either one tries to eliminate the other
• Justice: mutual responsibility to compromise to ensure each can exist?
 GM Food - Key Value Criteria

• Scientific rationality - technological progress

• Commercial - economic growth, jobs, competition
• Theological/philosophical - is switching genes right or wrong?
• Ideological - industrial vs organic agriculture
• Risk – uncertain outcomes; when do we know enough?
• Resouce - feeding the world
• Development - global justice for the poor
• Benefits – Goals and interests of companies vs. consumers
• Trust – government, regulators, NGO’s
• Control / Participation - who decides / what criteria?
Is Genetic Modification too Risky for Humans to Manage?

Unintended effects of genes moved out of their normal context?

Long-term risks to health: widely feared but no scientific evidence
• FSA : GM no better/worse than any other sort of food?
• Clash : plausibility and unfamiliarity vs. evidence-based policy
Environmental risks
• Pest resistance : large scale application vs targeted benefits?
• Gene flow happens but only to related varieties:
• Only a big issue if serious evolutionary advantage results
• Contamination of local non-GM crops (thresholds, co-existence)
• Biodiversity : can GM make it better or worse?
 Farm Scale Trials of Herbicide Tolerant GM

• World’s largest scientific investigation of farmland ecology

• Irony : attacked and criticised by GM opponents
… until the results came out in their favour
• Oil seed rape, sugar beet : GM decreased weed populations
and bees, butterflies and wintering birds which depend on them
• Maize showed increase in weeds and wildlife but
compared with aggressive non-GM herbicide (Atrazine)
• Effects caused by herbicide tolerance not by GM as such
• Same results expected if selectively bred herbicide tolerance
• Widespread GMHT might exacerbate existing long term decline,
but major variations in expected agricultural practice
• So what is the right balance between production/wildlife?
• FSE report concludes : shift back to wildlife to a significant degree
 How do we weigh up GM Risk?
• Evidence based and precautionary risk assessment
• How precautionary should we be about potential GM risks?
Whose version of the "precaution principle"?
Whose burden of proof : to prove harm or no harm?
• Crops and applications differ greatly : case-by-case evaluation
• Moratorium : What would be the criterion to go ahead ... or not?
When can we ever say we have done enough tests?
Theological question : did God create life risky?

• God created human life in context of natural risks & physical limits
• God made humans creative but not omniscient
• Humans creativity & ingenuity always has uncertain consequences
• Human fallibility makes us more prone to risk
• But has more safety made recent generations more risk averse?
• Is demanding absolute safety out of step with God?
• Where does true security lie?
 GM Food - Key Value Criteria

• Scientific rationality - technological progress

• Commercial - economic growth, jobs, competition
• Theological/philosophical - is switching genes right or wrong?
• Ideological - industrial vs organic agriculture
• Risk – uncertain outcomes; when do we know enough?
• Resouce - feeding the world
• Development - global justice for the poor
• Benefits – Goals and interests of companies vs. consumers
• Trust – government, regulators, NGO’s
• Control / Participation - who decides / what criteria?
 Do we need GM to “feed the world”? - basics
"To feed an expanding global population we'll need GM"
"GM is the last thing that developing countries need"
“European resistance to GM is stopping GM development in Africa”
What is the basic issue? - various factors are claimed :
• agricultural inefficiency, local ignorance
• poverty, insecurity of livelihoods of local farmers
• inequity of distribution of current global economy
• national inequities, corruption, civil war
• global and local ambitions of major players - state & corporate
• radically wrong policies of global funders (IMF/World Bank, etc.)
• WTO rules promoting wrong or insensitive motivations/pressures
• greed of all of us?
 Great diversity of situations

• Locality and scale: Argentina soya plantations; African smallholders

• Funding/promotion: Company, Government, Academic, Trusts
• Crops: cash crops, food for local market, subsistence farming
• Sources: indigenous crops, national seeds, foreign hybrids, GM
• Traits: developed nationally (China, Brazil) or abroad (US, UK)
• Maintenance: crops which do/do not require chemical/other inputs
• Food aid issues: 1W surpluses, local economy, etc.
 GM to “feed the world”? - company realities
• GM development dominated by private sector so far
• Companies not interested in markets for the really poor
• Almost all use of GM in South is of N. crops applied directly in S.
• GM aimed mostly at N. production efficiency, not feeding the poor
• Same inequity found in the ‘solution’ as in the problem
• Research needs radical re-orientation or drop the claim?
• Can private sector change its spots?
• Some partnerships with S. research institutes
• Some awareness of need to release materials, patents, etc.
• But overall, private sector generally seen as threat or nuisance
 Assumptions and Fallacies
• Underlying assumptions of the GM argument in private sector :
• increased efficiency of 1W is the answer
• whatever GM is good for N. is good for the S. farmers
• “trickle down” logic rather than tailoring GM to needs of S.
• Some fallacies :
• naïve assumption about usefulness of N. high tech solutions in S.
• who takes up GM in South?
• how does this relate to the poor/hungry?
• does GM uptake cause more dependency on multi-nationals?
• Problem-based or solution-based logic?
• is GM the best among a range of options to a known problem?
• or is GM a solution looking for an application?
 Can public sector GM deliver for the poor?

• Conditions for using GM in the South (Sahai):

• feed the poor, give farmers a living, avoid TNC's
• Can anyone deliver GM in practice to local farmers
in ways that meet these criteria?
• GM in public sector - different picture about who it serves
• some work by national research institutes
• some institute collaborations with N. institutes (e.g. DFID)
• some is N. funded work then applied in S. (golden rice)
• Mostly early stage work; few are near-market
• Generally avoids private sector genes and crop varieties
• At a major disadvantage: economics, infrastructure and regulation
 GM Research in the Global “South”

• GM research in 16 S. countries, 46 crops, over 200 applications

• China, South Africa, Indonesia, India, Argentina: 58%
• Cereals 32%, fruit 16, vegetables 15, roots/tubers 13, oils 9
• Resistance to : virus 27%, insect 25, fungus 10, bacteria 3
• Herbicide tolerance (HT) 5%; other agronomic traits 13; quality
8%
• Only insect, virus resistance and HT are well developed
• No good GM “constructs” yet for fungus or bacteria
• Plans for dissemination to local farmers not often established
• How well linked are scientists and subsistence farmers?
 Some factors about GM in the South

Northern view of science allied to ideology of progress

puts local agriculture and knowledge at a disadvantage
North holds all the cards in regulation and patent systems
danger of forcing the South to conform against its
interests
big pressures from IMF/WB/WTO under wrong ideology?
Southern views may depend on who they have talked to in North
Promotion of “sustainable” agriculture as alternative - dangers :
seeing “organic” as saviour for Northern ideological
reasons
idealising indigenous knowledge
rather than good practice and best solution approach
 GM Food - Key Value Criteria

• Scientific rationality - technological progress

• Commercial - economic growth, jobs, competition
• Theological/philosophical - is switching genes right or wrong?
• Ideological - industrial vs organic agriculture
• Risk – uncertain outcomes; when do we know enough?
• Resouce - feeding the world
• Development - global justice for the poor
• Benefits – Goals and interests of companies vs. consumers
• Trust – government, regulators, NGO’s
• Control / Participation - who decides / what criteria?
 Social justice - who benefits and who loses?

• GM crops for whose benefit - companies, farmers or consumers?

• Who is controlling it, and to whom are they accountable?
• Failure of democracy in UK decision making re GM products
• How should the public have a say in these matters?
• How does society protect those who object to modified food?
• GM foods should be labelled by process not by content
 GM Food - Key Value Criteria

• Scientific rationality - technological progress

• Commercial - economic growth, jobs, competition
• Theological/philosophical - is switching genes right or wrong?
• Ideological - industrial vs organic agriculture
• Risk – uncertain outcomes; when do we know enough?
• Resouce - feeding the world
• Development - global justice for the poor
• Benefits – Goals and interests of companies vs. consumers
• Trust – government, regulators, NGO’s
• Control / Participation - who decides / what criteria?
 Seeing GM as a Social Contract
What sort of Conditions?
• Does it uphold or challenge our Values
• Is something Familiar?
• What can we Compare it with? Did it work or not?
• How much we Feel In Control of it?
• How much do we Trust those in control?
• Do we Share their Motives, vision and goals?
• What sort of Risks are involved?
• Do I have any Choice - voluntary or imposed risk?
• Are there tangible Benefits to consumers?
• How is it Portrayed in the mass media?
 GM Soya failed the Social Contract
• Unfamiliar and sensitive
• Challenged basic values about genes and species
• Suspicion of unnecessary scientific tampering
• Risk compared with BSE or ecological accidents
• Not in control and no trust in those who are
• Suspicion about commercial motivations
• Low probability, high consequence risk, insidious
• No choice : any risk would be unavoidable
• Imposed risk with no tangible benefit
SOCIAL CONTRACT - GM SOYA & TOMATO PASTE
GM Soya GM Tomato
Products Paste
Familiarity No No
Values No ?
Comparison No Yes
Control No No
Trust No Yes
Vision No ?
Choice No Yes
Risk No ?
Benefits No Yes
Media Profile No No
These are based on the author’s personal evaluation
 COULD GM APPLICATIONS BE ACCEPTABLE?
NUTRA- PLANT ENHANCE ANIMAL
CEUTICAL VACCINE ECOLOGY DISEASE
Familiarity No Yes No No
Values Yes Yes No Yes/No
Comparison Yes? Yes/No No Yes/No
Control No No No No
Trust ? Yes No No?
Vision No Yes ? Yes
Choice Yes Yes ? Yes
Risk ? ? Yes/No No?
Benefits Yes Yes Yes? Yes?
Media Profile Yes? Yes/No No ?
These are illustrative only – based on the author’s estimation
 Summary : Some Ethical Questions about GM -1
Basic Issues
• Is it wrong to be manipulating genes across species?
• Does it make any difference what we are modifying?
• For which ends can we modify and which not?
Priorities
• What human needs are we applying our skills & resources to?
• What should be the priorities in crop and soil research?
• Who should decide on these priorities?
Power and Global Justice
• Are we "Feeding the World" or just Western supermarkets?
• Who are the losers as well as the winners of a given application?
•Third World benefits and disbenefits from gene technology?
 Summary : Some Ethical Questions about GM – 2
Risk
•Do we know as much as we think about the full effects of crop GM?
•on plants and their genetics?
•on the ecosystem?
•on human health?

• How far should we be precautionary?

• At what point can we go ahead?
Societal Questions
•What are our obligations to those who object?
• Should we segregate and label GM food from ordinary food?
• What should we agree to label?
• How do we make our biotechnology accountable to the public?
 SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY

‘The extent to which the genome can be redesigned to produce a

radically novel synthetic organism is of considerable interest.’
(Royal Society workshop report)
• The same presumption as with GM :
• that we can apply to self-organising living systems
• the same manipulative, directed, function-oriented practices
we habitually apply to inanimate matter
• Is it right to apply engineering logic to re-design living organisms
(or even to ourselves?) once we think we have the tools to do
so
• Is biology now to be seen as a branch of engineering?
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 SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY RHETORIC

• Expressions : iGEM : genetically engineered machines

• Aspirations : artificial cells, synthetic organisms, creating life
• BioBricks
• Minimal genome ‘chassis’
• Exaggeration
• almost religious visions for what synbio is capable of achieving
• treated as almost inevitable in a mechanical way
• Creating life ... c.f. Patenting life (1990’s)
• argument that patenting a GMO had violated a category distinction
• products of nature  products of industry (Crespi)
• link to inanimate matter >>> link to what is alive
• IPR ignored an value (?) or intuition of popular culture
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 ETHICAL LIMITS TO SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY? –
Inherent Value
• Synthetic biology is mostly about micro-organisms, so far
• Patenting micro-organisms set a precedent for all other life forms
• Should we be careful not to make precedents with synbio?

• Medieval scholastics: animals ordered to higher purposes of humans

• Criticised: inherent value, God’s creatures, subjects of a life, sentience
• Hard to argue the same for bugs : ‘let’s hear it for E.coli ...’?
• But if you move up to plants and animals, what you are engineering
starts to have greater significance
if you could one day make radical changes

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 ETHICAL LIMITS TO SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY? - Risk

• Do we know what we are doing?

• Applying design to an undesigned system
• Junior designers trying to improve on dad’s model?
• Imperfect designers
• What is sufficient knowledge to justify creating ‘synthetic’ organisms
and releasing them
• insufficient to have a good empirical craft skill
• the more radical the change the more you have the thorough scientific underpinning

• Beware being pressed by arguments of utility (energy, cures, cleanup)

to act before we are ready

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 ETHICAL LIMITS TO SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY?
Virtue Ethics
Conclusions?
Synthetic biology challenges similar values to those GM challenged
It remains to be seen if it can deliver anything like some of its hype
But in how it is conceived and spoken of
there are challenges to basic values that GM marginalised
that we should marginalise at our peril

An insight from virtue ethics

What sort of person or society are we
if we regard something living as a mere object at our disposal?

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