One of the most encouraging things about the sustainable-food movement is how effortlessly it crosses traditional political-party, religious, ethnic, and other lines. The right to good, clean, and fair food, to borrow Slow Food's shorthand, seems to unite people who'd never otherwise find themselves chatting at the same party: Home schoolers and dreadlocked hippies, libertarian DIYers and heartland moms.
But there are little pockets of polarization where brawls can break out. One of them is the so-called elitism of such food. The biggest hot-button issue by far, though, is that of transgenic crops. The food movement's Christian wing opposes it for religious reasons, the Berkeley brigade for dogmatic ones, the moms out of health fears. Those with science or technology backgrounds, however, tend to see genetically modified organisms as just another tool in the how-we-are-going-to-feed-the-world toolbox -- and tend to get pretty impatient with those who fear them.
In her new book, Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds, Claire Hope Cummings marches through the middle of these often reflexive con and pro positions in search of a more nuanced big-picture view. An environmental lawyer for 20 years, including four spent with the USDA, Cummings now reports regularly on agriculture and the environment. She has also farmed in California and in Vietnam. These experiences inform her book, which chronicles how transgenic seeds came to market; how their corporate backing has affected farmers, biodiversity, and agricultural sovereignty; and what their unfettered spread may mean for humankind.
It's not a happy picture. Just as Rachel Carson opened Silent Spring with the allegory of a town that woke up to find all the birds gone silent, Cummings said she considered starting Uncertain Peril with a scene in which everyone goes out to check their spring gardens, only to find that nothing has grown. Recently Cummings stopped by my house in Oakland, Calif., (yes, on the Berkeley border) for a chat conducted at her usual breakneck pace.
What motivated you to write this argument against the use of genetic technologies in agriculture?
Because GMOs [genetically modified organisms] don't seem like an immediate personal threat, their risks to our health and the environment are fairly subtle. They're real; they're just not the kind you see on the evening news. There's a lot of information about those risks already available. I wrote the book because I'm very concerned with the political and moral aspects of the technology. As a public-interest lawyer I was appalled to learn how this was invented and imposed on us. We were never given a choice. There's a whole matrix of control involved, from the biological level -- the way they are engineered -- to the social level, how they are being imposed on people and nature.
Let's start with the biological. Why do you call genetic technology the "defining moral issue of our time"?
Because it dismantles the basic integrity of the natural world. It's so shortsighted. We don't know enough about the biological world to know what we're doing, and we haven't agreed on an ethical framework for these technologies.
But isn't the technology itself morally neutral?
Like all tools, technology simply extends the hand of man. But we forget that that hand is connected to the head and the heart. So how it is manipulated is part of the technology. We can talk about science as a set of different tools of inquiry, that can be a little less value-laden, but technology is never anything but a tool that is connected to a value.
Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds, by Claire Hope Cummings.
Genetically modifying a plant severs its relationship to its evolutionary course, and inserts into it, by force -- using a gene gun or bacteria -- some human idea of what the plant should do. The technology is limited both by its violent nature and our imagination. We're rearranging the molecular structure of these plants because we think we know how this plant should be used. Why, instead of breeding plants with traditional methods and relying on the plant's own carefully created system for say, drought resistance, would you use a much more expensive, unpredictable process like genetic engineering?
Because of patents. So you can own it. I mean, given all these great tools, what did Monsanto come up with? Herbicide-resistant soybeans to sell more of its chemicals. Most GMOs are plants that don't die when sprayed with a lethal herbicide, or ones that exude insecticide. That's Monsanto's idea of how to use nature to make money. The point of GMOs is control over seeds for profit.
Which brings us to the social-control aspect.
Yes, the ownership issue. For example, Monsanto owns so much of the world's cotton seed supply now that cotton farmers cannot get conventional [non-GM] seed. It is simply not offered. [Editorial note: Cummings later clarified that while non-GMO conventional seeds may be listed in catalogs, farmers are telling her that when they go to buy it, only GMO seeds are available.] Monsanto also tells farmers they can't save seeds, reuse them, or even study them. This is the time-honored heart of agriculture. Seeds have always adapted themselves to a specific place and climate. Now, just when we need more food, more adaptability, and natural diversity, millions of dollars' worth of seeds are being thrown away because of biotech industry contracts.
So this is really about who controls our food supply?
Yes. Is food going to be something the public maintains at the center of our personal and political decision-making, or will we just continue to hand it over to either private corporations (which have a completely different set of interests in mind) or to the government (which is now aligned with these private interests)? That's what we have now. How are we doing so far? I'd say the sorry state of public health and the environment shows our food system is not healthy.
When Abraham Lincoln created the U.S. Department of Agriculture, he called it "the People's Department." The USDA used to send seeds out free every year to gardeners and farmers all over America. The democratic underpinnings of our food system have been dismantled.
Talk to me about the tripod you write about, of "people, plants, and place."
That's my favorite way of discussing what we need to return to, what we need to build a productive agriculture on. True productivity, fertility, and health are based on those three things, and all of them are under huge duress right now. We have to go back to understanding that productivity is more of an ecological question and more whole-farm based, looking at the whole farm, the soil. It's about biodiversity and even the larger human community in and around that farm.
What can we do?
We can save seeds. It doesn't matter which ones. Calendula is a really pretty, very hardy flower, very generous with its seeds -- so easy to save. Have fun and plant stuff. Kids like to see things grow; radishes are easy kid plants. There are so many easy ways to honor our relationship with plants. It's sort of like a prayer. You may not want to be a priest, rabbi, or the Dalai Lama, but you can have a simple daily prayer of caring for a plant through its entire cycle, and participate in the generosity and integrity of the natural world by growing food and sharing it. It's a practical spirituality that keeps us grounded in place and community, while giving us the enormous privilege of assisting in the regenerative capacity of the earth.
What it comes down to is whether or not we are going to be allowed to feed ourselves and make informed choices about how we do that -- to live in our biological and social reality, which is that people, plants, and place were meant to be working together.
Peterson’s Waxman-Markey amendment: the nitty gritty and what it means
Comments View as Flat
Gustavion Posted 3:53 am
01 Aug 2008
Very Neat
Thanks for the write up. I'll definitely check out the book.
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Chloe501 Posted 8:27 am
01 Aug 2008
gmos
Not all scientists nor everyone with a background in scientific methodology leaps to unfounded and unverified conclusions.
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rrecroc Posted 12:04 am
02 Aug 2008
The Next Step Logically ......
(and you know we are now tampering with mosquito dna to try to solve the problem of malaria) is genetically modified people.
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lirene Posted 1:28 am
02 Aug 2008
GMO seeds now widespread
If you want to educate yourself about this very important issue, some good places to begin are
<http://www.seedalliance.org/index.php?page=SeminisMonsanto>
and
<http://www.fedcoseeds.com/seeds/monsanto.htm>
<http://www.fedcoseeds.com/seeds/terminator.htm>
If you want seeds that do not originate from a Monsanto-owned company, be sure to ask in your seed order that no seeds coming from Seminis be included. It's disheartening to learn how many of our favorite seed companies now sell seeds (unmarked) that come from Monsanto-owned Seminis.
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Rick North Posted 6:04 am
02 Aug 2008
Cummings interview
Thank you for the Claire Cummings interview, but your introductory comments that anyone rejecting GMO's do so "without really understanding the science or economics behind them" is totally off base. Then you make matters even worse by implying that everyone with science and technology backgrounds are all pro-GMO.
Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility has intensively studied the science, history and politics behind GMO's for the past five years. Our concerns about GMO's aren't instead of science, they're BASED ON science. Unfortunately, science revealing dangers of GMO's tends to get ignored or shoved under the rug.
As world-renowned geneticist Dr. David Suzuki asserted (one of hundreds, if not thousands, of scientists opposing GMO's), "Once we cross species barriers, we're in brand new territory. We have absolutely no idea what might happen."
Please keep the interviews coming, but do a little homework to head off the inaccurate, gross generalizations.
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peacefulpete Posted 4:03 am
03 Aug 2008
science is not rape
I'm not biting:
Cummings: "Genetically modifying a plant severs its relationship to its evolutionary course, and inserts into it, by force -- using a gene gun or bacteria -- some human idea of what the plant should do. The technology is limited both by its violent nature and our imagination."
This rape/assault metaphor is an utterly irrelevant and inapproriate frame for a weak argument based upon fear of the unkown. (BTW, naturally occurring viruses randomly insert utterly foreign DNA into billions of plants a day. This mechanism, uncontrolled by man, has been a major driver of plant evolution for eons. Terrifying...)
Cummings: "Most GMOs are plants that don't die when sprayed with a lethal herbicide, or ones that exude insecticide."
Selective breeding can achieve this same end, affording resistance to insects, infection, drought, high winds etc. "Severing" a plant's ecological course, indeed! How exactly does one, without hindsight, know a plant's "evolutionary course" anyway? Just asking...
It seems your real problem with modern agricultural methods, as is the case with most anti-GMO zealots, is illustrated in this buried lede:
Cummings: "That's Monsanto's idea of how to use nature to make money. The point of GMOs is control over seeds for profit."
It's ECONOMICS that many concern trolls like Ms. Cummings are really espousing. Like the Luddites of old, the real issues here are socio-economic, but are buried in the viscerally evocative language of victimology and ignorance-driven fear. Again, I'm not buying it.
Talk to me about sustainability and the resurrection of local farm-based communities, talk to me about the inherent ecological and socio-economic value of polyculture, then I'll have some respect for your position. Keep up this fear-mongering, ignorance-based claptrap about "altering the nature of nature" and you'll have very few scientists like myself on your side in ANY argument.
Here, Cummings offers little more than the same, tired neo-liberal "I shop at Whole Foods and made my dog a vegan so I love the Earth more than you" feel-good bullshit. "I hate/fear GMO, so I'm GREEEEN!" This is bite-sized, microwave ready ecology for the TV generation. Spare us...PLEASE!
Real concern for the environment demands action on substantial, substantiated, and immediate assaults on our ecosystem. I know it's boring (especially compared to the Frankenfoods "debate") and seems mundane to talk about greenhouse emissions and fuel efficiency; clean water and fisheries protection, etc., etc. Those issues, not the relatively insignificant ecological impact of Bt cotton and banana-based antiviral vaccines, demand our attention.
Absent immediate, EFFECTIVE action on those fronts, arguments about GMO and other false eco-demons will be but passing asides in the campfire stories of the future; told by the remnants of humanity not yet tossed onto the trasheap of evolution.
Think Globally, act Locally.
Pete
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peacefulpete Posted 4:19 am
03 Aug 2008
soylent green is PEOPLE!
Yeah, it would suck to have your child made immunocompetent, wouldn't it?
http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/1995pres/951019a.html
October 19, 1995 Results from First Human Gene Therapy Clinical Trial
Two years after receiving their last infusions of genetically altered cells to boost their weakened immune systems, the first patients ever to undergo gene therapy are still healthy and benefiting from the treatment.
According to a historic research paper published today in Science, the two girls still have white blood cells bearing copies of the replacement ADA gene. Patient 1, whose health improved significantly following gene therapy, has maintained a normal white blood cell count as well as measurable levels of the ADA enzyme, which was almost nonexistent prior to the treatment. Both girls also have developed stronger immune systems, showing improved immune reactions in a battery of tests conducted over the course of the four-year study.
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mtvyfan Posted 8:23 am
04 Aug 2008
Thank you! Now I have another hero!
Thank you so much Ms. Cummings for writing and so eloquently summing up the danger of GMOs. Jeffrey Smith is a hero of mine and now you are, too.
I have just started my first garden this year and have been amazed at how just will a little nurturing on my part how plants can simply thrive! You really don't have to do much but water them and harvest. These little seeds grow to a jungle (my garden now).
Humans don't realize how life even works, let alone tinkering with the basic beginnings of life.
I will definitely be reading your book and proudly display it next to "Seeds of Deception."
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PermieWriter Posted 5:41 am
06 Aug 2008
Our seeds
It sounds like Cummings is making some excellent points about agricultural transgenics. The problem isn't what the plants do (thought that's been bad enough, but what we don't know. Maybe they're as dangerous as Dr. Pusztai's test indicates, but since that experiment has never been repeated because of pressure from the biotech companies, we don't know. We don't know how much farmers are suffering because of the agro-chem corporations' practices because those farmers are systematically silenced. We don't know if the GMOs we eat every day are affecting our health because those foods aren't labeled - again due to systematic efforts by the companies that develop and sell those technology/crops.
I have no objection to transgenic technology in the lab, it's when it gets into the rest of the world that it bothers me, particularly when it's released in an irresponsible way by companies that make it clear that their only concern is short-term profits.
To get involved in the fight to keep those corporations under control, check out Californians for GE-Free Agriculture.
BTW, I'm growing calendula and it rocks. The petals are great in salad!
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kindredspeaker Posted 12:26 am
08 Aug 2008
A Renaissance of Voluntary Ethics
The issues of genetic and nuclear technologies are frightening. These are powerful natural systems that have existed long before we began to notice them. It is the daily fascination and horror faced by man-kind: the power to re-shape the cradle of our own existence.
And what of the other side of our existence? What happens beyond the veil of spirit when we reassemble the building blocks? Does Gaia cry out in pain? Or does she beam in pride at our progress?
Friction between two great forces of intention creates heat; new truths are forged within. Fear is the first casualty of Truth.
Monsanto: people. Berkley: people. Bright minds in search of the best way. Peace, having no enemies, is achieved by inclusion.
This powerful technology and the implied possibilities it awakens reminds us that we are all connected; we are indeed, all One.
~Adrienne~
Some of these ideas came from the following sources, (mixed with lots of other good stuff, including my amazing boyfriend, the creative scientist, Mark!)
Mayan Calendar Interpretation by the late Ian Xel Lungold (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDN6ZcZ0y9I&feature=related)
A New Earth, by Eckhart Tolle (http://eckharttolle.com/a_new_earth)
Duke 2008 Commencement Address by Barbara Kingsolver (href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMWAgtb9ZTY)
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Anastasia Posted 6:09 am
13 Aug 2008
Genetic engineering is not Monsanto
Cummings, despite being a lawyer, has inexplicably chosen to bypass intelligent discussion of the legal and economic challenges facing equitable distribution of all forms of technology. She barely touches the ethical and social issues involved when farmers either seek to or are forced to move from traditional farming methods to more complex and possibly inappropriate farming methods. She instead repeats the same sad quasi-science bleated by so many anti-technology sheep, because it is easier to blame genetic engineering for all agricultural and environmental problems than it is to actually learn about any of the thousands of issues involved. This type of writing isn't going to help anyone, least of all the poor farmers in developing countries that she and her elitist ilk only pretends to protect. Yawn.
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rizamerk Posted 6:31 am
13 Aug 2008
Interesting
The article seems to have raised all kinds of questions in my head, but the most intriguing part to me is how the author is being attacked by both sides of the argument. Sure is hard to please people.
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