Every few years, it seems, there is a hot button issue that divides people in a way that goes far beyond disagreements–the differences are sharp and deep. We’ve seen it in debates over abortion, gay rights, climate change, guns and fracking…and now over genetically modified crops and foods (GMOs). There is almost no middle ground–kind of like in the picture that accompanies this story.
Is there a chance for dialogue in the current rancorous debate over the future of food? I question whether that’s possible. The best parallel is not to gay rights or climate change, where facts can edge people’s views one way or another, but to abortion. If you believe life is so sacred that aborting even a damaged fetus violates the natural order, there is no middle ground. That doesn’t make abortion opponents wrong; just ridged. Abortion opponents hold a religious view that is impenetrable by science or compromise.
Most GMO opponents fall into the same category. There is a lot of faux talk about labeling and the desire to help consumers make informed decision, but we all know, and most GMO leaders candidly admit, that labeling is merely a means to the end of banning all GE products. To them, GMOs are as abhorrent as abortion is to right to lifers. It’s a religious violation of a perceived natural order, ordained by Nature itself, or God. I find this religious-like certainty scary, whether coming from the left or the right; but others, not so much.
I may be too cynical. Tamar Haspel, the gifted food writer for the Washington Post thinks so. She’s a classic middle roader, seeing excess on both sides of the debate but a campfire up ahead where heavily armed opponents have laid down their swords to join hands singing Kumbaya.
She boils down the differences to 5, and offers what she believes are potential points of agreement. Number ONE is that we should all agree that GMO foods are safe to eat, citing the worldwide consensus by mainstream science groups. She’s right; but hardcore GMO opponents will never acquiesce to that point. And even so-called moderates, like Michael Pollan, who often provide lip service to the “GMO’s are safe” consensus talk out of both sides of their mouth–saying one thing to NPR while riling up he anti-fervor when amongst friends. Chalk that hope up to wishful thinking.
Number TWO, Haspel tries to find a middle ground on the labeling date, saying that rejection of labeling on the grounds that GMOs are safe misses the point: people want them to be labelled. But do they? While 90% of consumers asked if they want GMOs labeled–a classic ‘pull poll–agree with questioner, the percentage falls to under 5% when consumers are asked, neutrally, whether there is any additional labeling they’d like on foods. And what would be on a label? In Vermont, GM corn would be labeled but not Vermont cheeses made with GM ingredients. Colorado would label GM soy products but not local craft beers or Budweisers made with GM ingredients. Why? Because consumers really don’t care much about this. Opponents are using the label issue as a wedge–get the skull and crossbones in place and the boulder is rolling down hill.
Number THREE: she questions that anti-GMO common wisdom that only Big Ag benefits from the technology. Except for a gratuitous swipe at GM crops that are herbicide resistant–they’ve allowed for the substitution of less toxic chemicals for more dangerous ones–she nails that. But accepting that premise would be ‘game over’ for the antis. It will never happen.
Number FOUR: Crop biotechnology supporters should get over their meme that ‘we’ve been genetically modifying crops for thousands of years.’ Personally, I think she’s nailed this one. While that statement is technically correct, it misses the point; people know that genetic engineering is not identical to conventional breeding. It is in fact more precise and may be safer, but it’s not the same. Haspel nails it: Making this argument to reasonable skeptics makes one sound silly.
Finally she hopes that the antis stop calling anyone and everyone who embraces the science of genetic engineering a shill and that opponents should not all be labelled anti-science. I’ve never quite felt comfortable slinging the anti-science label mud at GMO opponents, though I’ve used it a lot. Most of them are ignorant of the science of GMOs but that’s kind of beside the point. You don’t influence any views that way, and isn’t that why we are engaged in this discussion…to encourage genetic literacy?
Do her prescriptions make sense to you? Weigh in and we’ll pass them along to Tamar.
Jon Entine, executive director of the Genetic Literacy Project, is a Senior Fellow at the World Food Center, Institute for Food and Agricultural Literacy, University of California-Davis. Follow @JonEntine on Twitter
I wish Tamar luck with her campaign, but I doubt this column will have any effect.
The “debate” (I hesitate to use that term, because that implies some sort of clash of views, but they really just sail right past each other) from the anti-GM side is mostly driven by a relatively small number of people, benefitting from widespread popular ignorance about biology and farming, to demonize the technology with scary sound bites. Haspel is presuming that there is a desire and intention by the anti-GMO crowd to “get at the truth”, and that if we can just agree on how to do that we’ll make progress. But that’s not what’s going on at all. You can no more persuade Jeffrey Smith to look carefully at the facts and re-evaluate his position than you can expect the Pope to reconsider the doctrine of the holy trinity. Neither one holds views derived from empirical knowledge. The Pope, I’m guessing, would fully agree with that. That’s what “faith” is about.
Smith and his allies, however – and this is where the “anti-science” charge comes from – dress up their assertions in cargo-cultish mumbo-jumbo. But it’s just for show: sciencey sounding language as a handy polemical tool to pull in the rubes. To accuse this crowd of cherry-picking misses the point because it assumes a genuine quest for knowledge. They’re not choosing those studies because they’re looking for science to back up their pre-determined positions. That presumes that they care about science as a method of seeking truth. They’re choosing those studies because they provide the veneer they’re after. Maybe I’m drawing too fine a distinction here, but I think motives matter if you’re trying to find common ground for debate.
Would someone please give FosterBoondoggle a column?
Nailed this:
Drops mic. Walks off.
I think most people, on most issues, don’t have a desire or intention to get at the truth. If cognitive psychology has taught us anything, it’s that confirmation bias rules the human psyche, and we all bumble through this world looking for substantiation for the things we already believe.
I agree that motives matter, but I don’t think either of us has access to Jeffrey Smith’s. Or Vandana Shiva’s. We’re all guessing, but my guess is that they are true believers. Humans are hard-wired to believe what’s in their own interest, and I think that true belief is a more plausible explanation than the alternative, that they go out in the world to lie every day.
“Humans are hard-wired to believe what’s in their own interest,…” Yes. I’ve been in this business for almost 30 years and I assure you it is in MY best interest that nobody gets hurt. The fact that I make a living at this doesn’t (read shouldn’t) make a difference.
I thought that was Foster’s point–that you are hopeful, suggesting that people are willing to meet somewhere on facts, but that’s not how this works. That this is a “faith based” problem.
Quite literally so. How many times have phrases like, “Nature intended”, “Nature designed”, “God Move Over”, have been used?
May be. So i’ll explain where i’m coming from.
I actually remember the original Time magazine cover back around 2000 or so, depicting the advent of Golden Rice. I remember my thoughts were that this was a great thing and in just a couple of years a lot of people were going to benefit greatly from it.
Fast forward to about 2 year ago. I don’t remember how, but i came across an article describing how Golden Rice was being held up and was opposed by Greenpeace. I dimly remembered that Greenpeace, at one time, did change their mind about it but i quickly found out they changed it back. Investigating into the reasons why, i quickly sensed a bullying type attitude among anti-gmo comments and official positions of anti-gmo groups, particularly with Greenpeace’s heavy handed use of vandalism. And then there’s BAB of Hawaii and Vani Hari, who are nothing if not bullies. And, of course, Greenpeace’s arguments against releasing a product that would save at least tens of thousands of lives a year, and, most likely, hundreds of thousands, are ludicrous.
So, my cognitive filter has been initially set be the above. It goes by the old adage, he who throws the first punch, lost the argument.
For what it’s worth, i get a bit of sense that Jeff Smith might be a true believer, but not of Vandana Shiva. She actually has some science training and her true believing doesn’t get in the way of business class globe trotting at $40,000 a crack.
I think the underlying problem here is false equivalence in that the “pro-GMO” position, in practice, is *already* the middle ground; there’s just not as much extreme zealousness on the pro-GMO side. In practice, the pro-GMO side amounts to, “accept the science when it’s available – e.g., on food safety – but continue to study things we don’t fully understand.” At most this is an argument for “pro-GMO” folks to slightly change their debate tactics. Most or all of the substantive problems seem to rest on the anti-GMO side.
I think she hits the important issues on the head. Very reasoned article.
“Crop biotechnology supporters should get over their meme that ‘we’ve
been genetically modifying crops for thousands of years.’ Personally, I
think she’s nailed this one. While that statement is technically
correct, it misses the point; people know that genetic engineering is
not identical to conventional breeding. It is in fact more precise and
may be safer, but it’s not the same. Haspel nails it: Making this
argument to reasonable skeptics makes one sound silly.”
Not if the antis are relying on the “playing God” meme- which they usually are. Claiming genetic engineering is problematic because of meddling with nature, while the past 10,000 years of meddling with nature is ok is what sounds silly. and what is a “reasonable skeptic” ?
Even grafting has been opposed by some religious groups historically.
The only reasonable way to stop fighting over the “GMO” issue is showing that “GMO” is a meaningless acronym, as Jon Entine recently declared in front of that National Research committee (https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2014/09/16/glps-jon-entine-cautions-national-academy-of-sciences-about-views-of-anti-science-ngos). Nobody should use a term in which different biotech methods and products and traits are lumped together, pretending that even a little direct pinch to the DNA sequence makes a significant (negative) categorial difference.
I’d start a discussion saying that, yes, any biotech intervention may fail: traditional breeding can fail (remember the Lenape potato: boingboing.net/2013/03/25/the-case-of-the-poison-potato.html); DNA-recombination can fail (several examples both traditional and GE at http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v21/n7/full/nbt0703-739.html). Therefore we should not insist that “the technology is safe” (it may not be the case!), to which the anti-GMOers, either in good or bad faith, can always reply “you never know…”. Tell them that GE is fallible, you will wrong-foot them! Personally, I managed to convince a few GMO-skeptics that we have to stop being pro- or anti-GMO, and always evaluate the single phenotype resulting from any biotech experiment. Keep the good ones and throw away the others (trying to learn from mistakes). We have all the tools to evaluate the results of the trials, either they are fruits from grafted trees or mutagenized cultivars or crops obtained from tissue culture or DNA-spliced vegetables or… whatever!
On point 4, I don’t want to give up starting out any discussion about GMOs with the fact that we’ve been genetically modifying plants (plant bias showing!) for centuries, and with huge effects. Perhaps that’s the biologist/educator in me – but if you are trying for a more transparent food system, it seems an important message, to lay some groundwork. My intro biology students are pretty surprised and impressed when you show differences in wild vs. domesticated crops (eg., teosinte/maize; mustard/kale,cabbage, etc.) This information provides (I think) necessary context for thinking rationally about GMOs.
However, it’s not enough to discuss this point and stop there, if arguing from the proGMO side – that is, genetic engineering =is= different in terms of what can be accomplished. It’s still just moving DNA around, as in more traditional approaches to plant breeding – but clearly it can be both more precise and allows more flexibility & ‘engineering’, in that more specific phenotypic/trait predictions can be made, based on specific DNA involved. The context of understanding the types and extent of DNA changes associated with more traditional breeding provides a useful comparison, and helps explain why GMOs – at the phenotype/trait level – are not substantially different from conventional crops.
However, this line of argument does require that someone be open to learning some biology and genetics. I still find this general topic exciting to teach. But, I’m aware that some people will not be interested to listen…
“Finally she hopes that the antis stop calling anyone and everyone who embraces the science of genetic engineering a shill and that opponents should not all be labelled anti-science.”
Great. But who I am and who signs my paycheck should not be part of a debate about the facts surrounding this technology. First, being called a liar because I choose to make my living this way is rather annoying. Second, the fact that I’ve produced 25K transgenic plants over the last 20 years and know just a little bit about the subject matter, is always viewed through the prism of INDUSTRY, or discounted entirely based on perceived bias.
These assumptions are typically made by people with little or no REAL hands on experience in the science who view their “independence” as somehow leveling the playing field.
There are two fundamentally different kinds of debate going on here. Scientific debate—although it can be rancorous—is aimed at getting closer to the truth. Political or legal debate is about winning, regardless of what is objectively “true”. This is why so many people with science backgrounds feel frustrated and impotent in the GM debate: because the key strength of their argument is evidence and logic, rather than rhetoric and innuendo. For so many in the anti-GMO camp, there is no amount of evidence that would be effective in changing their perspective, because it’s about WINNING.
The options for scientists seem to be either relying on the strength of their evidence and reasoning to persuade a larger, more receptive, public; or to sacrifice their integrity and resort to rhetoric, logical fallacies and disingenuous partial truths.