I am preparing for a G7 Conference in Berlin on sustainability and social standards in global supply chains and have spent much time on reading about both environment and labour dimensions.
Working conditions is of course a familiar subject while other sustainability issues formed a major part of my report to the German cooperation and development ministry BMZ on Fairtrade cotton. As I will be in Berlin on behalf of the Global Organic Textile Standard GOTS, both will be important to follow.
One particular subject keeps coming up, genetically modified food and other agricultural products. I have approached this with an open mind, trying to close out the more extreme GMO views, for and against.
What strikes me particularly is that so many of those who defend the agribusiness interests don’t even hide their contempt for environmentalists and other concerned people. This has surely fed my already suspicious mind – are these scientists and others afraid of getting into an intellectually honest discussion?
I am not opposed to genetic modification science as such and I accept that much good has come out of it. What makes me concerned is that so much of this research and development is purely business driven, by large multinational companies.
As I said about genetically modified Bt cotton in my Fairtrade textile report, we may see these innovations being applied already before we know what longer term effects they will have on people and environment. There seems to be a belief that when new problems arise they can be addressed by modifications to the modified seeds.
When the Bacillus Thuringiensis pesticide produced by the genetically modified Bt cotton is not strong enough to kill the bugs that have developed a resistance, pesticide use goes up again and new generation GMO seeds are developed that are more effective. I am not comfortable about this approach, and not confident that responsibility for the environment and for human health will always prevail against economic short term interests.
This is an area where mistakes cannot be made. When the card has been played it remains on the table. Just that here the stakes are much higher than in any poker game.
Why then does something like 80 per cent of world cotton come from GMO farming?
Undeniably, yields increase considerably and pesticide use goes down in the years after having moved to these cotton varieties. Any future risks seem to be far away, if the farmer even knows about them. In the poorer countries of the world, where cotton is often one of the most important crops, there are obvious reasons that short term benefits prevail. Active marketing of GMO seeds contributes to these choices, marketing where risks are surely not often mentioned.
The lack of alternative seeds is a huge problem in many parts of the world. Even if a farmer would like to stay with other cotton varieties, this is often impossible. Also a cross contamination is a real risk, especially in environments where farms are small and education levels not very high. To apply the rather demanding buffer zones in these circumstances is not really realistic.
As the GMO seeds are produced by private companies, they are also their intellectual property. The producer multinationals like Monsanto are of course actively protecting their interests and either selling the seeds for every growing season, or requiring royalties.
This would not be a real problem in the developed world where most farmers already for long have bought seeds rather than collected them when harvesting. In poorer parts of the world the situation is different. There, millions of small farmers have been pulled into a ‘modern’ monetary economy in a situation where neither financial nor social support networks often exist. We have heard of many family tragedies when a harvest season has gone badly wrong.
Maybe we will still see something similar to the pharmaceutical industry, which has had to accept that cheaper generic drugs are produced and marketed in poorer countries?
Would I eat GMO food? Yes I would, even if I avoid it whenever possible. Would I serve GMO food to my children if they were still young? No, I would not.