GENETIC ENGINEERING COULD LEAD TO ARMAGEDDON, BREWSTER KNEEN TELLS BROCK UNIVERSITY AUDIENCE
The St. Catharines - Niagara Standard | October 15, 1999 | Allan Benner
While it may not be the end of the world, the author of Farmageddon painted a bleak picture of the possible consequences of genetic engineering at Brock University Thursday evening.
Armageddon "is certainly a possibility with genetic engineering. We don't know what we're doing. We're putting novel organisms out there and hoping for the best," said Brewster Kneen during a World Food Day lecture sponsored by Brock University's Campus Ministries and Ontario Public Interest Research Group.
"What we see in (genetic engineering) is the restructuring of life for corporate control and profit," he told the group of about 50 people, most of them students or farmers.
"What it comes down to for me in all of this, is not a question of science at all," said the former farmer and author of six books.
It's a question of cultural acceptance, he added.
"We have to view life in a certain way to accept this violent reconstruction of life forms," he said, adding that view puts no value on any life.
While the companies responsible for genetic engineering say it's little different than selectively growing seeds or breeding livestock, "in my mind, in no way is that genetic engineering ...
"A deliberate violation of any species' integrity is quite different than going to your field and saying, 'OK, which plants did really well this year, I'll save the seeds from those,'" he said.
"The whole game really is to my mind an issue of a bad attitude towards life. It essentially views life as something to be exploited for gain."
He called that attitude "an incredible arrogance that we really have to wrestle with as a culture."
The consequences of genetic engineering go way beyond just food products.
Whether it's cloning or embryo splitting, the same technology used on cattle can be applied to human beings, he said.
"We're going to have to face some really tough moral questions."
As grim as the consequences of genetic engineering may be, Kneen has hope.
People are becoming more concerned about the food they eat.
"I will choose a healthy soil to anything that's been sterilized," he said of farmer's fields that have been rendered weed- and insect-free through chemical use, and planted with herbicide-resistant crops.
If the public chooses naturally grown products over genetically altered ones when shopping at grocery stores, genetic engineering will no longer be profitable, he said.
The first printing of 5,000 copies of Farmageddon (New Society Publishing, Gabriola Island, British Columbia, 1999) have already sold out since it hit book store shelves in May. The 232-page book is soon to be re-released.
Kneen also publishes a subscriber-supported newsletter 11 times a year called The Ram's Horn.
