Farm & Rural Commentary | November 12, 1999 | by Elbert van Donkersgoed
Some farm voices and food executives were proverbial "ostriches with their heads in the sand" at a trade seminar in Guelph last week.
Barriers in the European Union to genetically modified food from North America were flash points in the seminar sponsored by the provincial agriculture ministry. Fred Kingston, a trade adviser to the European Union, argued that the EU is merely responding to consumer demand. "This isn't coming from government, it's coming from the large grocery chains responding to consumer demand."
Ontario farm and food voices insisted that new EU rules for genetically modified food - a moratorium on approvals and labelling requirements - are just aimed at keeping out North American imports. In other words they are politically inspired trade barriers.
But reservations by the EU consumer about genetically modified foods are real. And their governments are merely giving voice to what lives among them.
EU civil society deeply distrusts experts. The French don't trust British scientific authorities, probably because they don't trust their own. They trust North American authorities even less.
Some suggest that the recent EU experience with mad cow disease, dioxin in animal feed and contaminated Coca Cola is the cause of this temporary caution about genetic modification and the authorities that promote it.
Others point to the fact that food is becoming fashion. It is cuisine: fragrance, pleasure, festivity and sensuality. Food is all about fun.
Preparation is art and celebration. Cooking is no longer about rations or provisioning. Genetic modification appears to be solving old problems - hunger problems that are no longer part of our experience in the developed world.
The misgivings about genetic modification in food are based on something deeper. The implications of this new tool of science are far-reaching and diverse. It can move genes between species of microorganisms, between plant species, between animal species, between humans. More dramatically, it can move genes from microorganisms to plants, from animals to plants, from humans to - take your pick. Conventional breeding techniques are giving way to the reshaping of the creation around us to suit our interests - rather than learning to live in and harvest the abundance of creation.
Moving genetic material in the laboratory between microorganisms is a small step beyond conventional breeding techniques. Animal to plant modifications raise issues of irreversible ecological change, of animal rights and of the integrity of creation. Civil society has not engaged in a discussion of the wisdom of these changes.
Europe has started that discussion. It will lead to differentiations between various levels of genetic modification. It is not being driven by trade considerations. I'm Elbert van Donkersgoed with the Christian Farmers Federation.
