GM Foods: Hard to Swallow
So what’s a hungry person to do? The issues are complex and there’s little to be gained in villainizing either the scientists, who are hoping to use their skills to feed the world’s hungry, or the corporations, merely because they stand to profit immensely from such a feast. But for many who are justly concerned about the risks associated with GM foods, a policy of informed, strategic complaint may offer a good stop-gap solution. Policy reversals in Europe may be indicative of how the GM food controversy could play out in North America. Some nations, like France and Italy, where television ads decry GM crops and foods, have moved to ban planting GM corn. And sustained public outcry has prompted thousands of European supermarkets to remove GM foods from their shelves. Denmark, Switzerland, and Norway require labels on GM foods, and the European Agricultural Commission now requires labels on all GM seeds, grains, and animal feed.
Such moves are cause to celebrate for those who for political, socioeconomic, or environmental reasons find GM foods unsavory at best. At present in America the debate is deeply divided between reactionaries fleeing the complexities of a new technology and the scientists and businessmen who think that what they’re doing really is good for humanity (or at least isn’t harmful). In Europe, a third way is being pursued called the “precautionary principle,” which (in its narrow interpretation) urges that even remote risks from GM crops and foods be given more weight than any possible benefit. Too narrowly interpreted, however, the precautionary principle could stall any progress because it would preclude marketing to foods unless the outcome was absolutely guaranteed in advance. A wider interpretation could foster humane progress while ensuring safety before profit.
Evolving a synthesis for a just third way to be pursued for the entire world community will also mean overcoming a universal problem. Throughout human history, our knowledge has often outstripped our moral sensitivity. As British theologian and philosopher John Peck says, “At the back of our fear of GM food technology is that human beings can’t be trusted with it.” The technology itself is not bad, notes Peck, but “as Christians we must bear testimony that knowledge is not a god, not an end in itself, but that the search for it has a responsibility to God and the moral conscience. It sounds heretical today to say this, especially in the scientific community, but if we took this responsibility seriously, it would mean saying ‘no, we’re not going there’ to certain expressions of technology unless we can agree on a transcendent moral authority by which to control it. And to some technologies, we may simply need to say no, full stop.”
Religious, or ultimate, beliefs also ought to be an aspect of a third-way paradigm, and they are actually shaping some boardroom decisions. When asked why he had decided to stop using GM ingredients in Gerber baby food, Novartis chairman and ceo, physician Daniel Vasella (Switzerland’s best-known corporate leader), told The New Yorker, “We are not missionaries. We sell things. No company can prosper by telling customers what is good for them…. This is not just about plants. This is about our myths, our history, our culture. It’s about what we put in our mouths and in our babies’ mouths…. What is more basic—and what could be more frightening—than playing with that? Of course it scares people. How could something so important not scare people?”A theology of food is ultimately one of where (and in whom) you put your trust
A theology of food is ultimately one of where (and in whom) you put your trust, and how you handle your fears. There are no hard and fast rules. If you’re Joseph in Egypt, the faithful thing to do is to build storehouses for your nation’s grain. To the rich merchant of Jesus’ parable, however, the one who’s life was to be demanded of him that very night, bigger barns are of no value. For the Israelites wandering towards the promised land, a strict set of dietary laws was just the thing to promote obedience to God and to set them apart from other cultures. But for Peter, daydreaming on a rooftop in Joppa, every sort of food was declared clean, for God’s greater purpose of revealing Christ to all the earth’s people.
The immense promises and purposes bound up in the development of genetically modified foods provoke questions of trust and fear that cut both ways. Unwise though it may be to blindly trust in the goodness of a GM-food-fueled human future, it is also naive to fear the future by placing a similarly blind trust in the good old days before all of this cropped up. Ultimately, no technology should be trusted more than God; but neither should any future (genetically modified or other) be feared more than God. Food is vital, but at least theologically, the maxim “you are what you eat” is misleading at best. (Published in re:generation quarterly, 6.4; 2000. Edited for the Web.)
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