We eat to live, we eat for fun and we eat to socialise. But the pleasure of the experience is seemingly under threat by a new range of foods that has crept into our diets.
Every food-shelf and menu throughout the country is soon to be littered with notices advising about the presence or absence of genetically modified ingredients. Do we really need the warnings?
GM foods have raised three concerns. Could they damage national economies, spoil local environments, or even adversely affect an individual's health?
These concerns escalate into scares as vested interests, big business and government give full assurances, but opposition groups urge caution.
The multinational companies and academic scientists pursuing GM crops argue that they are making nothing new. Traditional plant and animal breeding techniques have allowed farmers to produce varieties that have sought-after characteristics; cows that make vast quantities of milk, wheat with short stems and high yields, pigs that have increased numbers of ribs to yield more chops per beast. All we are doing, claim the technologists, is producing new varieties with greater precision and at greater pace.
Hit and miss no longer
GM technology was ultimately made possible by the discovery of DNA at the centre of each cell in every living organism. This string-like molecule carries a code written in three-letter words using a four-character alphabet. The words describe instructions, genes, which allow the cell to produce specific proteins. The minor differences in physical characteristics between different members of a single species stem from minor alterations in the code. Standard breeding programmes operate by using sexual reproduction to combine the genes from two individuals of the same species, with the aim of sorting out any offspring that have acquired the best features from its parents. It's a hit and miss process, which is costly and time-consuming.
Genetic technology offers the promise of precision. Rather than simply hoping to produce offspring with required characteristics, scientists can choose to insert specific genes into individual plants. So where are the problems?
Problems
The first problem arises as a result of the amazing transferability of the DNA code. You can move a gene to another member of the same species. You can take it to a new species. You can even move a gene from an animal and place it in a plant, or vice versa. Plants can be made to grow in climates that were formerly hostile to them. However, this is a double-edged sword. It brings not only the possibility of famine-stricken areas growing valuable food crops - it also raises the possibility of crops that were once restricted to tropical climates being able to grow in cooler areas, which could decimate the economies of some developing countries. Crops can also be designed not only to give high yields, but also to have infertile grain or seeds. With this 'Terminator technology', the farmer then has to return to the seed merchant each year for new supplies, something no one in the developing world could afford.
Secondly, there are environmental concerns. The main commercial thrust now is to produce crops that are resistant to herbicides. The multinational giant Monsanto is fighting for permission to plant out acres of crops resistant to its powerful herbicide 'Roundup'. The agricultural advantage is that this enables a farmer to generate fields that are clear of anything other than the valuable crop. Environmentalists point out that these stretches of monoculture are just about as useful to wildlife as an airport runway. In the US, the crops have met with little opposition, as the continent is divided into areas for commercial agricultural exploration and other areas that are wildlife sanctuaries. In the less spacious European environment, agriculture and wildlife have to co-exist.
But that's not all. The GM crops resist the herbicide because they have had a gene inserted that is capable of neutralising the chemical's toxic effects. An unresolved question is, if you can get a new gene in, can you stop it getting back out again? The possibility exists of the resistance gene moving from the crop to a species of weed, which could then be extremely difficult to control. Pressure groups like Greenpeace argue that crops have been planted out before there have been sufficient experiments checking whether or not this is likely to happen.
Our health
But even if you are not particularly concerned about the global environment, wildlife or super-weeds, there is a third concern: our health. A recent set of experiments conducted in the government-funded Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen has thrown a new spanner in the GM machine's works. An experiment suggested that food produced using GM techniques may be unsafe to eat. Dr. Arpad Pusztai had three groups of identical rats. He fed one with normal potatoes, one with potatoes laced with lectin, an insect-resisting chemical normally produced by snowdrops, and a third group received potatoes that had been genetically engineered to produce their own supply of lectin. He discovered that the internal organs of rats fed with the GM potatoes changed size compared to the other two groups of rats. Their disease-fighting immune system was also damaged. That the rats fed normal potatoes with added lectin were normal showed that lectin alone has no adverse effects, so a finger of accusation was pointed at the process of genetic modification itself.
The problem is that adding a new gene is not simple. First, it has to be included in a package of other genes that control it. Secondly, it is often inserted into the plant's existing gene sequence. There is the possibility that this process could radically alter aspects of the plant, changing the nature or amount of other chemicals that it normally makes.
GM politics
Pusztai was rapidly dismissed from the Research Institute by the director and government advisor Professor Philip James, on the basis that the work was of poor standard. True, the work wasn't superb, but then it was only intended as a preliminary investigation. Prime Minister Tony Blair jumped into the fray saying that he was perfectly happy to eat GM food and 'government enforcer' Jack Cunningham told Newsnight that he 'thinks' GM food 'can be safe'. Conspiracy theorists then had a field-day when links were found between New Labour and companies with vested interests in GM foods. A few days later, 20 leading scientists stood up in front of the Press to state that the experiment was good and urged caution about GM food.
So, can there be such a thing as a Christian response to this unsightly food fight? I'm not sure. However, the first action must be to seek good information before drawing conclusions or implementing policies. GM foods have not received the same level of scrutiny that other technologies receive before being launched. Whether or not they turn out to be innocuous, this seems reprehensible.
One of the most damaging things I have heard Christians say, or leave unchallenged, is the comment that such technologies allow human beings to 'play God'. The arrogance in that statement is staggering. Scientists may be doing some amazing things, but they pale into insignificance against the God of creation. To suggest that a few minor alterations to a living organism is in any way comparable to starting with a blank 'drawing board' and coming up with an inhabited universe is farcical. As Christians, we should make clear just how big is the God we worship.
Within Christian and non-Christian circles, people draw inspiration for their argument from the early chapters of Genesis. However you read Genesis, the key thing is that God set up human beings with vocation, permission and prohibition. The vocation is to care for and make use of the 'garden' and share in God's work, in a world where everything is permitted, within the prohibition of unqualified obedience to God.
GM in a fallen world
Genetic technology raises fears not so much because of what it is capable of achieving, but because we do not trust the people who are thrusting it on us. Rather than making use of resources, the multinationals are seeking to own sectors of it. Rather than loving God, they love their bank managers; and instead of looking to God for inspiration. they look to their shareholders. The things they do may ultimately end up being harmless, but the shallowness of their motives leaves us feeling cold.
Genetic technology has made valuable inroads into medicine without the majority of people being aware because they are basically well and so have not encountered it personally. However, food is different. We are all involved. In 1825, Anthelme Brilliat-Savarin wrote the world-famous book on gastronomy 'Physiologie du got', in which he challenged his readers to: 'Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are.' One wonders what he would have thought of including GM foods in his recipes.
Pete Moore BSc PhD is a freelance writer who works at the interface of science, medicine and ethics, and contributes to The Lancet and New Scientist. He has had two books published by Lion Publishing; Trying for a baby - which looks at fertility treatments, and Pregnancy - a testing time, a guide to antenatal screening.
