Scientists Sit Out Genetic Engineering Debate

By Blake Hurst 

If scientists cannot or will not explain the issue, then farmers have very little chance of protecting a technology that has immense value to consumers.

It's all so easy if you're a farmer. Genetically modified seeds are nothing more than the latest improvement to the seeds we plant, and goodness knows, we’ve bought many new technologies in the past century or so, from mechanization and hybridization to chemical fertilizers and chemical herbicides. No technology has been as rapidly adopted as genetically modified seeds. More than 90 percent of the corn and soybean acres in the United States are planted with GM seeds. On our farm in northern Missouri, GM seeds have allowed us to cut erosion because they work well with no till farming; they’ve eliminated our use of insecticides on growing crops; they’ve increased yields by anywhere from 10 to 15 percent an acre; they’ve survived drought and heat; and they’ve saved us hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past two decades. Good for the environment, good for our soil, and good for our pocketbook. In farm country, it truly never occurred to any of us that there would be a public controversy over the use of this wonderful new technology.



But for the past two decades, beyond the farm gate, the controversy has been brewing. In fact, if my summer is any indication, it may be getting worse. So, herewith some reports from a few months on the front lines in the anti-GMO resurgence.
I’m having a theological discussion with a corn farmer in southern Missouri, 200 miles from the Corn Belt. My fellow farmer has enough flat ground to plant a few acres of corn, and she and I are deep in the weeds of the contentious subject of seeds. She maintains that the Bible is explicit in forbidding the use of genes from non-corn plants in the breeding of corn seeds, based on Leviticus 19:19, which prohibits seeding fields with two kinds of plants. I point out that humans share 50 percent of their genes with bananas. This does not impress her. She informs me that she doesn’t buy food made from GMOs. Even while she avoids GMOs in her family diet, she plants them in her corn field. The conversation is far past the boundaries of what could be called productive, so I don’t pursue how she squares her biblical beliefs with her agronomic choices.
Elsewhere, Jackson County, Oregon is home to a world-famous Shakespeare festival and lots of seed and hay production. Ashland, the largest city in the county, has the lowest vaccination rate of any city in Oregon. Earlier this year, Jackson County was ground zero of the current national obsession with plant breeding; the voters there, by a two-to-one margin, banned the growing of GM seed in the county. If you’re convinced, all evidence to the contrary, that the measles vaccine has been detrimental to society, then you probably aren’t going to be a fan of genetic engineering either. Farmers in Jackson County have 12 months to destroy their GMO alfalfa; it’s a crop that’s expensive to plant, with an expected productive life of 7 or 8 years. Proponents of the ban on GMOs based their appeal on their property rights: stray pollen from a neighboring farmer’s alfalfa field could contaminate organic crops. (The property rights of farmers raising genetically engineered crops were conveniently ignored by the voters.)

The last year has seen a realization among many in the media that the case against GMOs is without merit.

In fact, farmers have managed to keep different crops separate for centuries. Although weed seeds are spread by birds and by weather, pollen moves much smaller distances. Farmers have already agreed on buffer zones between crops that might cross-pollinate, and seed comes with guarantees against the presence of weeds and undesirable species. Trace amounts of foreign seeds and materials are typically allowed. Farmers have legal recourse against neighbors who damage their crops, and insurance companies exist to provide liability coverage against herbicide drift where one farmer’s crop abuts another’s. No matter, the important point here is that GMO opponents demand another level of purity, because, just like with my friend in the Ozarks, we are having a religious disagreement here, and the legal protections and custom that have allowed all kinds of producers to solve differences sensibly and “coexist” are as passe as iambic pentameter.
Not only are the actors in Oregon who perform Shakespeare against modern seed technology, but so is Chuck Norris. Well, that settles it. Farmers depending upon genetically engineered seed might have had a chance against Dr. Oz and men who wear tights, but if you’ve lost Chuck, you are in deep trouble. According to the world’s most famous Texas Ranger, GMOs are “killing you softly” and will be responsible for “novel epidemics.” According to Iowa farmer Bill Horan, Norris didn’t write the column in which those charges appeared, he just stared at “words until they arranged themselves into sentences.” A society that cares what a martial artist conjures up about agriculture is already contaminated by an epidemic of foolishness.
Our allegiance to the precautionary principle seems to have its limits, however. When two recent Ebola victims were offered a possible cure, the fact that the medicine was derived from a genetically engineered tobacco plant was of little import. Genetic engineering was used because it made possible the rapid production of the medicine, and tobacco plants are used because they are easy to manipulate. The two patients have been released from the hospital, and tests show that they are free of Ebola. Thanks to medicine from genetically engineered tobacco plants. Turns out Gaia has a sense of humor.

It’s instructive that the opposition to genetic engineering is led by non-scientists.

That’s not the only example of compromise. Although the big island of Hawaii has outlawed GMOs, the local law excludes the papaya plant, which has been genetically modified to resist a species-threatening virus. I guess the principle here is: we’re against the genetic modification of seed, unless we really need it.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Ben and Jerry’s is working diligently to eliminate genetically engineered ingredients from their ice cream, but they’ve fallen a year behind schedule. It appears to be very difficult to buy milk from cows with diets pure as the driven snow. According to the director of social mission for the company, it could take five to ten more years to make the transition. But wait! It takes one growing season to produce a corn, soybean, or hay crop. If Ben and Jerry’s were really serious, they could contract, at a suitable premium, with any number of farmers and have the appropriate feedstuffs for the dairy cows by the end of the next growing season. Ben and Jerry’s hasn’t made the switch to GMO-free milk for a very simple reason: it is convinced, and probably rightly so, that its customers won’t pay a premium to ensure GMO-free ice cream. What a perfect solution for a company with a social mission! They can posture about GMOs, position themselves perfectly for those consumers who profess to care, but they don’t have to actually show results. Here’s a secret for those paying attention: premium ice cream tastes premium because it contains more fat, expensive fat. Consumers of Ben and Jerry’s are willing to pay extra for tasty fat, but presumably not for milk from cows fed non-GMO ingredients. It’s enough to make a director of social mission despair.
It's perhaps too easy to laugh off the whole GMO issue: the opponents so over the top, the proponents, including Monsanto, so earnest and ineffective. Because the scientific evidence is so overwhelmingly in favor of GMO safety, many mainstream scientists have essentially checked out of the debate, disgusted by the tactics of GMO opponents. Although Monsanto and others have finally realized there is a problem, it really is late in the game. Robert Fraley, Monsanto’s chief of technology, admitted as much: “I never thought in the early stages that we would still be talking about acceptance and the consumer challenges we are talking about today.” Marc Van Montagu, the founder of the Institute of Plant Biotechnology Outreach, agrees:

There are people who believe in horoscopes, people who believe spaceships come here; that is not problematic. But it becomes problematic if it becomes a power structure that destroys our society — because that is really what’s going on. If you cannot use science anymore because of these crazy beliefs, then there is a problem; I would even say there is a war going on that is much more serious than we were thinking before.

A society that cares what a martial artist conjures up about agriculture is already contaminated by an epidemic of foolishness.

GM advocates have been slow to respond, or don't want to counter misinformation at all. A website, GMO Answers, was developed just last year, providing access to at least some experts on the technology. That’s years too late for an issue that has been contentious for more than two decades.
I was recently on a panel with an expert on plant breeding. He was eloquent, authoritative, witty, and an effective advocate for science and more particularly the science of plant breeding. I had not met or spoken to him before the event, and afterwards congratulated him on his contributions to our discussion. I also asked if he’d be willing to speak to other groups about biotechnology. He grimaced and said: “only if it would do some good.” In a recent electoral debate here in Missouri about GMOs, pro-GMO groups approached a leading plant research facility in the state, asking for a public statement about the importance of genetic engineering to the future of agriculture. The institute, which is endowed with hundreds of millions of dollars and is doing important research in the field, declined to take a public position. I was recently contacted by a German filmmaker working on a documentary about herbicide-resistant weeds. She wanted to know if a) I had herbicide-resistant weeds on my farm, and b) if I would allow her to film them. I said sure, although a film about weeds in a Missouri soybean field does not strike me as Oscar material. It was clear from the conversation that she envisioned weeds resembling those from Little Shop of Horrors: monstrous, hideous creatures leaving carnage in their wake as they spread righteous retribution for the sins of Monsanto. She wished to interview other people, so I reached out to one of the leading weed scientists in the Midwest. He declined the invitation to appear in a film about herbicide resistance. According to him, he had been involved with these issues for a decade, and had come to the conclusion that it was “harmful” to talk with people who were against genetically modifying seed. If scientists dealing with a very real problem cannot or will not explain the issue, then farmers have very little chance of protecting a technology that has immense value to farmers and to consumers.
What I would say to the filmmaker is something like this: weeds evolve to survive whatever methods farmers use. A weed found in rice fields today changed colors through generations of evolution, disguising itself as rice after centuries of hand weeding. Over time, on Midwestern farms, weeds have evolved to withstand mechanical cultivation, older herbicides, and changes in planting dates. Bugs evolve to survive crop rotations. It is no surprise to farmers that weeds have evolved to survive applications of Roundup, the herbicide used with genetically modified seeds. Farming is a continuing adaptation of methods to defeat pests, and we’re always learning ways to deal with herbicide-resistant weeds. Could we have protected this technology better? Sure, just as doctors could have done a better job prolonging the efficacy of penicillin. But mankind has benefited from the use of both antibiotics and GMOs, and farmers will continue to make life better by applying technology to the problem of feeding billions of people with a finite land base.

Ben and Jerry’s hasn’t made the switch to GMO-free milk for a very simple reason: it is convinced, and probably rightly so, that its customers won’t pay a premium to ensure GMO-free ice cream.

The debate over GMOs is often compared to the controversy over global warming, but I don’t think the analogy holds. Although most climate scientists agree that man has caused global warming, there are academics who specialize in climate science who disagree, at least in part, with their peers. It’s instructive that the opposition to genetic engineering is led by non-scientists. Television personalities, bloggers, philosophers, and journalists all oppose the technology, but the opposition to genetic engineering among the professional community, at least opposition on safety grounds, is essentially nonexistent. That unanimity, while reassuring, has led to a paradox: Scientist are reluctant to engage, because they don’t want to argue with people whom they don’t respect. Like my Missouri friends, they won’t waste their valuable research time engaging with those they consider not worthy of their intellect and their time.
Here’s what Jon Entine, visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, has to say about the scientific consensus on GMOs:

More than 100 of the world’s independent science bodies — including the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Medical Association and every major science oversight group in Europe and across the developed and developing world — have by now issued summary statements that foods made from genetically modified crops are as safe as conventional or organic varieties — and often times are safer because they undergo extensive evaluations for approval.

According to Entine, the last year has seen a realization among many in the media that the case against GMOs is without merit. The European Union is moving toward allowing more of the technology, and even India will soon allow GMO trials. The New Yorker recently ran an article that was critical of anti-GMO crusader Vandana Shiva, and even Mother Jones’s series of articles dealing with the safety of GMO foods did not find much to worry about. Entine references a recent article in an Italian science journal, compiling some 1,783 studies done in the last decade about biotechnology. Researchers found “little to no evidence” that GM crops have a negative environmental impact on their surroundings.

Because the scientific evidence is so overwhelmingly in favor of GMO safety, many mainstream scientists have essentially checked out of the debate, disgusted by the tactics of GMO opponents.

There are studies with different conclusions. Perhaps the most famous is the Seralini study, which purported to show that Roundup, the herbicide used with genetically modified crops, causes tumors in rats. First published in 2012, it was withdrawn later by the journal where it appeared, after near unanimous opprobrium from the scientific community. It recently re-appeared in an “open access” journal, but the authors had done nothing to correct the errors in the original study.
Entine believes opinion leaders across the developed world have finally accepted the technology. I’ve visited with other astute observers of agriculture and technology who make the same observation. According to them, what we are seeing is nothing more than the kind of ruckus that surrounds any new technology, and we are well on our way as a society to accepting modern plant breeding.
I’m not so sure. It’s disturbing to see people who have some scientific knowledge, and probably know better, use opposition to GMOs to raise money and garner publicity. Dr. Oz and the Food Babe are after ratings and Internet traffic, and perhaps they haven’t taken time to understand the science. But some of the major environmental groups and leading food journalists understand the science, and they still won’t admit what is patently true: the methods we use to genetically engineer plants are perfectly safe and offer great hope for our ability to continue increasing the production of food.
Genetic engineering serves as a proxy for what many latter-day Luddites find repulsive. The notion that the production of food is just as much science as art is disquieting to many people. Genetic manipulation serves as the most visible example of the type of cellular-level impersonality they cannot abide in modern farming. To these romantics, food should be produced as a labor of love by peasants in straw hats and artisans of the soil. That vision has no room for PhDs in lab coats.
As farmers and others speaking for the hundreds of millions of people who will benefit from this technology attempt to mount a defense, we cannot depend upon science and reason to win the argument. The people who understand the science are often absent or ineffective when they do speak up. Reason fails miserably in reaching those whose faith system has focused all of their discomfort with change and technology on the breeding of seeds.
My interlocutor in the Ozarks found her objections to GMOs in her faith and in the Bible. Most opponents of GMOs are about as familiar with Leviticus as they are with molecular engineering, but both groups are working not from a reliance on evidence and reason, per the Enlightenment, but from a rigid, even dogmatic version of faith. One may result from a much too literal interpretation of Biblical injunctions, and one from the mistaken belief that farming was somehow a natural process until Monsanto’s labs intervened. Agriculture by its very definition is manmade, and genetic engineering is little different in its effects from more traditional means of plant breeding. Several of our major food crops are a result of crosses between species that aren’t particularly closely related, and traditional breeders have long exposed seeds to radiation in the hope that beneficial mutations would occur. To cross two genotypes in nature is to mix all of their gene pool, with results that can’t be predicted. Genetic engineering is much more precise and thus less risky, because often only one well-identified gene is involved. When we moved as humans from hunting and gathering to a place-based cultivation, we left whatever the “natural” was and fully embraced something more. That change has allowed every advance that civilization has made in the past ten thousand years. It’s far too late to go back.

Blake Hurst is a Missouri farmer and a frequent contributor to THE AMERICAN.