Fruits of science

20/02/1999

Public disquiet over genetically modified foods has reached fever pitch in Britain. The former Secretary of State for the Environment takes a lesson from the Book of Genesis: we cannot go back, but we must get better control. I CANNOT but start with Genesis. The story of the Tree of Knowledge becomes more relevant with every year that passes. As the world?s information increases and our access to it multiplies, we are assailed by doubts about controlling the knowledge we have. Even more are we concerned about the knowledge we are about to have. Yet what is known cannot be unknown. Once we have eaten of the fruit of the tree there is no going back. It is the blight that man was born for and we wouldn?t have it otherwise. In our questing and questioning age we cannot easily get inside the medieval concept of mourning for lost innocence. We want to know and we have to pay the price.

That of course is the problem. We want to know and we would much prefer not to pay the price. Nowhere is that more true than in our attitude to safety and risk. We have become so used to the marvels of science and technology that we have begun to insist that we have all of them risk-free. It is summed up in Herbert?s image of God having a glass of blessings standing by which He pours out on mankind, but alone of all his treasure, rest is the one thing not given to man. So we are constantly on the knowledge trail, wanting to be wholly satisfied with no niggling doubt.

So behind the current debate about genetically modified organisms is a very much more fundamental concern. We are beginning to question the way we deal with new knowledge. That is fundamental because we are thereby confronting the central idea of Western civilisation. We are what we are because we have allowed men and women to speculate, research, disseminate, and sell. However traditionalist we may be, we are all children of the Enlightenment.

Perhaps the mood began with the nuclear debate, both military and civil. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the environmentalists? assault on nuclear power posed the question clearly. Could we not unlearn our nuclear knowledge? What CND was demanding was not that we controlled nuclear bombs but that we eschewed them. They wanted the world to act as if it had never known. The multilateralist response was that no such response existed. What had been discovered could not be unlearned and had therefore to be controlled.

That same argument lies at the very heart of the debate about genetic modification. Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth talk of a moratorium when they really mean a full stop. Believers and atheists alike, they feel as the Prince of Wales felt. This is man playing at being God. It is a technology too far.

Yet the proponents of GM foods argue that this technology can reduce the use of pesticides and herbicides enormously. Properly used, it can enhance biodiversity and increase the opportunity for wildlife. The increased yields can be obtained with greater respect for the soil and indeed by using no-tillage systems which are significantly better for maintaining the soil?s structure. They suggest that the food safety worries which beset the public are unfounded and that the environmental concerns can be met by careful controls and perhaps by a period of further testing in European conditions.

The structure of the argument is familiar. The popular press has given it urgency. Catholics ought to try to give it depth. To do that we shall need to recognise that the fears are not mere scaremongering. I have given advice to Monsanto, the American multinational, on these environmental issues and I believe they remain serious concerns.

In Europe we have cultivation cheek by jowl with our wild places. Typically, the United States has huge areas of farmed land quite separate from the vast wilderness. No wonder we are so much more concerned about out-crossing of genes from the cultivated crops to their wild cousins. We have seen the diminution of our bird-life because of modern farming techniques and we still need to be convinced that the ability to farm what is now unfarmable land will not make matters worse. There is as yet no satisfactory code of practice which ensures that these crops would be grown in an environmentally friendly way. We have been promised uncultivated strips and barriers for wildlife and significant reductions in the use of chemicals. All this remains to be proved in European conditions and under British and EU law and practice. So there is much to be done. That?s why the demand by English Nature for a breathing space while these real worries are considered is a proper way forward environmentally.

Yet the fundamental issue will still remain. Can we control this knowledge or should we seek to stop it in its tracks? Even here the practical issues intrude. GM foods are being produced in large amounts throughout the world. For some crops in the United States, GM seeds are becoming the norm. For basic products such as soya, differentiation and labelling have already been denied. So derivatives of the GM bean are to be found in much of our diet, from chocolate to frozen foods. Under the rules of the World Trade Organisation, we cannot interrupt trade in these crops. Free trade, to which Britain is committed, depends upon there being no barriers except where objective health and safety considerations make them necessary.

And there?s the rub. How do we know? There is no authority we trust, no objective assessment to which we will all give assent. The scientists who have advised governments on safety issues have not always been right. The public distrusts them almost as much as they do the politicians they advise.

In any case, what does objective mean? We in Europe have banned the use of hormone growth promoters in meat. In the United States they have not. They claim that there is no scientific justification. We say the customers don?t want the risk. When we exclude meat from the United States they will take us to the World Trade Organisation to force us to buy their products. They will then take retaliatory action if we don?t obey. How, in those circumstances, do we rate our sovereign right to determine our nutritional future? For that is the practical issue. Even if we were to ban the use of this technology in Europe, we cannot stop its products being exported from the United States. We may attempt to put the genie back into the bottle here but we will not be able to do it worldwide.

So perhaps we have to learn again the lesson of Genesis. There is no way in which we can unlearn what we have learned. Human knowledge has always outrun human wisdom. Painfully and slowly, the mechanisms of control have to try to catch up. Discipline and self-restraint have never been the most fashionable of virtues, yet there is even greater need of them now. We have eaten the apple and we shall have to live with it. Indeed, if we are to live at all, we shall have to find ways of controlling ourselves, our pollution, and our technology so that we do not bring about our own final destruction. Handling genetic modification will be one, but only one, of those challenges.