Whether you call it GE or GM, the debate about genetic engineering has been overwhelmed by vehement opposition from the environmental movement from day one. Former NZ Green MP Jeanette Fitzsimons said in 1998 that that Christmas was the last one when you could "trust a potato" and since then the rhetoric around GMOs has been simple:
- Genetic engineering shouldn't be allowed outside laboratories because once released into the environment anything can happen (visions of plants and animals overrunning the landscape);
- GM food is "Frankenfood"(visions of it coming from monsters, as if it involves something half fish/half pineapple) and so everyone has the right to know if there is any trace of GMO in it, so they know they are "safe";
- Organic food is safe and healthy and wonderful, and is not only the best for one's health, but is great for the economy.
Mark Lynas is an environmentalist, his credentials are here. He was an activist against GMOs, and he has come out to admit he was wrong. He gave a lecture on 3 January 2013 to the Oxford Farming Conference where he said so. It tears at the heart of the rhetoric of the Green movement on genetic engineering and as a result gives good reason to question any time any of them try to quote science.
Here was a big American corporation with a nasty track record, putting something new and experimental into our food without telling us. Mixing genes between species seemed to be about as unnatural as you can get – here was humankind acquiring too much technological power; something was bound to go horribly wrong. These genes would spread like some kind of living pollution. It was the stuff of nightmares.
These fears spread like wildfire, and within a few years GM was essentially banned in Europe, and our worries were exported by NGOs like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth to Africa, India and the rest of Asia, where GM is still banned today. This was the most successful campaign I have ever been involved with.
This was also explicitly an anti-science movement. We employed a lot of imagery about scientists in their labs cackling demonically as they tinkered with the very building blocks of life. Hence the Frankenstein food tag – this absolutely was about deep-seated fears of scientific powers being used secretly for unnatural ends. What we didn’t realise at the time was that the real Frankenstein’s monster was not GM technology, but our reaction against it.
It is damning about the environmental movement, about Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. Some of the choice quotes are:
