A summit on genetically modified (GM) crops held in Melbourne last week attracted lots of big names in this debate, including Western Australia's Julie Newman, who leads the Network of Concerned Farmers, and the deputy chief of CSIRO's Plant Industry division, T.J. Higgins.
But perhaps the most interesting presentation was from Lucy Carter, who talked about the ethical debate surrounding GM crops.
Dr Carter is from the School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics at the University of Queensland. She has previously investigated the quality of arguments for and against the development and use of GM crop plants as part of her PhD.
She told the summit she had taken a pragmatic approach acknowledging that some applications of science are objectionable to some sectors of the community whose deeply-felt concerns should not be ignored. Nevertheless she had sought to work through these concerns in a spirit of compromise, utility and resolution, recognizing that both proponents and opponents have vested interests in the regulation of GM.
Dr Carter recognised several strong themes in the debate including environmental concerns, in particular the impacts of gene flow; end product labelling, risk and consumer autonomy; food safety assessment; developing world hunger and opportunities; the "precautionary principle"; social, cultural and economic considerations; the role of functional foods in the industrial world; and naturalistic objections to GM.
The following assumptions were made: GM confers several advantages over traditional agricultural methods; GM can improve a plant's performance by increasing its tolerance to various environmental factors; and agronomic traits such as pest resistance, herbicide tolerance and salinity tolerances have the potential to improve yield quantities and/or decrease input.
Dr Carter concluded that the expectation by organicists for absolute non-interference is unreasonable and unjustifiable and that the organic community cannot set standards that exclude other agriculturalists from taking part in legitimate agricultural activity.
But, in fact, they had, particularly with moratoriums banning the planting of GM food crops which are still in place in Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania.
Dr Carter also concluded that co-existence of GM and non-GM crops was possible, as has been demonstrated in the US. She said co-existence was morally desirable; conventional, organic and GM agriculture were not mutually exclusive enterprises, and the incommensurability claim made by the organic community was arbitrary.
Dr Carter also stated that GM has the potential to decrease future environmental degradation.
Because of this we could use the precautionary principle to justify GM use on the grounds that to do nothing might be worse for the present situation.
ADVERTISEMENT
No comments:
Post a Comment