GEO Watch | Protegendisque scientifica
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Art courtesy of Leonardo Solaas, Dreamlines (2006). Credit | x-traonline |
Moderator’s
Note: There are
thousands in the professional ranks of scientists who have cast their lot with Monsanto
et al under deals involving corporate sponsorship of research. When you are
seen as selling out, and thus riddled with conflicts of interest, there are
consequences: One is the erosion of the public credibility of scientists seen
as blemished by their association with powerful corporate interests. As a
result, they are increasingly plagued by a declining lack of legitimacy in the
public sphere. Biotech scientists are increasingly perceived as servants of
power guilty of “screening factual evidence”.
Friends of the Earth (FOE) - Europe has
released a report (see press release and links below) on GMO crops that
describes in detail the structure of benefits accruing from the deployment of
agricultural biotechnologies. There are few surprises here since the primary
benefits continue to accrue to profit-driven corporations peddling a magical
elixir to the market to the tune of the song of approval sung by self-anointed
scientific experts – the choirboys and girls (think Ann Glover) of
corporate legitimation.
There is a subtext to the FOE report
that fascinates me because it reflects this notion of the legitimation crisis. McLemee (2007) explains this most enduring of Jürgen Habermas’s concepts for the
critical study of modernity. The legitimation crisis
…refers to periods when…the
‘organizational principle’ of a society does not permit the resolution of
problems that are critical for its continued existence….The viability of a
regime has gone seriously into question when it feels threatened by its own
young people[…]
The FOE-Europe report released earlier today details
a pattern of global decline in the approval of GMO crops – and I predict this will become even more
salient with the millennial generational shift underway. I believe one reason for the GMO science legitimation crisis is that the risk scientists who have sold their expertise to the
highest corporate bidder are finally becoming incapable of obscuring the truth
by cherry-picking the evidence in order to serve their corporate masters. They are victims of their own Protegendisque scientifica.
Scientific
facts versus biotech myths. The irrefutable fact of gene flow; the growing evidence of environmental
and public health harm associated with the use of transgenic crop technologies and the toxic
biocides tied to their deployment; the blatant corporate disregard and in some places
governmental (USA, Brazil, Argentina) disrespect that allows for continued attacks on the viability and survival of traditional
farming systems, traditional environmental knowledge, agroecology, and smallholder
communities; the advent of super-bug and super-weed resistance to the chemical
cocktails and built-in defenses of transgenic technologies; the displacement of
indigenous farmers and their knowledge systems through land grabs, bio-piracy,
and the imposition of an immoral patenting regime; a shift to anti-democratic investor-state treaties that impose a country club-styled regime of privatized neo-regulation.
All these and many more harmful and disparate social, cultural, and ecological impacts are part of the litany of
problems being uncovered by social and natural scientific evidence after decades of failure by advocates of commercial agricultural biotechnologies.
The scientists for hire who are
employed by Monsanto, Dow Agrosciences, Syngenta, Bayer CropScience, and all
the others are paid to ignore or dismiss anything and anyone that disagrees
with the unquestioned promotion of a technology that is at a minimum already
established as a gene flow risk to traditional plant breeders and seed savers
and increasingly as a direct and significant contributing factor to a wide
range of environmental and public health problems – see GMO Evidence.
The corporate-sponsored scientists are experiencing
a legitimation crisis of their own and it is tied to their vested relationship
with failed and dangerous technologies. For 30+ years, these scientists
defended transgenic crops and other rDNA technologies knowing well at the start
that there was a complete void in predictive ecology without which there can be
no complete science-based risk assessment. That data is only now coming in and
it is bad news for the proponents of agricultural biotechnologies including
transgenic crops based on Bt insecticidal proteins as well as those engineered
[sic] for glyphosate resistance.
These scientists have lost credibility
because they have allowed selfish pecuniary motives to interfere with respect
for the norms of scientific inquiry. Every time Monsanto or Syngenta bewitch a
young scientist to join their employ, they are essentially being asked to be animated
as much by the pursuit of speculation as service to the pursuit of scientific
truth.
Now that they have failed to convince
the public of their objectivity and the inaccuracy of their misrepresented scientific
data; now having therefore also failed to deliver scientific evidence to
support corporate goals. What do the biotech scientists do? They have turned to
attacking their critics as being anti-science. This is sheer neoliberal spooking masquerading as scientific
expertise, a brutal form of epistemological violence rightly denounced and
inverted by Mary Daly (Gyn/Ecology).
A
message to young scientiststs. I have been instructed to deliver a message to young scientists
from a friend who wishes to remain anonymous and allows that he self-identifies
as an Ethiopian environmental refugee living in North Seattle. It is a message
directed, he said, to the professional and academic practitioners of protegendisque scientifica:
“We are still waiting for
you to fulfill a promise you made 30 years ago that pledged our salvation from
hunger if we all just grew and ate the same GMO crops”. Instead: “…Under you the hunger population has
grown by many millions and now numbers more than 1 billion persons. Most are children
and women.”
I
have a companion question:
How many decades does a failed scientific paradigm get to dominate the
agriculture, food/nutrition, environment, and economic values despite the
social injustice it spawns through the destruction of the cultural and
ecological diversity of the planet?
FRIENDS OF THE EARTH EUROPE
Who benefits from GM crops?
GMOs IN DECLINE
Brussels, April 30th, 2014 – Global
acceptance of genetically modified (GM) crops is in decline, with the number of
countries cultivating falling for the first time, according to a new report
from Friends of the Earth International released today [1]. Poland and Egypt are
the latest countries to suspend or phase-out GM crop production.
The report Who Benefits
from GM Crops?
reveals that in Europe, production of Monsanto’s GM maize, the only GM crop
permitted in Europe, dropped in Portugal, Czech Republic and Slovakia. Over 90%
of the European Union’s GM crop production is based in just one country, Spain
[2]. Globally GM crops are grown predominantly in USA, Brazil, Argentina and
India.
Mute Schimpf, food campaigner for
Friends of the Earth Europe said: “There is public resistance to GM crops on
every continent, with increasing social and environmental impacts wherever they
have been planted. In Europe it is clear that the public don’t want them, shops
refuse to sell them and an increasing number of countries have banned them.”
“Food and farming should not be in the
hands of companies who profit from GM seeds and the chemicals needed to grow
them. We need a food system that promotes greener farms, safer food and vibrant
rural communities.”
Countries such as the USA and Canadaare faced with escalating problems associated with GM crop production. In the
USA, 49% of farmers report problems with herbicide resistant weeds [3]; in
Canada around 10% of farmers report about the same problems [4], resulting in
increasingly toxic weed-killers being sprayed.
In Africa GM crops are grown only in
three countries, South Africa, Burkina Faso and Sudan. However, extreme
pressure from biotech companies threatens to open up the continent to GM crops.
A recent Kenyan decision to ban GM crops came under fire from lobbyists intent
on profiting from the sale of seeds and pesticides. [5]
Kirtana Chandrasekaran, food
sovereignty coordinator for Friends of the Earth International said: “There are
readily available, less risky and more effective solutions than GMOs to tackle
hunger and poverty. The solution to the hunger crisis is not more GM crops; it
is more low cost, high yield agro-ecological farming – the type of farming
being threatened by GMOs.”
In Europe, a new proposal to grant
national governments more say over cultivating GM crops on their territory in
Europe is currently under discussion in Brussels. The proposals, if agreed in
the current version, would provide biotech companies strong power to decide if
national government can ban the cultivation of GM crops or not, according to
Friends of the Earth Europe [6].
Instead of allowing GM crops, the
European Commission and national governments must urgently support existing
farming methods that protect the environment and deliver healthy food for all,
according to Friends of the Earth Europe.
For more information please contact:
Mute Schimpf, food campaigner, Friends
of the Earth Europe (DE, EN),
Sam Fleet, communications officer,
Friends of the Earth Europe, (EN)
***
NOTES
[1] Friends of the Earth International,Who Benefits from GM crops, an industry built on myths, April 2014:
[2] All official figures for Spain
(136,962 hectares), Portugal (8,171 hectares), Czech Republic (2,561 hectares),
Romania (835 hectares) and Slovakia (100 hectares) available here: http://www.foeeurope.org/who-benefits-gm-crops-industry-myths-280314
[3] A separate survey of thousands of
US farmers across 31 states conducted over three years by Stratus
Agri-marketing, Inc., showed 49% of the farmers surveyed reporting
glyphosate-resistant weeds on their farm in 2012, up from 34% in 2011.
[4] Stratus Ag Research (2013). One
Million Acres of Glyphosate Resistant Weeds in Canada,
[5] Africa Biotechnology Stakeholders
Forum, African Agricultural Technology Foundation, International Service for
the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications, Program for Biosafety Systems,
Africa Harvest Biotech Foundation International
USDA GAIN Report (2012). Kenya Bans
Genetically Modified Imports,
2012.pdf
[6] Friends of the Earth Europe, ‘Empty
offer to ban toxic crops’, March 2014:
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