IF Johann Sebastian Bach was still kicking around Germany, writing the cantatas, passions, oratorios and concertos for which the 18th century composer is famous, would he be sitting down to compose “the Bt Corn Cantata”?
Reading last week’s United Nations Development Program annual report on human development, that could almost be a logical conclusion.
To make the point that the controversy over genetically modified foods is nothing new, the report outlined the 17th and 18th century campaigns against coffee. Its critics, including France’s wine industry, attacked it as a drink that would dry up brain fluids, create impotence and enfeeble women.
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In 1732, Bach wrote his whimsical Coffee Cantata “partly as an ode to coffee and partly as a protest against the movement to stop women from drinking it,” says the report.
That frivolous comparison aside, the UN report is an amazing document – both for its bluntness and its clarity and uncompromising language.
Bureaucracies tend to produce reports written by committees, filled with weasel words and milquetoast conclusions.The 2001 version of the UNDP report is anything but.
Right or wrong, it is a clear and uncomplicated call to arms. For all the controversy, biotechnology and genetic modification are powerful potential weapons in the fight against world hunger, it says.
GM varieties can be drought resistant, higher yielding, early maturing and requiring less or no expensive inputs such as fertilizer and pesticides. All this can be an answer to food deficiency problems, said the UNDP report.
Even with its call for more research and tough regulation, the pro-GM tone has enraged anti-GMO activists who consider the report a betrayal and an unwarranted intervention by the UN into a charged political debate.
But it also tells truths about the GM debate that should make both sides squirm.
The promoters of GM varieties consistently overstate its potential.
Opponents consistently overstate the dangers and ignore possible benefits for poor and hungry people.
European farmers use public fears as a cover for trade protectionism. Anti-GM campaigners play on public fears as a way to raise money.
Everywhere, there is a political debate within developed nations that ignores the needs of the hungry and that condemns the new technology because of failures in the regulatory systems of Europe.
The report offers a blunt assessment of the debate: “Language itself has become a political weapon,” it said. “Miracle seeds and ‘golden rice’ exaggerate the positive while ‘traitor technologies’, ‘frankenfoods’ and ‘genetic pollution’ deliberately engender fear and anxiety.”
It makes reasonable and informed debate difficult, said the report. “The opinions of those most vociferous, rather than those who stand to gain or lose the most, can drive decision making.”
These are unpleasant truths to the partisans, no doubt, but truths nonetheless.
From an organization that usually issues reports so nuanced as to say nothing, it was a welcome addition to what has become largely political bombast. It contains a caution for both sides.
