Engineering nutrition: GM crops for global justice?

This report challenges the dominant view of the scientific establishment that the future of agriculture lies with genetic modification technologies. It argues that a general moratorium on their use in the EU is not only prudent but an ethical requirement.

The paper further argues that governments of wealthy countries have a duty to invest more in building international food security and food justice, but research funding should not be earmarked for GM crop development. Instead, it should be directed at projects that involve small-scale farmers and other stakeholders, from the planning phase right through to implementation. The paper identifies reasons why technological ‘solutions’ to food insecurity are often favoured in science and policy at the expense of alternatives that are potentially both more effective and more just. The three main sections of the report analyse each of these areas in turn, drawing on the example of ‘Golden Rice’, a strain genetically altered to contain extra ß-carotene.

Recommendations include:

• the UK government and the European Commission research and develop mechanisms for evaluating the social acceptability of risks, that are widely trusted by members of the public including scientists, and press for the concept of risk acceptability to be pivotal in international agreements that have a precautionary element
• until trusted mechanisms for evaluating risk acceptability are in place, governments place moratoria on highly controversial technologies such as GM crops
• policy approaches to alleviating hidden hunger and food insecurity involve the communities affected in defining the problem and in evaluating potential solutions
• food security strategies be assessed for their beneficial effect on the whole diet, taking into account the social dimensions of food insecurity
• food justice and food security at all levels be valued in policy as goals in themselves
• a greater proportion of research funding is invested in cross-disciplinary programmes, in order to encourage broader approaches to addressing food security problems
• IP protection applied to plants or animals should not allow the holder to prevent users from re-using or developing their product
• non-exclusionary incentives for agricultural innovation, such as cash rewards or prizes, are introduced instead of IP
• because ‘intellectual property rights’ are actually intellectually-based monopoly privileges, they should be named and treated accordingly