Safe Food_ Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism - Marion Nestle [103]
Others raise more personal issues of values. In 1998, at the peak of the furor over genetically modified foods in Great Britain, for example, none other than His Royal Highness, Prince Charles, wrote of food biotechnology: “I happen to believe that this kind of genetic modification takes mankind into realms that belong to God, and to God alone. . . . We simply do not know the long-term consequences for human health and the wider environment of releasing plants bred in this way. . . . It is the unforeseen consequences which present the greatest cause for concern. . . . I personally have no wish to eat anything produced by genetic modification, nor do I knowingly offer this sort of produce to my family or guests.”6
One might hardly think it productive to argue with such beliefs, but biotechnology stimulates theological as well as secular debate. Derek Burke, the former chairman of the British government’s scientific committee on novel foods, took the secular route: “He [the prince] is raising one more food scare. As far as we can see, the risks of genetically engineering crops are very, very low. You can’t walk away from changing the world.”7 A Vatican official also weighed in: “We are increasingly encouraged that the advantages of genetic engineering of plants and animals are greater than the risks. . . . We cannot agree with the position of some groups that say it is against the will of God to meddle with the genetic make-up of plants and animals.” Pope John Paul II disagreed; at an outdoor mass attended by 50,000 farmers, he said that using biotechnology to increase production was contrary to God’s will and that when farmers “forget this basic principle and become tyrants of the earth rather than its custodians . . . sooner or later the earth rebels.”8 Officials thought it necessary to counter religious arguments, because such values matter. Prince Charles’s statements contributed to a sharp increase in public opposition to transgenic foods in Great Britain.9
British attitudes toward food biotechnology are more extreme than those found in the United States, but what most strongly emerges from surveys on both sides of the Atlantic is the importance of trust. If people do not trust the industry, they must rely on their governments for assurance that food is safe and worth eating. If they do not trust government, they worry more about safety. When, as discussed in chapter 7, U.S. government agencies made industry-friendly decisions to approve transgenic foods exclusively on the basis of science-based perceptions of risk—completely discounting all other considerations—they created a trust vacuum. Without an opportunity to consider the commercial, societal, and political implications of science-based approaches, advocacy groups focused on the one issue open for debate—safety. This chapter examines the health and environmental safety issues raised by genetically modified foods. In looking at these issues, we will see that despite protestations of industry and government to the contrary, it is impossible to separate science from politics in matters related to the safety of these foods.
HEALTH CONCERNS
When scientists first discovered how to move genes from one organism to another, they wondered whether such manipulations could be harmful to health or to the environment. In 1975, researchers met in Asilomar, California, to review the potential hazards of genetic manipulations. To prevent unanticipated problems that might emerge from the new recombinant DNA techniques, they proposed stringent research guidelines. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) soon required recipients of