"The Ethics of Eating" Thursday, November 2, 2006 John Farina On Thursday, November 2, 2006, Woodstock's Catholicism and Civic Renewal Program concluded its project on "The Ethics of Eating." This final event followed up on the discussion begun a year prior and carried on in seminars of lawyers, historians, and theologians throughout the year. Each of these groups presented findings from their discipline and both practitioners and experts responded to these insights. The discussion was moderated by John Farina, director of the Woodstock program on Catholicism and Civic Renewal, funded by the Henry Luce Foundation. He is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at George Mason University. His current book is The Intelligible Sphere: Pointers Toward a Theory of Religion and Civil Society. The evening's panelists were: Grazer, Kimbrell, Rivas, Lewis, and Lo Biondo Walter E. Grazer is currently Director of the Environmental Justice Program and Policy Advisor for Religious Liberty, Human Rights and European Affairs at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, where he has worked in several departments for 25 years. In addition to prior work in the Diocese of Richmond, he is co-editor with Rev. Drew Christiansen, S.J. of And God Saw That It Was Good: Catholic Theology and the Environment. Andrew Kimbrell is the executive director of the Center for Food Safety and its sister organization, the International Center for Technology Assessment. He is the editor of Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture, and author of Your Right to Know: Genetic Engineering and the Secret Changes in your Food. In 1994, the Utne Reader named Kimbrell one of the world's leading visionaries. Jeffrey Marlett teaches religious studies and philosophy at the College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York. He is the author of Saving the Heartland: Catholic Missionaries in Rural America, 1920-1960 (Northern Illinois University Press, 2002). Frank A. Orban, III, is a graduate of Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania Law School as well as a former lecturer in comparative law at the University of Virginia Law School. He is a career international legal practitioner, former Senior US diplomat/negotiator and general counsel of major US and foreign corporations. Responses were also given by Andy Rivas of the Texas Catholic Conference, Josette Lewis of the U.S. Agency for International Development, and Gasper F. Lo Biondo, S.J., director, Woodstock Theological Center. Streaming videos of the evening's presentations are available here. (It may take a while for all of the videos to load.) "Ethics of Eating" Update October 2006 Seminar on the Ethics of Eating, April 21, 2006 As follow up to the 2005 forum on "The Ethics of Eating," the Catholicism and Civic Renewal project at Woodstock Theological Center has held as series of seminars to shed light on some of the topics raised by the forum. Moderated by project director John Farina, these seminars have brought together lawyers, theologians, and historians to explore this question addressed by the forum: How should we as Catholics approach the issue of genetically modified (GM) food? While the topic, upon first glance, may appear mundane, the issue has been at the center of debates in both domestic and international agriculture, in U.S. foreign aid, in the European grocery markets, and for local farmers everywhere. GM food, or the ability to genetically alter seeds and then patent this process, leads us to ask as Christians, "What does it mean to protect creation? What is our role as stewards? And, finally, can we deny someone food today because of potential threats tomorrow?" Rather than approaching the situation from one particular perspective, John Farina guided the seminar participants, who come from a variety of professions, to challenge the assumptions of their discipline about the use of genetically modified food. The participants first convened with others in their discipline (law, theology, and history) to take a critical look at the issue from with in their field. They then came together in two final plenary seminars, sharing with each other the findings of each group. Seminar on the Ethics of Eating, September 15, 2006 The purpose was to provide a basis for theological reflection on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and their ramifications for society – legal, legislative, economical, or social. Participants in these discussions included representatives from USAID, several prominent law schools, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, Georgetown University Philosophy and Theology Departments, law firms such as Winston and Strawn and deKieffer and Horgan, the Family Research Counsel, and the Center for Food Safety. The seminars were able to delve into the obscure complexities of GM food. While there was no final conclusion drawn on how the Vatican should feel about GMOs, the seminars did move towards a method of evaluating modern social issues from a Catholic perspective. Drawing upon the varied background of the participants, the seminars aimed to pull apart the tangled web of societal influences to see where the Church can find its voice in the mixture of commitments, intentions and viewpoints. At the final forum, which will took place on November 2, 2006, a panel selected from across the disciplines presented some of the debates we encountered and the conclusions we drew from this exercise. "The Ethics of Eating" Panel Discussion Presented October 25, 2005, at Georgetown University by the Woodstock Program for Catholicism and Civic Renewal and The Center for Food Safety, Washington, DC One of the most hotly debated issues in international development policy is what role, if any, genetically engineered food should play in solving world hunger. Despite years of drought, Zimbabwe and Mozambique refused in 2002 to accept the import of genetically engineered corn as food aid. The US Embassy and the Holy See co-sponsored "Feeding the World: The Moral Imperative of Biotechnology," held September 24, 2004 at Gregorian University in Rome with the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. At that meeting, several biotechnology specialists argued that genetically modified food is needed to alleviate world hunger. The purpose of this discussion was to explore the ethical and theological questions associated with promoting genetic engineering as part of development aid. Report | Introductory Remarks by Farina | Kimbrell Comments | Weber Comments | Kleckner Comments Catherine Halvey Goodwin, Andrew Kimbrell, John Farina, Margaret Weber, and Dean Kleckner Report of the Discussion by Rebecca West, Georgetown University student On October 25, Woodstock held "The Ethics of Eating" conference in partnership with the Center for Food Safety. The forum centered on the ethical issues involved in using genetically engineered seeds in food production and the implications of using that food in international food-aide. While genetically engineered seeds may help to increase crop yield and the nutrition of the crops, little evidence exists of whether or not later consequences will arise. Is it just to give food, which Europe has already banned, to countries with starving people? Is it just to withhold a surplus and the technology to produce that surplus from starving people due to the risk of later problems? Leading off the discussion was the executive director of the Center for Food Safety, Andrew Kimbrell, with his argument against GE food. Opening with the claim that "eating is the most intimate relationship that we have with creation," Kimbrell first developed the importance of eating not only to our physical well-being, but also to our spiritual well-being. Like the examination of conscience that people take in the Catholic Church before the breaking of the bread, he suggested that maybe we should always eat with consciousness. He then brought up the diseases and problems caused by pesticides and the current agricultural system. Presenting the debate as a crossroads between moving forwards to continue the development of agriculture and rolling the clock back to more traditional ways of farming, Kimbrell pointed to several problems with using GE crops. First he claimed that there is no documented studies of GE seeds increasing yield. Second he finds fault in "patenting the seeds of the world," because of the effects of the genes. For instance, in many cases, these herbicide-resistant genes, which are supposed to allow crops to survive herbicide use, only allows more herbicides to be poured into the environment, thus causing further harm to the environment. Finally, he claims that these major corporations who patent the seeds and are supposed to be "feeding the world" are actually hurting both farmers and plants: farmers by limiting their freedoms and plants by developing suicide genes which kill the seed after one season. Following up on Kimbrell's discussion, Ms. Margaret Weber, the Coordinator of Corporate Responsibility for the Adrian Dominican Sisters, brought to light what it actually means scientifically to have a genetically modified plant and provided a context in which to evaluate it. She questioned the long-term impact on human health, on the environment, and on the economy of small and indigenous farmers. Although she emphasized that she was not opposed to biotechnology, she claimed that method of handling GM seeds so far has undermined these three concerns. Following her claim that "honesty requires clarity" she pointed out the biotech community's failure to label and fully monitor GE food. Since we do not know when we are eating GE food, we simply cannot know all of the health effects of these foods. On the farms, changes may occur from the changes in the crops. Other plants may adapt to these development leaving permanent changes to farms. Thus she additionally claims that it is essential to have monitoring systems in place to keep track of and limit these effects. Additionally, she questioned the ethics of allowing companies to patent seeds. By patenting seeds, farmers loose their right to self-determination because they can no longer develop their own seeds or exchange seeds using these patented seeds. If local communities decide not to use GE organisms, they should not face retribution of any sorts. She asserted that "these conditions are not yet in place," and therefore held that claims that GE foods could feed the world are misleading. Dean Kleckner, Chairman of Truth about Trade and an Iowa farmer, brought the farmers' point of view into the discussion. Speaking from his experiences, he retorted that it hurts farmers for companies to have patents on the seeds. While the patents prevent farmers from reusing the seeds, they still have the option of buying non-GE seeds. Still, he claimed, "the genie's out of the bottle." The increase in yield makes it worth it to most farmers to buy GE seeds annually. He stated that there is no way to turn back to the old way of doing agriculture. Instead we must move forward using the technology at our disposal. He noted that there have been no proven health risks from GE foods. Moreover, many of the foods have been enhanced with proteins and nutrients that will improve diets. For instance, rice fortified vitamin-A can combat blindness caused by a deficiency in vitamin-A, particularly in countries where rice is a staple. Kleckner then turned to the instance of food aid from the U.S. being rejected by the President of Zambia. According to Kleckner, the President told his starving people that the corn was poison, most likely because some of it was probably genetically modified. Kleckner asserted that the president was worried about long term consequences on the agricultural system. If the people had access to the food, they could then plant it and raise GE crops, which would permanently change the system to involving GE organisms. However, since the people were starving they broke in and took the food. Referring to the president's actions, Kleckner declared "I think it is ethically wrong to have that attitude." Woodstock Fellow John Farina Introductory Remarks by John Farina, Woodstock Senior Fellow "The Ethics of Eating: Will Genetically Modified Food Feed the World" is the subject of tonight's discussion. More precisely, we might ask, Should Genetically Modified Food feed the world? With 90 million children categorized by UNICEF as severely food deprived, there's no doubt that advances in food production are welcome. But at what cost? This program is sponsored by the Woodstock Program on Catholicism and Civic Renewal (CCR), funded by the Henry Luce Foundation, and by the Center for Food Safety, Washington, DC. CCR is an interdisciplinary look at the role Catholicism plays in contemporary civil society. The program brings together insights from political theory, law, history, and theology. We at Woodstock are ultimately concerned about the ethical issues raised by this new technology. Specifically many of us will want to ask how our theologically-informed understandings of creation, the person, stewardship, social justice, of enfranchisement and participation, and the like, might shape our analysis of this issue. The Ethics of Eating conference is a first step in that process. We not with our moral theories but with an experience of the issue itself. We have gathered together an outstanding panel of experts to help us frame the debate. When presented with the notion of genetically modified food, many of us, unlearned in the technical issues, might wonder whether we are journeying with Huxley's Bernard Marx into a Brave New World in which humans, as well as plants, have been engineered to produce more Alpha Pluses and fewer of the deplorable Gamma minuses. Or are we simply walking in the footsteps of that simple Augustinian monk, Gregor Mendel, who taught us about the wonders of peas. Andrew Kimbrell Comments from Andrew Kimbrell Executive Director, Center for Food Safety Thank you and what a joy it is to be cosponsoring this event, The Ethics of Eating. It is true by the way that I was named one the country's leading visionaries by the Utne Reader about ten years ago. And they took us to the town hall to give visionary talks, and I was about the fifth visionary to speak. I noticed that the four who preceded me all had very thick glasses, and it occurred to me that maybe to be a visionary you really couldn't see at all. So maybe that's a caveat for what I'm going to talk about today. I am very interested in this subject. Ethics seems to me such an abstract subject, something that you study. And it was actually one of the few class in college that I didn't get an A in, I think I got a C which I think was an indication of life to come. But it was so abstract, how do you relay ethics to one's real life. And when you talk about the ethics of eating, the ethics of food-eating is the most intimate relationship that we have with creation, with the natural environment. It is the most intimate way we experience creation. And in the Catholic tradition, the Christian tradition, and some others, the breaking of bread is literally sacramental; it is literally the ultimate of ethics. In fact in the Catholic tradition you may not break bread in that sacramental fashion unless you've had an examination of conscience. I wonder if we should simply limit that to churches. I wonder if eating with conscience isn't something that we should all do regardless of our religious tradition. Regarding eating as sacramental is something we can all share regardless of the traditions that we come from. And I would hope that an ethics of eating course would begin to help us all better understand and to eat with conscience and to think conscientiously. And there's no one who does this better than my friend, the wonderful writer and thinker Wendell Berry. He writes "To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of creation. When we do this lovingly, knowingly, skillfully, reverentially, it is a sacrament. When we do it greedily, clumsily, inhumanely, ignorantly, destructively, it is a desecration." I know no better summary of what we're here to talk about. Now how do we then think about genetic engineering? I'd rather frame the issue, since I'm the first one to speak. And so one of the things I want to frame is where we are. During the 50 years of my lifetime I have seen American agriculture radically change. Has anyone here seen the Jetsons? And what do they eat in the Jetsons, anyone remember? Pills, they eat pills. By the way, they always ate them with a knife and fork, which I always found charmingly retro. And they always had this orange drink with it which I always assumed was Tang because that was the drink of the astronauts. And for 50 years we've decided that the best way to do agriculture is to make it as chemically intensive, mechanistically and technologically intensive, capitally intensive as possible. Larger economies of scale. And in that time we've lost ten million farmers, five million farms, 90% of our genetic diversity in our fruits and vegetables. We're losing top soil at 10-15% of the rate it can ever be replaced, which is why we're putting petrochemicals called fertilizer on top of it, because we've lost all of that soil. Seventyfivepercent of all the species on the Endangered Species List are there because of farming and ranching. The poisons that have gone into our environment have also gone into our bodies and we've seen an epidemic of cancers, childhood leukemia, breast cancer, all associated with this pesticide use. We've seen the diseases of health--the heart attacks, the strokes, again the cancers that account for some people think, up to 89% of our mortality. We have produced large amounts of monoculture crops, we do export. I'd also like to mention the unspeakable cruelty to the 10 billion animals that are used every year in our agriculture system which I consider one of the great crimes of modernity. That has gone on unnoticed for many, many years. We're more of an urban population; we don't actually see what's going on. The Happy Meal is the most unhappy meal in the world if you were to see what's actually happened. You take those people in McDonald's to the slaughter house or to see the forests being burned down or to see the grazing that's destroying our national parks, they'd run out of McDonald's screaming. It's the least happy meal in the world, but it's hidden because of advertising. But fortunately there's another movement that we're seeing that's counteracting the Jetsonization of agriculture, and that's organic and beyond organic. It's the fastest growing sector of American agriculture. So we come to this debate tonight at a crossroads of the future of food in the 21st century. Will we continue along the industrialization path and now actually engineer food at the genetic level, actually fundamentally changing the genetic makeup of food, taking foreign organisms, taking their genes and putting them into our crops, our animals, our fish, our trees? And will we use irradiation to basically nuke, to change our food at the molecular level? This is the final; I would call it reductio ad absurdum of the industrial model. Or will we switch, and let nature be our teacher, through organic and beyond organic? We are at this fundamental crossroads and this debate happens right there. Now what moral claims does genetic engineering make? John framed it earlier, which is "will it feed the world?" The first thing we need to realize is that we have eight million people who are starving, and many of them right here in this country. Do we have a shortage of food in this country? No. We're a huge exporter of food. Do we have starvation in this country? Yes. Why? Because people don't have access to food, they can't buy food. Eighty percent of the countries where we have starving people are net exporters of food. The UN, FAO, every international organization says we are not starving because we have too little food; we're starving because we don't have access to food. Only a hundred years ago the vast majority of the world, including people in this country, was food independent. They were growing their own food. Then corporations came in, realized it was much more profitable to grow sugar, coffee, and other export crops. They kicked those peasants off the farm, it's happening today in Brazil, Argentina, and Africa. And where do those people go? They go to Brasilia, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, these new ghetto cities around they world where they starve. They starve because they're not growing their own food anymore, and they can't afford to buy food. That's why we have starvation. It's the very corporations that would use this technology and patent this technology and say they're going to feed the world whose practices through the World Bank, the IMF, and the WTO are causing the enclosure of these people off their lands, into the cities, and causing that starvation. It's one of the great ironies of our time, one of the great untold histories, that's still going on around the world. But let's assume for a moment that we will grow in population and that we will need more food. What about then? Won't we need genetic engineering? There is not a single peer reviewed scientific study in the world that shows genetic engineering increases yield. Not one. Zero. There are numerous studies that show genetic engineering,--yes it's more convenient, and yes it allows you to use pesticides and herbicides more freely. It either keeps yields the same or in most cases decreases yields in the four major crops,--corn, soy, canola, and cotton,--it actually decreases yield in three of them-cotton being the only exception. In corn, soy, and canola it actually decreases yield. So even if you say we need to save the world through more yield, genetic engineering is the wrong way to go unless you're going to save the world through more herbicide use. In that case you've got the right technology. This is another claim they make, they claim that genetic engineering is actually reducing herbicides. Well again, study after study shows. these are herbicide resistant plants. Eighty-five percent of every genetically engineered plant out there is herbicide resistant. That means it's been genetically engineered so you can put more and more herbicides on it. If you've got a garden, you've got weeds. If you put too much herbicide on it, you don't just kill the weeds, you kill the plants in the garden. So that was a problem for Monsanto, it limited their sales. They said we will genetically engineer plants so you can put as much herbicide as you want on them. And so we have 85% of all the genetically engineered plants in this country and around the world that are herbicide resistant. So don't believe the stuff about vitamin A or drought resistance-that's all science fiction, that's Disney Land. It's not sound science; it's not what's in the ground. John said we should talk about how this technology's affecting us. This is essentially herbicide resistant technology. The debate tonight should be whether the real technology around the world-herbicide resistant technology- which allows us to put indiscriminate amounts of pesticides into our plants, water, into our air, into our bodies, is a good idea or bad. And it's increasing at an exponential rate. In the past five years we have put over 150 million more pounds of pesticides on GE acres than non GE acres. That's going into our water, into animals, plants, that's going into our bodies. And the only people that this helps are the major corporations. And I don't believe that's a moral claim on us, to help Monsanto of all people, with its history of corporate crimes, to make more money. But they do sell more herbicides. And here's the final irony. It turns out that by putting all this herbicide on crops that those herbicide resistance genes spread to weeds. And we now have weeds that resist herbicides that cannot be eliminated with Roundup. They need more and more pesticides on these resistant weeds. This really helps the chemical companies; they're selling more and more of their product. So after 20 years, tens of billions of dollars of public and private research what we have in the world is genetically engineered plants to massively increase the chemical pollution of our planet. That's what Monsanto is doing. That's how it's making its money; it makes its money by patenting and selling the seeds so that more and more farmers can use pesticides indiscriminately. It's a convenience for the farmers admittedly, that's why farmers are using it. But it's a tragedy for the environment; it's a tragedy for our own health. But that is not the only moral claim we have against genetic engineering. It's not going to cure hunger, it does not reduce pesticides. It massively increases pesticides. But also, Monsanto is not just about genetic engineering. They are using genetic engineering to patent the seeds of the world. They've already garnered a huge percentage, they own them as monopolies. Eighty percent of the world's farmers depend on saving seeds to survive and to create food. By patenting seeds Monsanto and a few other companies- they are now the second leading seed patenting company in the world-prevent farmers from saving their seed. CFS has just issued a report showing that 147 farmers in this country have been sued by Monsanto for saving seed, often having to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages and many of them going bankrupt. Monsanto now is monopolizing the seeds of the world and, with Delta Pine and the U.S. government as coconspirators, is developing a new technology called terminator technology. This genetically takes seeds and makes them commit suicide after one growing season. So you have a seed, you plant it, and it commits suicide. There are about 15 different patents on different kinds of terminator technology. And why are companies interested in terminator technology? Not because they're interested in feeding the world. It's the reverse of that. They're interested in it because if your seed dies after one growing season, what does the farmer have to do? It has to go back to the company to buy seeds. So it is the height of hypocrisy for these companies to say they're saving the world from hunger when they re inventing technology that will destroy seed saving. And in at least five of the patents that the Center for Food Safety has looked at, the suicide technologies are genetic; they're not even chemical triggered, which means those suicide genes could jump from crop to crop. And I find it, again, ironic that companies like Monsanto, Dow, Bayer, Dupont that call themselves life sciences, are creating suicide genes. They should call themselves death sciences, because that's what makes them profitable. Margaret Weber Comments from Margaret Weber Coordinator of Corporate Responsibility, Adrian Dominican Sisters "The obligation to evaluate social and economic activity from the viewpoint of the poor and the powerless arises from the radical command to love one's neighbor as one's self." (#87) "Personal decisions, policies of private and public bodies, and power relationships must all be evaluated by their effects on those who lack the minimum necessities of nutrition, housing, education, and health care." (#90) Economic Justice for All: Pastoral Letter on Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy, 1986 The Adrian Dominican Sisters and other members of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility have engaged on the issue of genetically engineered food and seed, with corporations across the food spectrum, for the past five years. We have approached the issue from a three-pronged concern: the long-term impact on human health; long-term impact on the environment; and social and economic impact on small and indigenous farmers. Our framework is justice, not charity. We began our work in the context, which remains true today: a regulatory system that is inadequate to address long-term impacts; lack of official monitoring for environmental or health effects, and a system of corporate agribusiness which does not protect the right of farmers to save and exchange seed, but rather gives priority to strong protection of intellectual property rights. Justice requires honesty. Honesty requires clarity. Let's be clear: genetically engineered food is one aspect of biotechnology. A position on GE-food must not be equated to a position on biotechnology. Biotechnology includes a wide range of recombinant DNA tools and products, transgenic foods or genetically engineered foods being just one of them. Critique of GE-foods is NOT dismissal of biotechnology as a whole. If there is nothing else to recall from this discussion, please remember this point. Advocates for GE-food frequently characterize any critique or question of GE-food as total opposition to all biotech. It should also be noted that claims about agricultural biotechnology often do not distinguish benefits claimed from use of biotechnology tools such as marker-assisted breeding, and benefits claimed from use of the products of transgenesis. All GE-foods are the products of transgenesis. Not all ag-biotech produces transgenics, or genetically engineered food. Reframing the question "Can genetically engineered food feed the world?" to "Are genetically engineered foods essential for a sustainable and just food system?" gets to the heart of the issue: the ability of people to feed themselves. Essential elements for GE-food to be part of a just sustainable food system: Right to know and ability to study effects: Genetic engineering is a quantum leap from traditional cross breeding. Studies on health effects are impossible without labeling. There is no post-market monitoring of any products currently on the market, or any system in place for such monitoring. It should be evident which products are GE, so that consumers and farmers globally can make informed choices. The example of the new Vistive soybean illustrates how "choice" for an agricultural trait can be manipulated choice. Vistive is a soybean with low linolenic acid. The low linolenic acid trait makes the Vistive soybean oil a good oil to decrease transfatty acids in food. Food companies are eager for this product. The low linolenic trait has been bread into the soybean through the use of conventional breeding. However, Vistive is being offered only along with the Roundup Ready trait, making Vistive a genetically engineered bean. There is no choice with Vistive to be low linolenic but not Roundup Ready. Monsanto is forcing the market. The company claims it is responding to the market, but that is fallacious claim. How can it make a claim that there is no market for a non-GM version of the "healthy bean" when it is not even offered on the market? Monitoring of environmental effects, with accountability and remediation protocols in effect. We know that overuse of anything agriculturally will result in resistance in the pests that are the focus of eradication: weed or insect. We now know that there are five major US weed pests that have resistance to Roundup. This is due to overuse of Roundup Ready crops. Monsanto has certainly encouraged farmers to use their RR seeds. In some cases, as the Vistive soy, even offering no non-GM alternative. Yet now as these major weeds are showing resistance to Roundup, i.e. becoming more of a weed problem, Monsanto is not taking responsibility for aggressive marketing of the RR seeds. Monsanto is not claiming the patent rights to the Roundup resistant weeds. No, the responsibility and additional cost is to the farmer. Biosafety capacity: The Cartegena Protocol provides for a precautionary approach to GE-seeds and organisms. It allows for countries to consider social and economic factors in regulating these products, and even for more stringent regulation locally than the minimum called for in the Protocol. Yet the US and a couple of other nations are attempting to block implementation. What does this foretell for local determination within an agronomic system? Protection of the right to save and exchange seed: the current system for GE-seed is one regimented by Intellectual Property Rights. Buying GE seed includes "technology fees" which are payment to the company holding the patent. When the major producers of GE-seed, specifically Monsanto, aggressively pursues legal action against farmers for allegedly violating the property rights it is serious question how GE-seed will allow for greater self-reliance and food self-sufficiency. Dow Chemical's subsidiary Mycogen Seeds last month was granted a very broad patent on Bt seeds: seed engineered with a trait from the bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis. The patent is good until 2021. It includes not just the traits of Bt but also the method of incorporating the Bt into a host plant, the plant regenerated from a plant cell transformed, and on and on. What is the big deal? Going forward, Dow can, via this patent, force payment of licensing fees or licensing agreements with other companies and growers of any Bt seed or plant that is toxic to six orders of pests. Simply put, Dow now holds ownership over these traits, the process of getting them into cells and plants. How wills this play out in developing countries? How is the regimen of IPRs aligned with principles of justice and local self-determination? Any solution must be evaluated in comparison to its alternatives, using the lens of "Who benefits? Who loses? Will the common good be served from the outset or only after a few have profited? Who/what will bear the cost of any mistake? The signals from the current system do not portend for a more just global food system with GE-food, than is currently in place. It may be fair to hope that agricultural biotechnology will be a tool for improving local agronomic results, but only if the following conditions are present in the local community: GE-organisms are identified, including labeled; There is local control over the organism; i.e. the local community has opportunity to accept or reject the GE-food without condemnation, or economic retribution via trade or aid; Resource poor growers have access to the traits and technology without restrictive IPRs; the right of farmers to exchange and develop seed is protected; There are strong biosafety systems, including monitoring for unintended health and environmental effects, with accountability and the resources for public enforcement. These conditions are not in place today, either in the so-called developed world or in the developing world. Thus it would be misleading to claim that GE-food can "feed the world." "Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing." Arundhati Roy Dean Kleckner Comments from Dean Kleckner Chairman, Truth About Trade Introduction - Main Themes I grew up as an organic farmer, only, I didn't know it. I didn't have many choices. My father, brother and I didn't use commercial fertilizer - there wasn't any. We used the manure from our animals and plowed under legumes to provide nitrogen for our corn crop. We didn't use chemical sprays to control weeds - there wasn't any. We cultivated our corn four times to control the weeds during the growing season. Organic farming was conventional farming then. Everybody did it. Today - conventional farming is using hybrid seed, chemical fertilizers and chemical sprays to control weeds and bugs. As an Iowa farmer today, I face choices all the time about what crops to grow, where to grow them, and when to grow them. One of my most important decisions came several years ago when I chose to begin planting genetically enhanced crops. I'm currently one of more than 8 million farmers around the world who do this. Embracing biotechnology has been one of the wisest moves I've ever made--beneficial to me as a farmer, to my family as an economic unit that depends upon agriculture, and to consumers everywhere who want their food to be healthy and good for the environment. After 10 years since its commercial introduction, as well as a billion acres planted and harvested, GM crops are no longer an experimental technology, but a proven one. In fact, they are on the verge of becoming the new conventional. Better Health Biotech food poses no risk to human health. Regulatory and scientific experts in the United States and around the world have studied genetically-improved plants for more than a decade and have determined that they are just as safe and healthy to eat as the current conventional crops. Among the groups and people endorsing biotech food are: the National Academy of Sciences, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the American Medical Association, the French Academy of Medicine, the International Society of Toxicology, and 25 Nobel Prize winners. 2001 European Commission report summarizing 15 years of scientific research conducted by 400 teams of investigators: "Research on GM plants and derived products so far developed and marketed, following usual risk assessment procedures, has not shown any new risks on human health or the environment. ... Indeed, the use of more precise technology and greater regulatory scrutiny probably make them even safer than conventional plants and foods." Biotech plants are sometimes healthier than conventional crops. In the United States, corn plants that are genetically enhanced to fight off corn borers are 47 percent less likely than their conventional cousins to be infected by the fungal disease fumonisin, which can cause health problems for people if it enters the food chain. At present, many consumers shrug their shoulders at biotech food. In the future, however, they will actually demand it, as products such as heart-healthy soybeans come on the market. Over time, biotechnology will improve nutrition and diets everywhere. Tomatoes enriched with lycopene will help fight heart disease and cancer. Rice fortified with beta-carotene will combat vitamin A deficiency that causes blindness in half a million children and kills 2 million people annually. Cooking oils with higher levels of vitamin E and lower levels of trans-fatty acids will improve overall health. Better Environment Biotech foods require fewer applications of herbicides and insecticides because genetically enhanced crops are better able than conventional crops to defend themselves against insects and weeds. Globally, biotech crops have led to a 6 percent reduction in pesticide, or about 380 million pounds of chemical sprays. The total "environmental footprint" associated with this gain is actually 14 percent. In China, Bt cotton is responsible for a 57 percent reduction in pesticide applications, which is a major benefit to the workers who apply these sprays. Biotech crops require less tillage, which means they help prevent soil erosion. Nearly two-thirds of all the American soybean farmers who have reduced their tillage practices since 1996 cite biotechnology as the key factor. Biotech crops lowered greenhouse gas emissions by more than 22 billion pounds last year, through a combination of farmers needing to plow and spray less plus the soil storing more carbon in the form of decaying plant matter. The net effect is similar to removing 5 million cars from the road for a year. Aid to Farmers Up to now, farmers have been the driving force behind biotech adoption, primarily because of the cost savings--$27 billion globally between 1996 and 2004, according to a new study by British researchers Graham Brookes and Peter Barfoot. In the United States, these savings lessen reliance on federal subsidies, help rural economies, and make food more affordable. Biotech holds special promise for the developing world. Last year, for the first time, the absolute growth in biotech acreage was higher in the developing world than it was in the developed world. According to the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA), a non-profit group, "90 percent of the farmers benefiting from biotech crops were resource-poor farmers from developing countries, whose incomes from biotech crops contributed to the alleviation of poverty." Moral Message The global population is booming and is expected to reach 7 billion by 2013 and 8 billion by 2028. We add more than 73 million people each year, which is roughly the size of the population of Germany. There are limits to how much our cropland can grow, so we must rely on productivity gains to feed a growing planet. The "Green Revolution" helped the last generation keep pace with improved hybrids, fertilization, irrigation, and mechanization. Right now, we need a "Gene Revolution" to make a similarly important contribution. If we were restricted to the farming techniques and practices in use just ten years ago, satisfying today's food needs would require more than 400 million acres of additional farmland, which is larger than all the farmland in either the United States or China and comparable to about one-quarter of the Amazon rainforest. Biotechnology can help us discover better and more efficient ways to use the space we have to feed a growing planet. THE MODERATOR John Farina, Senior Fellow, Woodstock Theological Center, is the director of the Center's Catholicism and Civic Renewal Program, sponsored by the Henry Luce Foundation. THE PANELISTS Catherine Halvey Goodwin Andrew Kimbrell is the Executive Director of the Center for Food Safety and its sister organization, the International Center for Technology Assessment. He is the editor of "Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture." In 1994, the Utne Reader named Kimbrell one of the world's leading visionaries. Margaret Weber is the Coordinator of Corporate Responsibility for the Adrian Dominican Sisters. Weber also serves as the Co-chair of the Access to Health Care Working Group, as well as Co-chair of the Water and Food Working Groups, for Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility. Dean Kleckner currently serves as Chairman of Truth About Trade, a national grassroots organization advocating freer trade and agricultural biotechnology. Previously Kleckner served as president of the Iowa Farm Bureau for 10 years, followed by two seven-year terms as president of the American Farm Bureau Association. Catherine Halvey Goodwin is cofounder of the Center for Human Rights in Manaus, Amazonas, and is currently an International Visiting Fellow at Woodstock Theological Center. THE STUDENT PANEL responded with questions for the panelists. Cosponsored by the Georgetown Lecture Fund, Christianity in Politics, EcoAction, Georgetown Solidarity Committee, the Protestant Student Association, and the Catholic Student Association Students question panelists Catholicism and Civic Renewal webpage