Where Is God in the Genetic Food Fight?

The world’s population is booming, while fewer of us are involved in food production. The multinational corporations that control agribusiness are increasingly the ones who feed us. These corporations are themselves turning to technology to boost agricultural productivity to unprecedented levels.

In creating super-plants, large agri-business companies make bold claims for the possibilities opened up by biotechnology. To give just one example, “golden rice,” is a DNA-enhanced rice that produces beta-carotene. This new rice is still in development stages, but the stakes could be high. With high beta-carotene levels, this genetically modified rice could help prevent a million children each year from dying from vitamin-A deficiency or prevent blindness in as many as 3 million children a year.

The science behind the hype works using recombinant DNA. This is DNA that has been created artificially from two or more sources. The recombinant DNA is then inserted into the DNA of another plant or animal.

Examples of this technology in practice today include a tomato plant given extra resistance to frost and spoilage by inserting a flounder gene into the tomato’s DNA and a potato armed with resistance to bacteria from a chicken gene. The new species created are sometimes referred to as transgenic organisms as they contain the DNA of one or more distinct species. This technology depends on the fact that the DNA of a tomato is essentially made of the same stuff as that of a fish.

Sometimes the use of biotechnology is compared to the selective breeding of plants and animals, which gave us for example, numerous distinct breeds of dogs. Selective breeding in plants took one species of vegetable and created broccoli, brussels sprouts, kale, cabbage and cauliflower. However, combining animal and plant DNA in a lab to create an animal-DNA enhanced form of plant life would seem to be a different activity in kind from selective breeding.

Selective breeding is a matter of coaching nature along using processes hard wired into plant and animal reproduction. Yet, in selective breeding there are biological barriers to the many theoretically possible combinations of plant and animal DNA available to those using recombinant DNA. Genetic modification breaks down these barriers in ways counter to the very distinctions vital to the account of creation shown in Genesis 1:4,6,7. The Bible presents distinctions as not incidental to creation but part of its very essence.

The Grocery Manufacturers of America estimate that 70 percent of the processed foods sold in grocery stores in this country contain some DNA-altered content. The Food and Drug Administration requires notice of genetically modified foods together with proof of safety, but these findings are not independently verified nor is special labeling required to inform consumers.

Most genetically modified foods are plants altered for herbicide tolerance and insect resistance. The best-known examples are the transgenic tomatoes, corn, soy, potatoes, and cotton created using genes from the soil bacterium bacillus thuringiensis (called Bt). The Bt-enhanced plants are resistant to a variety of insects including the larvae of butterfly and moths.

Biotechnology promises increased production of food, foods with higher vitamin content, that are more resistant to pests and vagaries of nature. Yet, recent advances in biotechnology have not been without incident. One example is the StarLink corn recall. StarLink was a genetically altered corn with a built-in insect-controlling protein. The Environmental Protection agency licensed the corn for animal feed only due to concerns with how the protein might affect human allergies.

Keeping corn sources separated proved a regulatory impossibility and StarLink corn made its way to grocery store shelves, prompting a massive recall in the fall of 2000. We still have no idea if the StarLink corn posed a problem to humans, but the lesson holds that it may be impossible to contain transgenic plants approved for growing from reaching the human food supply.

A paper in the scientific journal Nature set off a storm of controversy in early 2003. Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley reported finding traces of genetically modified corn in traditional maize strains found in remote areas of Mexico. Genetically modified corn is illegal in Mexico, but the corn pollen evidently found its way into the native corn.

The original article resulted in a back and forth of name-calling in the media and even in professional publications, but the risk remains. Large agribusiness quickly moves to a monoculture in which very similar plant species are planted around the nation, and in some cases around the world (Bt-crops are licensed in 11 nations).

This use of only a few plant species will work well until nature outflanks science with a new strain of virus, bacteria, or insect, which will prove resistant to the genetically modified plants. Having a monoculture of corn, for example, from sea to sea would allow new viruses or pest problems to wipe out corn in this country as fast as the boll weevil decimated cotton.

The central problem is that humans are trying to adapt the natural world to fit the market-driven economy rather than having the farming methods fit the world around it. Some of the very problems now being countered with transgenic plants were not a problem in smaller-scale farming that relied on planting various crops alongside each other to naturally discourage pests. You see this in household gardens where tomatoes and marigolds are planted together as a natural form of pest control not seen as practical for large-scale farming.

While a life-saving crop of rice is tempting, we should not gamble our food supply on unproven methods. We do not yet know the long-term implications of genetically modifying the plants we eat. We humans may be making an end-run around biological barriers intended to protect us without first considering the consequences.

A little more humility is called for in both the science and the regulation. Corporations seeking to enlarge their profit margins will not introduce this humility. We need regulations to slow the move from greenhouse to broad-scale use with better science. After all, once the transgenic varieties are introduced, we have already found that they create their own hybrids with native species. We may find a new plant safe in the lab only to find that they have disastrous results when they move from greenhouse to field. We also need labeling which will allow you the consumer to know if the food you buy was genetically modified.

Where is God in all this? God created a world with a dizzying array of plant and animal species held in a delicate balance. We know that greater diversity of plant and animal life allows greater chance of survival for the all species if one variety falls prey. This diversity of life is the way the world was created. Part of the role of stewardship of the earth found in both the Jewish and Christian faiths is that we are to protect the diversity of life, which in turn protects our food supply.

            (The Rev. Frank Logue is pastor of King of Peace Episcopal Church in Kingsland, Georgia.)

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