ABSTRACT
In years to come, what will be remembered about these present times? The war in Gaza, the ‘Credit Crunch’, ‘bank bailouts’, the worst stockmaket crash since the Great Depression, Barak Obama’s victory as the 44th President of the United States, or ‘Swine Flu’. Or will it be remembered for the one thing affecting the very existence of millions of people – the food crisis, or what has been termed ‘the silent tsunami’ (The Economist, April 2008). I suspect not the latter – at least not in the minds of the affluent West where such issues fail to resonate in the memories of those whose material and fundamental needs are met in abundance. Indeed the World Health Organization reports that 1.6 billion men, women and children worldwide are ‘overweight’ with 400 million adults ‘obese’ – such figures represent the excesses of the West. Yet, Western governments and corporations are deeply embroiled and embedded in the contexts, politics and resources that give rise to the circumstances and solutions surrounding food shortage and world hunger. Towards the end of 2009, when industrial nations were reporting a rise out of recession, announcements were made by the world’s richest countries to slash $US 2 billion in food aid. The head of the World Food Aid Programme, Rosette Sheeran, warned that such cuts could result in ‘the loss of a generation’ (quoted in Vidal, 2009a). The globalisation of inflation and rising food prices, combined with
debt, poverty and civil war have conspired to produce 850 million people on the brink of starvation (Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United
Nations, 2006 and 2009). The United Nations Secretary-General has warned that ‘food production needs to rise by 50% by the year 2030 to meet the rising demand’ (Ban Ki Moon, 2008). In contrast, Tristram Stuart’s compelling book Waste – Uncovering the Global Food Scandal identifies how food wastage in North America and Europe is so extensive that it could feed the world hungry six times over. Moreover, he points to the 40 per cent of all crops that fail in developing countries due to a lack of resources to process and store food, and not the ability to successfully grow and feed the world’s hungry (Stuart, 2009). That said, food security remains a topic of international concern. Issues
about the production, sale and distribution of food are constantly called into question. Such issues have included widespread condemnation of large areas of agricultural farming used for the production of biofuels – ‘feeding cars and not people’ and have brought into focus the ongoing immoderation of the West at the plight of impoverished people in the developing world. For some, food has become a way in which to understand contemporary economic inequality, environmental crises and Western governance. The increasing political and social discourse around food poverty, food prices, food miles, obesity, BSE, GM, supermarket monopolies and fast food offer ‘a distinctive way in to critical discussions over the nature of globalization and the burning human questions of our time’ (Andrews, 2008). The global food crisis has also reinvigorated the debate about genetically
modified (GM) food. Yet the battle lines have been drawn, and the arguments are polarised. Indeed, the international reputation of GM technology, including research, has been reportedly placed on the ‘bad industries black list’ alongside, and I quote, ‘pornography, arms trade, animal experiments, human rights abuse, nuclear power, tobacco, fur and GM Research’ (Jamieson, 2008 emphasis added). Among the dictators and pornographers are those engaging in genetically modified research? How and why has GM research come to be regarded in such a negative light? How can scientific research ever be viewed through the same lens as human rights abuse? This answer is partly explored in this book through the lens of political economy. For some, the issue of GM food remains a poisoned chalice; while for others, it provides the solution to world hunger. And why political economy? Because the scientific, social and legal discourses around the acceptance or otherwise of GM food has more to do with issues of politics and economy than hunger and food security. Let us emphasise this point with a recent example in Britain. UK super-
markets have reportedly held ‘secret talks’ to pave the way for more GM food products to be sold in British supermarkets. The argument is not food crisis but cost, contending that food sourcing and labeling has become so expensive that determining products to be ‘GM free’ is driving up supermarket prices (Bloxham, 2009). In other words, the ‘GM free’ stance that has reportedly preoccupied Europe for the past decade is now costing
supermarkets, and more importantly, consumers vast amounts of money. Supermarkets, with the ministerial and Defra backing, are arguing that the increasing production of GM maize and soya is making it difficult and costly to source non-GM products. As a result, a re-education of the public on accepting GM food and embracing GM technology is called for (Hickman, 2009). This call, which emphasises a slow but increasing public support of GM food (FSA, 2009c), has been preceded by earlier government reports that have questioned the value of organic foods and highlighted the pesticides in commercially grown products all in an attempt to subtlety put GM back on the public and political agenda (FSA, 2009). Chapter three examines this further and identifies how public opinion has been manipulated to endorse a pre-determined pro-GM government policy. The opening quotation to this book from Michael Meacher serves as a
powerful reminder of the ways in which corporate enterprise can sometimes clash with, and dominate, public political and media opinion. Yet that is just one piece of the puzzle. The production of GM food and its associated GM technologies is a complex web of actors and actants involving multiple dimensions of power, harm and profit. What does this mean? It means that GM crops are much more about differing ideologies and turf war fares than scientific neutrality and progress. It means that a scientist, a gene, a laboratory and a seed are combined with water, soil and air to produce one of the most vexatious debates of the past 20 years which has polarised governments, consumers, farmers and academics across the world. As a criminologist wishing to develop the boundaries of the discipline, I’m interested in questioning the role that criminology might play in understanding the complex dynamics and deadlocks of global issues – including the international GM food debate. This project is by no means the end, but merely the beginning. A way of suggesting that genetic engineering, an area traditionally dominated by and reserved for the ‘pure scientist’, is central to social scientific inquiry. Much of my focus will be on the UK, but the fieldwork has necessitated field trips to Africa, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. In the UK, genetically modified (GM) crops have been grown within
‘contained sites’ since 1987 while commercial cultivation has been partially granted with restrictions.1 Recent media has warned that Britain also faces ‘food shortages’ and that we must embrace GM crops through ‘agricultural reform’ (Doward, 2009: 15). Such media has responded to reports from the Royal Institute of International Affairs suggesting that the UK is ‘not immune’ from the global food crisis and must reconsider its GM options and ‘re-open the GM debate’ (Ambler-Edwards et al., 2009). This will come as good news for pro-GM advocates and the UK Government. Yet, as this book details, the GM debate has not been a debate; and the public opinion opposing GM crops has been sidelined and usurped. It should be remembered that the UK Government’s decision to commercially grow GM crops
in Britain was taken three years ago, well before any suggestion of food shortages in the UK and during a period of intense public and political opposition. Issues about the safety of GM food have routinely been catapulted to front
page status with, for example, allegations that the UK Government’s food watchdog, the Food Standards Agency, had permitted Morrisons to sell a brand of GM rice banned in the United States. The Shadow Environment Secretary, Mr Peter Ainsworth referred to this particular incident and the likelihood that British consumers were consuming illegal GM products as ‘a massive scandal’, involving a government ‘cover up’ (Lean, 2006: 1). The Prince of Wales has also publicly accused the biotech industry of conducting a ‘gigantic experiment with nature’ with GM crops that were an ‘absolute disaster’ (Randall, 2008: 1). ‘Corruption’, ‘scandal’, ‘disaster’, ‘bankruptcy’, ‘contamination’ and ‘exploitation’ are just some of the terms that have been widely used to describe government and corporate involvement in the production of GM foods. There is no doubting that the introduction of genetic or living modified organisms to the world’s food chain has divided the people including the world’s hungry. Emerging from international discourses on genetically modified organisms are issues of commerce, health and safety, environment, politics and science and technology, as well as illegal, unethical and harmful practices. As already mentioned, millions of people worldwide suffer from mal-
nutrition and starvation. For some, international hunger is a humanitarian crisis, for others, it is a commercial opportunity. The political economy of food and hunger is a long established debate (Harle, 1978), and the emerging discourses about GM food and its development and consumption must be seen as an extension of the politics of humanitarian relief, free trade and sustainable development. Within these discourses are issues of economic hegemony and the politics of world trade; as Mulvany (2004) argues, ‘those with power, particularly the United States, have used hunger as justification for trade supremacy and the promotion of genetically modified (GM) crops owned by northern multinational corporations –much to the delight of pro-GM advocates’. The international commercial growth of GM crops is steadily rising. An
estimated 21 countries are reported to be commercially growing GM crops across 90 million hectares of land. As a result, 39 countries across five continents have reported GM contamination to their environment (Genewatch, 2008). The production and sale of GM food remains an issue of intense conflict in global trade as issues of health, the environment, economics and consumer protection are widely contested. While biotech corporations (and governments) reposition and rebrand themselves as ‘green’ and ‘eco-friendly’ and promote what is referred to as the ‘second wave’ of GM crops (where the emphasis has shifted from food to medicines and biofuels), public opposition to GMO’s remains strong.
