Opposition to Genetic Engineering Incorporates Wide Array of Social Movements

By Ann Reisner, associate professor of Agricultural and Environmental Communications in the Department of Human and Community Development at the University of Illinois.

One often overlooked aspect about the opposition to genetic engineering in agriculture is the wide variety of social movements opposed to it. As expected, social movement organizations directly concerned with “natural foods” or “natural agriculture” in all of its forms are highly active in opposing the trend to genetically engineered products in agriculture.

Organic farmers, retailers, and health food store operators are obvious members, but people who shop for this type of produce would also be sympathetic to the arguments favoring natural (as opposed to engineered) food. After all, five to ten percent of the population considers itself vegetarian and that organic food is one of the fastest growing agricultural markets in the U.S.

In addition to the health food movement, a wide variety of other types of movements have adopted genetic engineering as an issue, including alternative agriculture movement, the environmental movement, the consumer movement and health movement, peace organizations, labor, human rights, international and nationalist, and animal right organizations..

For sustainable agriculture and natural food groups, genetically engineered foods are clearly not natural. For environmentalists, genetically engineered organisms, capable of reproducing themselves, introduce new modifications into an ecosystem already made unstable by other human interventions. For left-labor groups and anti-corporate activists, the potential for vertical integration and monopoly control of food is a clear and present danger.

Animal rights groups are concerned about preserving the species integrity of animals; health groups with unanticipated health consequences. Peace/religious and nationalist groups are concerned about safe-guarding the integrity of the countries with significant numbers of subsistence peasants (Third World interests). In distinctly different ways for each, the narrative structures of all these movement groups trigger deep concerns about the economic and physical risks associated with genetic engineering.

Also unusual is the degree to which various organizations are adopting and using arguments typical of other organizations. Environmental groups mention left-labor concerns over a small number of large corporations controlling a public good such as food; consumer groups support environmental concerns; and safe food organizations talk about bio-piracy and the effect of monopolization on farm families and third world peasants. All groups mention health. Incorporating each other’s concerns increases the likelihood that these organizations will work together in other arenas.

Social movements are one of the few–although certainly not the only-- forces powerful enough to slow, stop, or redirect the trajectory of genetic engineering in agriculture. And social movements groups could mobilized a large number of people. Some of the mainstream environmentalist groups, alone, have membership lists in the millions. To completely ignore their concerns in the ongoing debate on biotechnology would be a move with potentially disastrous consequences.