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Ingolf Vogeler
Rural Geography
 Q. What are your concerns about genetically
engineered food?
Ingolf Vogeler: I think in the
United States in general, we view things relatively narrowly. And the
narrow perspective tends to be scientific, and even technological. So,
we're into technological innovations, medicines in particular. We're much
more interested in chemical solutions to medical problems than social
solutions to medical problems. And the same thing happens in the food
industry.
You know, if people are overeating, we try to create
light foods, artificial fake foods, rather than encouraging people to eat
less food, which is more natural, healthier and farmers could make more
money. People would be healthier. So, I think in the United States, we
have this problem with thinking that technology and science are solutions,
rather than thinking of them, at best, dialectical. That is, they have
advantages, but they also have a massive disadvantage. And we never
consider the disadvantages. It tends to be more marginal groups who argue
that. And then of course, the society at large can dismiss it because it's
those kinds of people who make that case.
The important issues of
the biology and chemistry of genetic food is very important to answer. But
I think even before you answer that is how that research is done. We know
that a lot of research in universities is paid for by corporations who
have a certain interest. And they get a deal, even though they give the
university lots of money, they invariably don't run these labs themselves.
So, any kind of public research is subsidized one form or the other by the
taxpayers. So, we need to say, do we want to spend taxpayers' money to
develop genetically altered food, even if they have certain short-term
benefits. And if we do, maybe we should fund with a similar amount of
money, an alternative way of doing things. And until you do that, you
don't have a fair playing field and you don't know what the outcome really
would be. So, it seems to me, land grant colleges have no business
promulgating one form of agricultural technology in contrast to another.
They have to fund them both or they have to fund neither. But they
certainly can't use private corporation monies in addition to public funds
to generate a certain kind of agricultural technological innovation. So,
that's a real problem.
And then, even beyond that, even those
companies that have their own labs use taxpayers' dollars in the form of
business expenses. The larger corporations run labs and they have huge
expenses, and they lower their tax burden. So, all of us, as taxpayers,
are paying for that research indirectly through the tax code. And smaller
groups, environmental groups, organic farmers, don't have that kind of
money. So, even though they could do that if they had the money, they
don't. And so, again, the results are skewed. You really don't know, is
this good science, are these good results. So, on those two counts, it's
highly problematic what the findings are.
Q. Do
you think we can trust the safety of the food science that has gone into
genetically engineered foods?
Ingolf Vogeler:
Well, science finds answers. But often they turn out to be not quite as
conclusive as we think, and we often revise our standards about safety and
the degree of a substance in the food supply. So, we need to do research
that sort of is the opposite. Instead of promoting an idea, we need to
spend the research to say, what happens-- can we find any evidence that
this is the wrong way to move. Congress tries to pass agricultural laws to
give money to alternative research, like organic farming or pesticide-free
farming. But if you look at the budgets, it's very small amounts. Most
land grant colleges have alternative farm initiatives, but the dollar
amount is tiny compared to the mainstream. And until that gets equal, and
one could argue it should be skewed the other way for maybe 50 years to
catch up with the inequality of the past, you don't know whether the
findings are trustworthy.
Q. Is there a social
impact of this technology?
Ingolf Vogeler:
Whenever you analyze a situation, there is a history to it. And so, when
you study agriculture, you realize that there used to be a lot more farms
than there are now. And via the trends, there are going to be even fewer.
So, whenever you come up with new technology for farmers, whether it's
public or privately funded, you need to, I think, ask the larger question,
what impact does that have on the structure of agriculture. It isn't just
about producing food, cheaper food, but how does it impact on ordinary
people, the way we have environmental impact statements. We should have, I
think, social impact statements. So, you develop a technology, what does
that do? How many farmers are going to be put out of business? And then we
make some collective decision on whether that's really the direction in
which we move. Because if the technology is expensive, that will favor the
large farmers. It's real clear. Everybody has equal access, but not
everyone has equal income.
So the equality principle doesn't work
in an unequal world. If small-scale farms are what we say we believe in,
especially those that are efficient, family farm--family values. Then, we
have to have public policy that reinforces it. We don't want to reinforce
inefficient farms. But we don't want to give large farmers even more of an
advantage than they already have. And that's what most of this industrial
agricultural research does, it gives them a better chance. And then, they
survive and then we blame the family farmers for their inefficiency or
incompetency.
Q. It has been argued that this
technology will lower the cost of our food.
Ingolf
Vogeler: Well the matter isn't that simple because there are
hidden costs, through taxpayer's money, by tax write-offs for laboratory
expenses or by land grant colleges. There are costs relating to nutrition.
If this food turns out to make people sick, then in the short run we've
gained, in the long run we have incurred enormous costs.
I think
the idea that consumers want cheap things always implies that they have to
be safe, and that we know what we're getting. Well, can we guarantee
those? I don't see companies putting up bonds to certify that their hybrid
or genetic foods are even ninety percent safe. No one is willing to make
that claim, yet they're willing to say they're safe for people to consume,
and we have lots of examples of recalls of food items. We've had the
problem with animal parts being ground up that were not to go into the
food chain, and they did.
So it seems to me, if in doubt, you err
on the side of being safer rather than err on the side of being high risk.
Especially in a society where food is already so relatively cheap. I mean
we have a problem that over half the population is obese. We don't need
cheaper food, in fact, that's one of the arguments people have made that
people are so obese. There's so much cheap food so readily available,
we're killing ourselves. So we would do the consumer a favor if we raised
the price of food, they would eat less, farmers would make more money!
Q. Do you think that consumers should have a
choice whether to buy this food or not?
Ingolf
Vogeler: I think you get at the issue of labeling, a lot of times
in science there's not a definite answer on whether the foods that we
produce are different from natural foods, let's say, and one of the
arguments is that you label this food, and we have a lot of labeling laws
about everything. I guess that really says that the consumer will
ultimately read the labels, and they will have an informed opinion on it.
And I don't think really the labeling is the issue. We don't have a vote
on public health issues, there is a certain scientific knowledge about
whether something is high risk or low risk, whether we should proceed or
not, and we don't always ask people whether they want that decision to be
made. So, for me, the labeling of the milk, for example, is a bogus issue
because I don't think it's a very effective way, that's why ultimately the
industry went along with it. Banning it is another matter. The Europeans
are already saying they don't want hormone fed beef. They don't care if
the science says it's okay, which is what American scientists say, they
say it's too high risk, it's unknown, why bother eat it when you don't
need to eat it. It seems to me that's the prudent way to go when we
produce so much milk that farmers are already going belly up. Why do we
need to produce more milk that is a questionable health risk when farmers
can't make a living on the milk that they produce? Clearly it's not a
shortage of milk that we need to be worried about, so it seems to me its
obvious that you should err on not producing it, but in a free society,
how do you regulate that, how do you ban that?
I think one of the
ways you ban it is by getting rid of all the subsidies that are embedded
in that kind of research. You pull that out and let the research stand on
its own financial merits and then I think you put some restrictions or
legal responsibility on those who claim it's safe, if they've done the lab
research then let them back up that if there is a problem, and to put a
bond, because of course once they go bankrupt, then there's no one to pick
up the tab like the toxic waste problem we have in the United States.
Corporations are great at delivering short term things, but in the long
run, communities and societies are stuck with their mistakes and we need
to link those to solve those problems in the future. Any prudent person
does it slowly, more cautiously.
I think you can affect farmers
directly if you allow milk to be produced per cow at a larger quantity so
you flood the market and the market can't absorb. I think in another case,
you can produce crops that are environmentally destructive, they may not
be so much related to farming and the structure of agriculture, but
invariably, genetically altered food, crops, plants cost more money, so
they become more expensive and in that sense they become more restrictive.
Even that aside, the problem is we don't know what impact that will have
on the environment. So if we're concerned with the environmental long term
effects, and social effects, it seems to me we err on the side of less
manipulation of nature rather than more.
Q. Do
you have concerns about how genetically engineered crops will add to the
industrialization of agriculture?
Ingolf Vogeler:
Well I think genetically altered plants, crops, and food is in the same
direction as industrial agriculture, there's no doubt about it. But I
think it's even more dangerous, because it's one thing to say we're going
to have very large poultry farms that historically we couldn't have
because animals would die or the pigs couldn't handle the stress, and now
we give them hormones and all matters of chemical ways and breeding ways
of reducing that stress. But now we're talking about frequently entering
the genetic pool of these plants, we're altering them genetically, and the
impact of that on other plants, I mean how do we control these genetically
altered crops from escaping and going into a farmers, neighbor farmer. So
if I'm an organic farmer, how does my chemical farmer guarantee that they
don't contaminate my crops? That's another issue that farmers don't want
to deal with. Everybody claims property rights, but in the real world
there's wind, and there's rivers, and things move, plants move, animals
move, and so in that organic environment that's so dynamic, to change a
little bit of it is much more dangerous than just making a dangerous
chemical in a factory. And that's why agriculture is a special candidate,
it's different. It's nature and it's long term that in many ways you don't
have this problem in industry.
Q. What about the
concern that population growth will outstrip our ability to grow enough
food to feed ourselves.
Ingolf Vogeler: There's
this whole issue of how to make agriculture more productive, and there are
many angles to this. In general, this is a misguided idea. There are
times, in certain cultures, in certain times, when there is a concern,
almost an obsession with production for its own sake. If you've got
millions of people starving to death, which is often the argument in the
third world, we can't be real fussy about air pollution, or using DDT,
we've got higher agendas to meet. That's one of the arguments for why
third world countries shouldn't control their air emissions, because they
do relatively little damage and they need to catch up, and the industrial
countries are the ones that already did it, and they can afford it, so
they should do it. In most of the industrialized countries, essentially
all of them, we're not faced with the problem of food shortage, in fact
the great irony is, that in the industrialized countries we have a food
surplus, while much of the world has a food deficit. It's fundamentally
not a problem of producing more, or producing it cheaper. I think we would
be much better off trying to figure out how to grow crops in the third
world better for people.
It's almost like the medical model. We
spend huge amounts of money to keep old, rich Americans alive, meanwhile
we avoid studying the obvious, cheap medical problems abroad, and that's
because you do the research that makes you the money. It doesn't matter if
it doesn't make any sense, that's where the profit is, so you drive the
technology in one direction, totally irrationally, based on anything other
than short term profit maximum.
Q. Do you think
there is a more sustainable way of growing our food?
Ingolf Vogeler: Well I'm not a purist about
agriculture because I think you cannot really be an agriculturalist and be
pure. When we go from hunting and gathering to agriculture we're already
condemned. We're already on a path of manipulation that really is sort of
the ultimate in genetic engineering because we select plants and animals
for what we want and so I don't think there's a purist solution for this
but I think there are better and more sensible and more cautionary and
more appropriate ways of doing things and they depend upon the times and
the place so that what we can do today is very different from what we
might have done in the 30's. Clearly we're not going to get more farmers
back on the land. That's not going to happen so there's no sense in
promoting small scale farming. So we're kind of stuck with a bad situation
but we can make it better by making sure that the farmers that are there,
that want to be there, have a fair chance of surviving and are taking care
of the environment well for the rest of us, the food supply our water
supply is healthy, so we can do those things. And some of those will be
more chemically dependent, maybe have to use herbicides and pesticides. On
the other hand you want to promote organic farmers or people who use
sustainable agriculture. So I think the prudent thing is a mixture of
types of farms, scales of farms and methodologies because in the long run
you know it's like genetic variety, you don't really know which is the
successful model. And if you wipe out too many models before you get to
the judgment day, it's too late. That's why smaller is better, less is
better and caution is better than deciding that you know the answer and
then proceed in this very narrow direction which frequently has been wrong
in the past.
Q. Isn't this solution adding to the
problems farmers are already having with disease and insect resistance to
synthetic chemicals?
Ingolf Vogeler: Why are we
making it even worse? We already have enough evidence that what we're
doing now is bad so it seems to me that genetically altered crops and
foods are just going in the worst direction. If anything a halt would be
better and then we've got to decide on how to roll that back to some
degree.
Q. There is some data showing a reduction
of chemical use on farms because of genetically engineered crops.
Ingolf Vogeler: Well again if you do the
calculations narrowly, a lot of things look pretty good. The unknown of
course is you are locked into a monopoly crop. You have to buy that crop
from that company because the herbicide they sell you works only on their
crops. So are you financially better off? So maybe you pay less on
fertilizer or herbicides because you're buying this crop but and then
what's the quality of the food that comes out? Is this going to be
salable? There's a lot of farmers who bought into this stuff and then all
of a sudden the market dries up. Now who's going to pay the bill for that?
What's the impact on the environment? And that's the problem in this
country, we always do the math on an individual basis. And yet we live in
a community, we live collectively, we live with nature we live with other
people and that is never factored in so it doesn't prove anything that it
makes sense for you now that it is good for all of us forever. And it
seems to me those are 2 different ends of the question and depending on
which end you identify with you err on one side or the other.
Q. I think the average consumer has a hard time
understanding the science involved in this technology so how can we make
an informed choice?
Ingolf Vogeler: That's
another good reason as things get more and more complicated to err on the
side of less complications so that more people can comprehend and
reasonable politically decide the issue and I think, there isn't a
conspiracy but it's a natural tendency that when you get technocrats and
scientists driving the society that only they will know the answers. And
the problem of course is that on any issue you can find prominent
scientists who disagree so that ultimately science doesn't give us the
answer. And it's not a simple matter that 5 are for it and 2 are against
it, because the 2 who are against it may be right and the 5 may not be so
it's not a majoritarian, it's not you know that's the problem, there is no
easy way to fix it.
I think again as the scientific community has
doubts it's another reason to say let's err on the side of doing less of
that as we agree on the value and the safety then we can proceed slowly.
And usually that's what happens. You have an idea, you test it , you see
how it goes and then you move in some slow and prudent fashion. The
problem is the scientific method is very different from the bottom line
approach of business. And when science and business get together it's not
a good mixture. You just know that business will win over science. And
that's why we need to have universities that are independent of
corporations and that also means independent of their funding because it
does contaminate potential outcome. And people won't have the confidence.
Q. Why do you think the Europeans are more
involved in the debate about eating genetically engineered food?
Ingolf Vogeler: I think it has to do with
cultural values that are not even adopted or accepted by most people but
are sort of national mythologies and in the US we honor the idea of
individualism, of innovation, of progress, of change or growth. Those are
not words that Europeans use. Those are not words that most people in the
world use. Most people are happy just to get fed so in a sense we've
created an ideology from pioneer days when we conquered the frontier now
we're into conquering outer space. We don't know when to stop. Now we have
a whole series of conquering the self you know we have this whole new age
movement, spirituality, there's endless restlessness in the American soul.
That isn't common. In most cultures, most people are very content with the
way things were done.
Q. How do you think this
food should be handled by our government?
Ingolf
Vogeler: Well I think labeling foods is a minimum. The problem is
you should also label whether the eggs are, you know, produced in a 10,000
pen barn, versus free ranging, I mean the problem is where does the
natural and the unnatural occur, and the chemistry industry I hate to say
has a point, I mean it is all chemical, I mean you know it's a fine line
where what's natural and when it's unnatural food. I mean all foods are
unnatural, when you think of only hunting and gathering as natural. So
that's why you have to be prudent and tolerant and have multiple ways of
doing it but not to proceed in one direction excessively.
Q. Would you tell me again your main objection to
the question about the safety of genetically engineered food?
Ingolf Vogeler: Science is often good at trying
to solve a particular problem and to do that it has to be increasingly
focused, narrower and narrower, what I call a splitting approach. You have
to really know a great deal about a very little thing to solve the
problem, and that's very good. The problem is, that this always has a
context, so if you figure out some solution, someone has to step back and
see what other related issues and concerns there might be. So you need
context, and unfortunately, the scientific approach tends to be splitting
and narrowing, and that's why you need public policy and social science
and philosophy to pull that back into context. How does it relate to the
environment, how does it relate to people's health, how does it relate to
consumer costs, short term and long term, how does it relate to
agriculture? And that context, is frequently seen as non-scientific, but
of course it is because sociology, geography, anthropology are scientists
too, but it's the kind of science that is not glamorous, high-tech, and so
that's why we need to have detailed research, but we also need research
that takes that and looks back in terms of perspective and context.
Thank you very much for your time. |
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