3. Technoscience – GMOs

Dominate western cultures view nature as a passive ‘productive model’, that is a slave to human science. Nature is something that is there to serve corporations that use advances in technoscience to provide food for the masses.

Plumwood outlines a traditional view of science, that uses a sado-dispassionate practice of disengagement that sees the scientific community, wall itself off from the world and stand behind a veil of ignorance that allows them to make decisions on issues without any emotional involvement. The combinations of science and business, as well as the ‘productive model’ of nature leads to a practice of using science to increase food productions and one outcome has been the growth of genetically modified organisms (GMO).

These GMOs, produced by technoscience, funded by corporations that lobby governments to lift regulations and allow more and more GMO products to enter our lifecycles, are driven by greed and profit. The deregulation of using GMO crops potentially puts the consumers and farmers in danger, as research into the effects of consuming GMO food has only been done by the corporations themselves and independent testers face legal bullying, and smearing by the powerful corporations. You can also argue that it is too soon to conduct research into the effects as it may take decades for the full effect of GMO to come to fruition. However, documentaries such as The World According to Monsanto and GMO OMG, highlight the physical and medical impacts of using GMOs and their accompanying fertilizers.

GMO OMG is a documentary about GMO foods and the truth about the food industry. The filmmaker Jeremy Seifert chronicles his story as a dad on a mission to uncover the truth about about genetically modified foods and how the loss of seed diversity and laboratory assisted genetic alteration of food affects his young children, the health of our planet, and freedom of choice everywhere.

GMO OMG documentary on Chemical Food Conspiracy w/ Jeremy Seifert

 

This interview with the filmmaker discusses the art of making a documentary, but also outlines the political, social and ethical issues surrounding GMOS and big business.

Plumwood, believes that science needs to change it’s male centric, corporate lead ways and move to a “integrated democratic science that is dialogical, non-reductionist and self-reflective – a science that can bring itself and its end under critical and democratic scrutiny.

We may need GMO seeds to produce crops that can withstand climate change, however we need an ethical approach to design and use.

 

Ref:

Val Plumwood (2002) ‘Environmental culture: the ecological crisis of reason’ Routledge

Mahony, Martin and Pallet, Helen, 2013 ‘Boundaries, territory and public controversy: the GM debate re-materialised

Featureimage: from GMO OMG documentary on Chemical Food Conspiracy w/ Jeremy Seifert