An Urban's Rural View

Before I stumbled across vegangmo.com the other day I thought I knew the arguments for and against genetically-engineered crops.

The Vegan GMO website showed me I don't know as much as I thought. The site's "why are we vegans pro GMO?" page (http://www.vegangmo.com) lists four reasons, three of which were new to me:

-- Some safety tests for GE crops involve animal experiments;

-- Genetic engineering could create "animal alternative" foods that would encourage more veganism, like artificial cheese;

-- Genetic engineering could create plants containing nutrients vegans lack, like vitamin B12 and DHA;

-- GE crops use less fertilizer and pesticides, so fewer insects and fish are killed, and "no- or low-till agriculture will save the lives of ground-dwelling animals."

It was the first reason -- opposition to animal tests -- that led me to the site. I had been reading up on a study purporting to show that pigs consuming genetically-engineered corn and soybeans had developed health problems. Vegan GMO had quoted (http://www.vegangmo.com), a rebuttal charging that "this study subjects animals to inhumanely poor conditions resulting in health impacts which can then be data-mined to present 'evidence' against GMO feeds."

The rebuttal, by British environmentalist and recent pro-GE convert Mark Lynas, leveled other broadsides at the study (http://tiny.cc/…). It noted that while the study's authors highlighted one measure on which the GE-fed pigs scored worse than those on conventional feed, on several health measures the GE-fed pigs had scored better.

As you might expect, though, the vegan website's excerpt from the Lynas rebuttal stuck with the animal-cruelty argument.

"Most damning of all," the excerpt continued, "close to 60% of both sets of pigs were suffering from pneumonia at the time of slaughter -- another classic indicator of bad husbandry. Had they not been slaughtered, all these pigs might well have died quickly anyway. No conclusions can be drawn from this study, except for one -- that there should be tighter controls on experiments performed on animals by anti-biotech campaigners, for the sake of animal welfare."

Are there really a lot of pro-GE vegans out there? Possibly. A basic premise of veganism is to avoid all animal products and oppose the use of animals in tests. Vegangmo.com's conclusions seem consistent with that premise.

That said, it's hard to know how representative these pro-GE vegans are. The website identifies its authors by first name only and reveals nothing about any institutional associations.

Could the seed companies be behind it? I doubt it. Some of the links from the site are to university scientists who favor genetic engineering but regret its domination by big corporations. Still, given the shield of anonymity the site's founders have raised, an opponent of GE might be forgiven for harboring that suspicion.

Still, there's food for thought in this for farmers who raise GE corn and soybeans and livestock raisers who feed their animals these products. They have a tendency to lump their critics into a single category, "the guys who know nothing about agriculture but oppose everything we do." In indulging in this oversimplification they miss the opportunity to form beneficial alliances when common ground exists.

Urban Lehner can be reached at urbanity@hotmail.com

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