Agricultural Biotechnology

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Agricultural Biotechnology The Role and
Importance of Ethics
Some thoughts Simon Barber, Plant Biotechnology
Unit, EuropaBio, September 2004
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First, who am I?

• 1st degree Agricultural Botany - Ecology from UK
• Worked in agricultural extension in Zambia,
  Africa
• Moved to Canada - postgraduate degree weed
  science
• Agriculture Canada - research - oilseed rape
  breeding
• Agriculture Canada - variety registration and
  plant biotechnology regulation
• OECD Paris - international biotechnology
  biosafety regulation
• Since 1999- with EuropaBio the European
  BioIndustry Association
• 30 plus years in agriculture and plant research

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I am not an ethicist, but my work leads me to
consider ethics seriously

• I like alliteration and wanted to share some
  thoughts on ethics through considering a number
  of B words - this in itself prompted by
  considering the bioethics around biotechnology
• Baselines
• Bags
• Boxes
• Biosafety
• Biodiversity
• Birds

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Before we start though, what are ethics?

• Ethics
• Relates to moral principles the science or
  philosophy of the practice of morals
• Morals
• Generally accepted principles of right and
  wrong, especially with respect to human behaviour
  towards other humans, animals and the environment
• All of this in the context of everyday life, and
  including amongst other things, agricultural
  biotechnology

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Birds

• From an early age I have been fascinated by
  birds. I always carry a pair of small binoculars
  with me
• Last week I received an e-mail
• Dear Colleagues
• We urgently need your help to stop farmland bird
  declines across Europe!
• The new European Commissioner for Agriculture
  takes up her post the Autumn, and it is vital
  that she becomes a driving force to reform
  agriculture and rural policy and reverse the
  continent-wide decline in farmland birds. Please
  help by joining our electronic petition and
  sending a digital postcard to the Commissioner
• Go to www.birdlifecapcampaign.org

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Birds

• Farmland birds birds that we have determined
  are partially dependent, on the agro-ecology of
  their environment
• Farmland birds we introduce agriculture and
  so establish an agro-environment encouraging
  population increases of certain species
• Farmland birds we change agricultural practices
  and so change the agro-environment, thus
  discouraging some species, while encouraging
  others
• Consider the Grey Patridge in the UK

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Grey Partridge, Perdix perdix
It is an interesting fact in the history of this
bird, that while the extension of cultivation has
gradually diminished the numbers of some birds,
and has entirely banished others from districts
where formerly they were in abundance, the direct
contrary effect has resulted in the case of the
Partridge, which we find to increase most
abundantly in those localities where the modern
system of farming is carried out to its greatest
extent
British Game Birds and Wildfowl by Beverly R.
Morris London Groombridge and Sons 1889
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Farmland birds - the Partridge

• Today
• The Partridge remains the most widespread and
  abundant of the European partridges. It is
  resident from the Spanish mountains eastwards
  throughout temperate and upland Europe to the
  steppes of southern-central Siberia
• Today in the United Kingdom
• The increase in population described in 1889 has
  over the past 40 years been severely eroded. The
  population is perhaps only 5 of what it was in
  1950
• Clearly, our ancestors and our choice to farm,
  and how to farm, have resulted in the
  establishment of a subset of birds we call
  farmland birds, and have caused dynamic changes
  in their population sizes in agro-environments

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Baselines

• The Partridge population dynamics in the UK is a
  useful example of a situation that begs the
  question so what is the baseline upon which we
  make judgment?
• What is the right population size of Partridge in
  the UK?
• What is right, what is wrong?
• What is the norm?
• What is the generally accepted moral view on
  this?
• Ethically, how do we consider the Partridge in
  the UK?
• These questions are relevant perhaps to all
  species
• Certainly in the arena of Biosafety and
  Biodiversity as it relates to agricultural
  Biotechnology, the ethics around the accepted
  norms I see quoted in the media and other arenas
  suggest that this technology is wrong
• Yet where are the baselines for comparison?

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Bags Boxes

• Staying with the Partridge for a moment, I would
  hypothesize that nature does not exist in boxes
• I would hypothesize rather, that nature could be
  considered to exist in a series of leaky bags
• At the gene level we know, as we unravel yet
  smaller and smaller units of life, that a bag of
  genes we call a species in fact shares huge
  numbers of genes with other species (other bags
  of genes)
• We know that sexual exchange of genes within a
  species (bag of genes) is the norm, but that
  there are exchanges across species (across bags)
• The closer we look the more we find, for
  instance, microbial and viral genes in plants,
  and we know that there is frequent gene exchange
  across bacterial species boundaries
• I perceive ecosystems in a similar way - a series
  of fairly well defined geo/biological systems
  that leak into one an other
• I simply dont see nature existing in contained
  boxes

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Boxes

• Yet we humans like to construct boxes - it
  perhaps keeps things simpler for us
• We construct boxes around religions, sometimes
  there are clashes between these, even though on a
  closer look we find common norms and morals
  within them - more akin to my bag model - and
  almost always coexistence amongst religions is
  practiced
• We construct legislative boxes that have clear
  differentiation between what is acceptable
  (right) and unacceptable (wrong)
• We also construct process or procedural boxes,
  boxes to fit our beliefs or philosophies

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The Bio-farming (organic farming) Box

• The organic farming process has always fascinated
  me
• With my science background, I consider the
  general philosophy behind this process to be very
  fine, and mostly sensible
• Yet I am distressed at the closed box approach
  demanded of those who would be organic farmers
• Let me ask some questions hereIf our
  scientific endeavours lead us to an agricultural
  innovation that better achieves a moral objective
  - a norm - such as growing a crop with less
  impact on the environment, is it ethical to keep
  that innovation out of the bio production
  box?Maybe yes! (perhaps in this case the bio
  box is an ethic of conviction)But what about
  preventing others from using this innovation in
  their production systems? Can this be considered
  ethicalMaybe yes, maybe no! (here we might want
  to consider the ethics of accountability)
• A case in point why continue the old practice
  of applying toxic copper to control plant
  diseases when there are much safer and more
  environmentally friendly ways to achieve the same
  or better norms?

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Precaution and the Principle

• This leads me to some thoughts on the
  precautionary principle
• As preached by many, including some advocating
  bio farming (thinking in boxes?) this is
  interpreted to instruct
• if there is any doubt - then dont
• We must show certainty of absence of harm
  before moving forward
• Yet we can continue our old ways (even knowing
  they result in harm)
• Here, I would suggest to you that no amount of
  scientific experimentation will ever result in
  certainty!
• So today it would appear quite acceptable
  (normal) to apply the precautionary principle in
  a selective manner - it would seem to be
  acceptable to apply it in a box-like manner -
  selectively - asymmetrically - quite apart from
  the chosen level of human, animal or
  environmental safety (the chosen norms)!

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Precaution and the Principle

• An example
• I have an innovation that permits the safe
  (extensively tested according to international
  safety standards) production of cereals with
  little or no fungal infection
• The harvested grains from my cereals used as food
  and feed for animals and humans have lower levels
  of naturally occurring harmful fungal toxins
  (fumonisins)
• My new technology has the PP applied - we dont
  (can not) have certainty of no harm, we are told
  we should not proceed
• The old production box resulting in higher levels
  of fumonisins in the harvested grain continues -
  no application of the PP for this case
• Where and what are the norms here?
• How are we applying the norms, are we being
  ethical in our application of the norms?
• Can it be considered ethical to have a policy
  that would appear to apply the PP asymmetrically,
  to establish different norms for different
  processes?

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Brassica oleracea
Brassica napus
Brassica campestris
X

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Lets consider another B word

• Brassica napus L. (oilseed rape, or OSR)
• A member of the cabbage family - an interspecific
  hybrid between B. campestris (turnip, birds eye
  rape) and B. oleracea (various mutated forms make
  up the family of vegetables including cabbage,
  brussel sprout, sprouting broccoli and
  cauliflower)
• B. napus although occurring through spontaneous
  hybridization between its two parents would not
  exist without the intervention (maintenance) of
  man over the past millennia
• Over the past 40 years, OSR breeders (using
  traditional, mutation breeding, wide crosses,
  etc.) have developed a crop producing very
  healthy vegetable oils and high quality animal
  protein feed (the species is very plastic and
  can also produce inedible industrial lubricating
  oils)
• I am sure you are all award of the four year UK
  Farm Scale Evaluations in which GM herbicide
  tolerant OSR was grown and compared to non-GM
  conventional OSR
• The outcome was, the GM HT OSR worked well, weeds
  were better controlled, so there were fewer
  insects visiting these fields than the
  conventional OSR fields,and fewer weed seeds
  incorporated into the weed seed banks in the
  fields, with the potential to discourage birds to
  forage in those fields because of fewer
  weeds/seeds/insects
• Apply the PP and halt this innovation
• At this time, dont bother to consider an
  overarching agro-environmental policy that would
  look to ways to increase biodiversity (headland
  and hedgerow management, for instance)

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Weed Control

• I think, without a doubt, the concept of weed
  control is as old as agriculture itself
• Weeds have the potential to severely reduce the
  harvest, but also to seriously reduce the quality
  of the harvested crop (OSR crushers really do not
  want other cruciferous weeds, for instance wild
  mustard Sinapis arvensis in the crop they
  purchase)
• So, having applied the PP to stop the GM HT OSR
  innovation, how are other weed control mechanisms
  in OSR managed with respect to the precautionary
  principle?
• How do we apply the PP to the development of new
  or better mechanical weeding instruments? To
  other novel herbicide tolerances in OSR derived
  through non-GM technologies?
• Looking at the larger macro level, how do we
  apply the PP to the growing of one crop (e.g.,
  maize) that encourages fewer insect visitors when
  compared to another, for instance OSR (whether GM
  or not) that is much favoured by many insects as
  a pollen source?
• It would seem to me that we have chosen to
  practice an asymmetrical application of the
  precautionary principle
• In this case we have chosen to apply it to the
  use of GM technology used in plant variety
  development - and ignore other factors in weed
  control on field biodiversity
• We certainly dont seem to have asked whether
  there are other activities that can assist in
  increasing agro-environmental biodiversity AND
  achieve weed free crops!

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Moral norms - leading to ethical choices

• At the start I mentioned moral norms, humans
  taking responsibility (through behaviour) for the
  wellbeing of other humans, animals and for the
  environment
• In our deliberations about agricultural
  biotechnology, we ought I think to ensure that
  our concept of norms includes, for instance,
  responsibility for achieving sustainability, for
  helping underprivileged societies break out of
  the cycle of poverty, etc
• In my mind, scientific investigation, knowledge
  and technology can help us achieve these today,
  as they have in the past science (responsibly
  applied) provides tools that can enable us to
  achieve our societal norms
• Yet, as I have suggested, we are prone to
  construct boxes around our philosophies and
  religions, our law and our processes (e.g.,
  farming, application of the PP etc.)

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Ethical choices

• It would seem to me then that we could perhaps be
  described as practicing two types of ethics
• The ethics of conviction and,
• The ethics of accountability
• The ethics of conviction would seem to me to be
  the closed box approach, an approach not in
  harmony with the natural world, and I suggest
  unable to attain our Moral norms
• The ethics of accountability are more consistent
  with my preferred leaky bag model, they tend to
  holism and I believe work better to achieve our
  Moral norms
• Seeing nature and agriculture from the leaky
  bag perspective as I do, and knowing of the
  incredible potential achieved and offered through
  our research and applied science, especially as
  it relates to agricultural biotechnology, I worry
  that we be apply only the ethics of conviction in
  the discussion about it use.
• Personally, I dont believe this approach can
  achieve our generally accepted Moral norms and so
  wonder if this approach can in itself be
  considered really ethical?
• Thank you for listening