The head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Cardinal Peter Turkson, has moved away from his predecessor’s support for developing genetically modified food to alleviate hunger in poor countries. Instead, he argues that adoption of the “precautionary principle” is warranted:
“There are a lot of claims that are disputed (like) that GMOs never call for the use of pesticides or insecticides or anything because they are resistant,” he said. Such claims have been challenged, he said, and some say “at a certain point (these crops) require insecticides whose chemicals break up later in the soil and render the soil less fertile.”
Given the disputed claims and doubts, “I think that we should go easy and probably satisfy all of these objections to the full satisfaction of those who raise these objections,” he said.
Because of the companies’ control over the patented seeds, “what is meant to alleviate hunger and poverty may actually in the hands of some people become really weapons of infliction of poverty and hunger,” Cardinal Turkson said.
Previously, opponents of GM carried the burden of proving that some harm was being inflicted. Under the PP, companies that planned on introducing genetic changes into an organism would have to bear the burden of proving that it was safe.
While this might seem counter-libertarian, I would argue it is not.
1. Since changes in genetics are impossible to regulate post facto, they cannot be subject to the usual economic arguments available to libertarians. The potential devastation is so irreparable that the principle of liberty demands that the bar be raised ahead of the event.
2. Biotechnology as an industry is concentrated in so few and such large companies, that free market conditions do not prevail at all in other respects. The companies owe their position in the market to their influence on government regulations and laws, to begin with. That suggests that there will be little in the way of normal market forces to check their natural profit-seeking from turning into rent-seeking based on preferential treatment, captive markets/monopoly, and government enforcement. PP is simply a thoughtful mechanism to prevent profit from careening into plunder.
Bottom line, PP prevents looting or theft.
That makes it libertarian.
The “potential for irreperable devastation” is a slippery-slope argument. Take Chernobyl as an example in history — the same argument could have been made that no such power plant should ever have been (or be) constructed. (Think of the global impact the fallout clouds had.) Or, using more sophisticated butterfly-effect theorization, I can definitely argue that (at least the main traditional) religions have definite potential for devastation. Where does one draw the line to such arguments of the future?
Yah, about as libertarian as Bush’s and Obama’s pre-emptive wars of aggression, wars that had no support in reality.
It took about five million years for hominids to develop brain structures to control emotional thinking. Too bad they are not very prevalent.
Hi –
I think you’ve misread this.
I’m not making the argument that the Vatican is free of ideological or anti-libertarian elements. It’s not.
I am trying to show how libertarian ideologues would argue against procedural cautions or “brakes” that actually prevent corporatism from distorting the market.
Dennis, you can indeed distinguish between the introduction of, say, technology where the buyer has to enter into a transaction with the vendor in order for him to use/become affected by/subject to the technology and
genetic changes that cannot be controlled once put in place…and will subject millions of people to restrictions on their freedoms through no fault of theirs (through genetic “pollution”)
This is where prudential considerations must modify practice if we are to have capitalism instead of parasitism and rent seeking.
Pollution (be it genetic, radioactive, chemical, climate-changing, or whatever) should already be protected against. If there was ANY purpose for a State, it would be for this — to protect people’s property, against genetic / radioactive / chemical / climate-changing damage. Yet again the nature of the beast is blatantly exposed.