No modified genes in our food! The movement against genetically modified organisms (GMOs) has been very successful within the European Union. In many member countries there is a ban on field experiments and the import of genetically modified food from outside the Union on the consumer market has been postponed again and again. Recently the Union agreed to open the market for GM food, yet the proposed regulations make experts doubt that innovations in this field will ever gain momentum in Europe. The fate of GMOs in Europe seems to be a source of rejoice for the STS community. Not only does it falsify technological determinism, the case also illustrates a new form of supranational politics. Apparently, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) like Greenpeace can influence the shape of European innovation politics, using new strategies and arguments. Moreover the controversy seems to prove a favorite STS point: in the debate on GMOs ‘science’ does not play the role of a neutral arbiter, but is enrolled in the battle by both sides.

Yet there is a mysterious twist to the case. It is obvious that we should stop risky technologies. But why oppose efforts to find out what the risks are? That’s exactly what the anti-GMO movement wants, however. Starting in the nineties NGOs like Greenpeace have almost continuously set up campaigns for banning field experiments with GM crops. This Greenpeace policy did amaze most scientists in biotechnology and chemistry, to put it mildly. Why oppose something before testing it? That goes against the grain of science. I have two questions. First, what is the source of this alienation between mainstream natural science and, in particular, Greenpeace? Is it just another example of sloppy science on the Greenpeace side, as in the celebrated Brent Spar case, or are we dealing with a more fundamental difference? Second, Greenpeace markets itself as a science oriented pressure group. But is it really possible to oppose new technologies in a categorical way within a scientific language game or style of reasoning? Let’s have a closer look at the GMO controversy.

The basic antagonists in the debate are, on the pro-GMOs side, the biotech industry (like Monsanto) but also some public agencies and research groups, and on the anti-GMO’s side, environmental NGOs (like Greenpeace), consumer-groups, the bio-food movement, development NGOs, religious groups. The pro-rhetoric tells us that GM Food is nothing new, GM Food is safe, and GM Food has only positive social effects. The Monsanto site sums it up nicely: “Today, biotechnology holds out promise for consumers seeking quality, safety and taste in their food choices; for farmers seeking new methods to improve their productivity and profitability; and for governments and non-governmental public advocates seeking to stave off global hunger, assure environmental quality, preserve bio-diversity and promote health and food safety.” The anti-rhetoric counters these claims by saying: GM Food is something completely new, GM Food generates new risks, and GM Food will increase global inequalities. So to each argument pro there is an argument contra, and visa versa. In effect there is not much real debate going on. Opinions are frozen and the frontline of the GMO controversy turns out to be quite static.

From a sociological point of view we can diagnose these states of affairs as elements of a new global complexity or a World Risk Society in which no objective knowledge of the future can be obtained. Yet there is no need to switch immediately to the cynical worldview, according to which arguments carry no weight in themselves. If only power counts, people’s passion to engage in arguments is difficult to understand. Moreover within a cynical worldview the special role of NGOs like Greenpeace within the public arena remains unacknowledged. One important reason for their increased popularity is that in an age of industrial incidents and bad functioning governments NGOs succeeded in cultivating an image of being decent, trustful advocates of the common interest. NGOs do have much less resources than industries and governments. But let us not underestimate their power. Some of them are able to organize very effective media campaigns. On the GMO issue, in the late 1990’s Greenpeace won an important media battle against companies like Monsanto and retailers like Iceland. The so-called Eurobarometer shows its effect till now: the majority of the Europeans don’t want GM Food. However, this success generates a dilemma, in particular for NGO’s. In order to live up to their image of decency they do not want to be seen as screwed P.R. machines. They prefer to position themselves as independent groups representing the public interest, giving voice to suppressed causes like nature and the poor. In addition they associate themselves with ‘science’, of which they like to present themselves as ‘honest’ spokespersons, at the same time demarcating their own public role from governments and companies.

Now, this self image, if taken seriously, has consequences for the way NGO’s relate to science. Obviously it implies a reverence for truth and facts, but there is more to it. In cases of new technologies we are dealing with the prospective assessment of possible risks. Here we leave the area of hard facts, entering the field of attitudes toward the future: how serious do we take uncertainties, how cautious should we be, where to put the burden of proof, etcetera. The reasons for the alienation between Greenpeace and science should be found in this second area, I assert. Embodied in science is a very specific attitude toward the future, which Greenpeace won’t accept, at least not in the GMO controversy. The problem is that Greenpeace tried to reconcile two fundamentally different styles of reasoning.

In the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Ernst Gombrich defines ‘style’ as follows: “The distinctive character of styles [..] rests on the adoption of certain conventions which are learned and absorbed by those who carry on the tradition. While certain of these features are easily recognizable (e.g., the Gothic pointed arch, the cubist facet, Wagnerian chromaticism), others are more elusive, since they are found to consist not in the presence of individual, specifiable elements but in the regular occurrence of certain clusters of features and in the exclusion of certain elements.” This definition suggests, in our case, to look at specific examples in which NGOs like Greenpeace refer to scientific research. In those examples then we should try to trace (recognizable or elusive) regular features, not of painting but of reasoning. Moreover, in a similar vain as Gombrich did, we try to trace blind spots these styles of reasoning generate.

A representative example of the way Greenpeace reacts to pieces of scientific GM research, is this press message, issued on February 22, 2002 by Greenpeace USA .

London/Washington - The US National Academy of Sciences is expected to release a report later today that criticizes the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) for inadequately protecting the environment from the risks of genetically engineered (GE) plants and calls on the USDA to make its review process for the GE plants “significantly more transparent and rigorous.” (…)

“This report exposes another example of corporate interests trumping environmental protection and the public interest,” said Dr. Doreen Stabinsky, science advisor to Greenpeace. “The USDA has to start doing its own homework and stop turning in work done by the biotech industry. By failing to seriously address the threats posed by gene-altered plants, the USDA has broken trust with the American people.” (…)

The USDA has virtually no special regulations for managing such crops, though dozens of varieties are currently grown. Companies developing such crops merely notify the USDA when planning to grow them in open fields.

“Politicians from the US travel the globe boasting that their regulations are the tightest in the world,” said Charles Margulis, Greenpeace USA GE specialist. “But scientists know the truth - the US is more concerned with protecting biotech business than with protecting the environment or the public health.”

One regular feature of Greenpeace’s handling of scientific papers or reports on GMOs can be found in this text. Through phrases like ‘The report exposes another example of….’ the expert assessment of the regulatory agency USDA is put in an interpretative frame in which corporate interests oppose public interests. The report was commissioned by the department itself and is not antagonistic in purpose or tone. Yet without any hesitation Greenpeace’s own GE specialist Charles Margulis puts the report in the conflicting interest frame.

Furthermore we can ask, in the spirit of Gombrich, is there is some feature in the ‘Executive Summary’ which is excluded from the Greenpeace text? There is. In the report Bezeten van Genen, on which this article is based, the press release is compared with its source - the 16-page Executive Summary of the US National Academy report, published some days before the full study. It contains an extensive argument, concluding that ‘the transgenic process presents no new categories of risk compared to conventional methods of crop improvement’ (my emphasis). Instead it argues that ‘risks must be assessed on a case-by-case basis with consideration for the organism, trait, and environment’ (my emphasis). The ‘Executive Summary’, I conclude, rejects quite clearly a principal or categorical difference between genetic modification and other forms of refining breeding, in the sense that genetic modification can be connected to a new category of risk. The report of the American Academy doesn’t say that genetic manipulation is safe; it holds that it depends in each case on the context.

Although the claim that GMOs generate new categories of risks is central to the Greenpeace case, this finding is not mentioned in their press release. That’s no accident: in all their press releases (and other publications too) on the GMO subject we find the same ‘stylistic’ feature: Greenpeace ‘chooses’ to ignore to take in account the contextual reasoning on which scientific findings and recommendations are based. This feature, I suggest, is part of the categorical style of reasoning Greenpeace uses in its anti-GMO campaigns. Within the context of that style there is simply no room for contextual arguments.

I call the Greenpeace style ‘categorical’ after its central claim that there is a categorical difference between genetic and non-genetic modification. Other features are associated with this idea. As soon as you reason in categories, you are inclined to frame single reports as signs of a larger pattern. As soon as you reason in categories, you are not inclined to see much middle ground or options for consensus. Another reason to call Greenpeace style ‘categorical’ is because it opposes a more contextual style of reasoning which dominates practices of established science. What does ‘contextual’ mean in this setting? It’s a relative term; contextual reasoning is contextual compared to categorical reasoning. To be more precise: 1. In contextual reasoning the (methodological) distinction between potentiality and actuality makes more sense than in categorical reasoning. 2. People who reason contextually more often say ‘it depends’. This phrase does not imply that you’re not interested in causal relations; it states that in which cases which ‘laws’ apply cannot be said beforehand. It depends upon ‘ceteris paribus factors’. 3. In contextual reasoning the assessment of risks is more closely related to problems of interactive complexity. In contextual reasoning it is relevant to know, as in the National Academy example, where the transgenic gene is taken from, but this information is not decisive. What transgenic mobility means depends upon the whole ecological context in which a ‘strange’ gene is implanted. 4. In contextual reasoning more often an inductive approach prevails. This means you go case by case; advice policy makers to monitor things closely, because you cannot predict the future. 5. In contextual reasoning the distinction between scientific values and social values is seen as more important. 6. Contextual reasoning favours a passive tone.

Categorical reasoning has a lot of advantages, especially if you’re fighting a decentralized media war on many fronts, as is normally the case in the network society of today. Clear categories of what is right or wrong, risky or not risky can be of great help in coordinating action and creating political momentum. But NGOs like Greenpeace should be more aware of the limitations of this style of reasoning. Categorical reasoning has the disadvantage of creating ‘news poverty’. Within the anti GM Food movement, again and again you hear ‘the mister Putszai story’ or ‘the Monarch butterfly story’, for instance. More importantly, this style encourages weak reasoning and a tolerance for fallacies like ‘pars pro toto’ and ‘jumping to conclusions’. Finally it forces NGOs to work with an inconsistent philosophy of science and technology.

This last point leaves NGOs with a real handicap. In debating the future in general, environmental NGOs oppose scientific determinism and the belief in technological fixes. ‘Yellow rice’? – adding vitamin A to rice, in order to fight blindness in third world countries? Bad idea. The real problem is malnutrition. The philosophy of science and technology in all this is contextual: let us not ascribe, as biotechnological industries do, to inherent (positive) traits of technologies.

At the same time though GMOs are not treated contextually. They should be banned, all of them. Here the intellectual tension becomes clear - the more a categorical style dominates your discourse, the more you are inclined to focus just on the technology itself, apart from ecological, social or cultural contexts. Science and technology, deconstructed with one hand, is reified with the other. A key difference with the pro-GMO movement should be noticed here. The pro’s not only favour GMOs; they also ascribe to science and technology direct beneficial effects. So in their case there is no tension between technology assessment and style of reasoning, as in the case of the contra-movement.

To conclude, the movement against GMOs is not just handicapped because it has less money or less institutional power. An important weakening factor is its inconsistent philosophy of technology. Using categorical arguments in scientific environments alienates scientists (and engineers). Discrediting possibilities of fixing problems with new technologies, assuming that technology has no meaning outside social and cultural contexts, while at the same time fixing or reifying technologies you are critical of, assuming that technology can have a fixed meaning, is a habit that alienates at least one philosopher.

Note This article is based on Rein de Wilde, Niki Vermeulen, Mirko Reithler, Bezeten van Genen. Een essay over de innovatieoorlog rondom genetisch gemodificeerd voedsel, Sdu Uitgevers, Den Haag 2002. This book is published in the Series ‘Voorstudies en Achtergronden’ van de Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid (V117) and can be downloaded as PDF file from the site www.wrr.nl. References can be found in the original publication.