Close to Home: Let science, humanity inform your GMOs vote

In November, Sonoma County voters will vote on an initiative to ban genetically modified crops. The anti-GMO activists failed to convince the voters on this issue in 2006, and through their proposed ban, they are returning to the well in another attempt to put emotion and fear above reason and respect for science.

Reminiscent of right-wing politicians' denial of man-made climate change, progressive voters in Sonoma County deny the consensus of scientific opinion on GMOs. The science is clear. GMOs are safe to humans, animals and the environment. No lesser groups than the World Health Organization, the American Medical Association, the U.S. National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, the British Royal Society, and with many other respected organizations, agree that consuming foods with GMOs is no riskier than eating the same foods produced by traditional plant improvement methods.

This broad consensus notwithstanding, deniers insist on peddling scare tactics and anti-scientific arguments to convince voters to ban GMOs.

Let's consider some of the arguments offered:

Genes in GMOs can find their way into humans consuming them. This is not possible.

Things “natural” are innately superior. This notion is sophomoric in it's simplicity as well as a logical fallacy.

Historical agriculture produced healthier foods. This is simply naive since GMOs were initiated concomitant with agriculture.

Still, emotion and ideology sometimes trump science in the popular culture. A Pew research study found that 88 percent of the scientists associated with the American Association for the Advancement of Science conclude that GMOs are safe. However, only 43 percent of the general American public shares that view. That percentage is likely even lower in Sonoma County.

One is left to wonder what everyday people understand that scientists fail to grasp. Not much, it seems. That same Pew study also found that two-thirds of Americans do not understand the science underpinning GMOs - which is to say they are opposed to GMOs without understanding the scientific evidence. So by using conspiratorial, emotional arguments referencing Frankenfood, Monsanto and Big Ag, advocacy groups attempt to frighten us into limiting and driving up the cost of our food supply. How? Because plants such as corn, the most widely grown grain in the United States, are genetically modified to improve their resistance to weeds, insects and disease. Thus larger yields of crops are created. More food can be produced on smaller plots of land. The need for herbicides and pesticides, beyond the reach of many, is reduced, producing higher yields at lower costs. GMOs are widely agreed to improve the texture and taste of foods and, even more importantly, nutritional value. GMOs are also used to ensure longer shelf-lives, easier transportation with less food damaged en route and ultimately less waste than counterpart foods raised without GMOs. Improved drought resistance, too, is gained via GMOs. The importance of this factor cannot be overestimated.

So while advocacy groups aimed at banning GMOs use scare tactics, straw man arguments like “so you like Monsanto?”, ad hominem attacks accusing respected scientists of being bought off and even conspiracy theories portraying big agriculture as a danger to our national well being, the facts of their case are fallacious.

On the other side of this false equivalence discussion are scientists and food producers using the tools of science and empiricism to continually improve food supply and reduce world hunger, malnutrition, disease and starvation.

Please consider these issues carefully when you cast your ballot in November on the initiative to ban GMOs. Bear in mind the admonition of storied public intellectual Isaac Asimov who famously wrote: “Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.' ”

Tom Cooke is professor emeritus at Sonoma State University.