Case Study: Eric

Eric is a biologist and senior academic who works within the advisory committee structure. He regularly appears in the media and public debates as an expert on genetically modified crops. The interview took place in his university office.

Eric is a particularly thoughtful interviewee, who is aware of many of the conflicting issues which arise from his work, and has clearly given them much thought. He is proud of his work within the advisory committee structure, which he considers to be rigorous and independent:

I honestly believe that as [a member of an advisory committee], and everything I’ve done for [the committee], it has been to try and ensure that the new technology is regulated appropriately. So if and when an accident happens, it will be despite the best efforts to prevent it happening. I think I’ve been pretty dispassionate. Erm. Whether I have or not, history will tell. But I do actually believe that we don’t allow things to go forward that can cause problems. [...] The trouble is nearly everything that comes to us at the moment, I can see no reasonable risk, so I don’t have any great worry for most of it that we’re doing anything other than bureaucracy.

PQ: Do you have any pressure from ministers, civil servants, or whoever,

trying to influence the kind of decisions that you make, or do you feel that you’re entirely independent?

Eric: I have not signed the official secrets act. I have never once been

pressurised to do anything. If I were pressurised, I would immediately notify the press.

PQ: Right

Eric: There’s been no problem there whatsoever, and I would not agree to be

re-appointed.

[...] We believe we’re impartial.

Despite his defence of the committee’s work, he feels that its consideration of risk in isolation is too limited; it cannot for example weigh risks against benefits, nor comment on the inherent desirability of a release on the grounds that its future commercialisation would be inappropriate.

Eric: And basically what we do is we look at something, and say how has this

genetic change affected it so that it may become a weed, it may become poisonous, it may have immediate knock-on effects, and if we don’t see any of those, then we offer the advice that it is appropriate that it be released. We’re not allowed to have subjective opinions. So if we don’t like an experiment, but we believe it is safe, then we say to the minister it is safe.

PQ: Is that because somebody else deals with those issues... Eric: No

Eric: No

PQ: Nobody does that?

Eric: Nobody does that, and that’s why at the moment after Tickell’s report on

Sustainable Development last year the department of the environment is setting up a meeting for March to discuss this gap which has been picked up by the... Greenpeace and others.

He is candid about his own limitations as an actor within the debate on GM food, for example the following excerpt where he outlines how his credibility is undermined by others’ perceptions of his personal interest in the technology.

Eric: [...] But you don’t have a vested interest one way or the other do you? PQ: Erm... no, I suppose I don’t.

Eric: But it could be argued I do. PQ: [pause] Yes.

Eric: I’m almost inevitably going to argue that the technology is intrinsically

safe, and there’s nothing wrong with gene manipulation. because I’m a career geneticist. So I’m disadvantaged [in any discussion]

Much of the interview is taken up with discussing conflicts brought out not just by genetically modified foods, but industrial agriculture in general. In this passage he juxtaposes the ecological problems associated with monoculture with the need to produce large quantities of food.

Eric: The biodiversity issues are relatively straightforward for groups. High

yielding agriculture without large labour input virtually has to be monoculture. There is no argument agronomically about that. So everything we do given an ever increasing world population is going to lead to more and more monocultures, unless until we can find ways of multi cropping that are compatible with machine harvesting.

PQ: Right

Eric: And so I think the monoculture one is... It’s a real argument.

Monoculture basically is wrong, biologically. Monoculture is designed for pests. So by having monocultures we enhance pest problems. But we enormously reduce the cost of food production. And the price we are willing to pay, in inverted commas, is that we will use chemicals, and that we will harm the environment. No weed species will grow and so forth.

This is something of great personal concern to Eric:

[...] Historically we’ve wiped out a lot [of plant species]. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t worry about wiping out even more. As a biologist, and someone with a great love for nature, I’m immensely disturbed that we allow so much land to be used for arable agriculture. The South Downs have been largely ploughed up. I think it’s a crime. [...]

He uses several arguments to resolve this conflict, the principal one being the need to feed an increasing world population, while dismissing organic

agriculture, albeit from what appears to be a background in chemical based agriculture.

Eric: Well [pauses] my background - I did a diploma in agriculture first, and I

have a very strong feeling for the agricultural industry.

PQ: Yes

Eric: The biggest problem I have is that you very seldom see in any of these

debates a proper understanding of feeding immense populations.

PQ: Uh huh

Eric: We see an awful lot of guff about how you can go to sustainable

agriculture. That’s total nonsense. Because every time you take a crop off the land you take nutrients out of the soil

PQ: Uh huh

Eric: And if you go way back to medieval agriculture it was phosphate limited.

And it was only when we started adding fertilisers and so on that we could actually begin to get yields up. So this concept that somehow we mustn’t interfere with nature I think is crap.

In the following excerpt, Eric is expressing the view that the agricultural methods proposed by environmentalists would be capable of supporting only a much smaller global population than at present,

I think we need a mass human extermination if the ideals that are being put forward by the Green groups are ever to be realised.

but on further probing, Eric considers the major problem with high yielding sustainable agriculture to be labour rather than soil fertility. Here the problem shifts from being a technical imperative to a social and political choice.

PQ: Assuming that you could get a proportion of these 3 million [unemployed]

out onto the land, would it theoretically be possible to move towards a more organic, more traditional form of agriculture and still feed the country?

Eric: [long pause] Assuming we still import food, yes. But you’re not going to

get an average of 6 or 7 tonnes of wheat from anything other than a well sprayed monoculture. And the real difficulty if you go to somewhere like India where they do proper mixed cropping, you have five different things all growing together. Unless you harvest by hand, you can’t harvest successionaly. [...] There’s absolutely no way we can conceive of human harvesting. [...]

Eric raises the issue of humanity’s pervasive influence on the English landscape, but not to dismiss notions of nature conservation as Andrew does, although it is clearly the site of some internal conflict. In the following passages, he talks at length about the ancient artificially created landscapes which are being destroyed by industrial agriculture; clearly something of concern to him. He justifies this with reference to the pleasure such landscapes give him, but at the same time calls into question these motives by suggesting it might simply be nostalgia for

the countryside of his youth. The detail he gives suggests that these are not arguments he has constructed in response to the issues raised in the interview, but something he has devoted some thought to over a period of time.

I would like to see much more money given to hill pastures, for the maintenance of the damage we’ve already done, but what we like.

PQ: Why does the state of the South Downs bother you?

Eric: [pause] Because I think there’s an intrinsic beauty in the countryside

which is important for people’s well being.

PQ: Uh huh

Eric: We’re gradually destroying it. Whether it matters, I really don’t know.

Before the enclosures, and sheep farming, the country was totally different, and so on and so forth. I think possibly when you reach your 50s, you begin to look back to what in your youth you thought was nice. And that’s what the place ought to be like. So when my sons are my age, they’ll probably look back to now, and say it should be like that now. So it’s maybe just the grumblings of an old man. Dunno. I really don’t know. I just think there should be relatively unspoiled countryside, in terms of birds and bees and butterflies. I don’t mind if they are enlarged patches. I don’t think the whole country should be like that because it’s unreasonable. But I think the patches should be large enough that these are sustainable. And I don’t see it.

During the interview, the discussion includes a broad range of issues relating to the context of Eric’s work, including some of the arguments put forward by the opponents of GM food. These are issues which Eric seems keen to engage with, particularly notions of environmental protection. As part of a wider discussion about the intrinsic value of nature, Eric talks about the destruction of the Brazilian rainforest. However, although this is a topic about which Eric has strong feelings, it does not appear to form part of his professional training (see above). This is reflected in a shift in his discourse away from the specific and the grounded towards the generalised.

I don’t think.... I think this argument that if you chop down a bunch of trees, the whole world will change is a very very weak one. We’ve totally wrecked the ecology of Europe, and the planet still rotates, we’re still alive. OK, it’s maybe less good than it was, it might be better in some places, I really don’t know. And I don’t think to say we must maintain things as they are is sensible. Or to say we must go back. I think chopping down the Brazilian rainforests is lunacy. But if I was a hungry person there, I would chop it down. I’m not sure I could argue with hungry people there why they should be hungry and leave the rain forest.

Eric also has strong feelings of helplessness and apathy in the face of environmental damage. He portrays the forces of economics as an overwhelming

power against which he can do nothing, and his lifestyle as a cocoon which only large sums of money will persuade him to leave.

I have the problem as a pragmatist and a cynic that given our population, given the economic constraints on what we do, there’s almost nothing I can do as an environmentalist that will help. Beyond joining the National Trust, which I have done.

I think I’m a fairly common, self satisfied, European. I drive a big car to work on my own, because it’s convenient to do so. On the other hand I have a plot of ¾ acre. I like the environment. If I had £20 million, I’d probably go and be a farmer. I love the environment, I love walking, but I am not willing to translate that into not driving to work on my own in the morning. So I’m like most people, highly hypocritical.

During the interview, Eric makes no statements which categorise him unambiguously as an ecocentric. However, pervading the whole interview is a strong sense of the profound attachment Eric feels for nature, an impression which was all the more powerful while actually speaking to Eric than it is when reviewing a transcript of his discourse, although that impression does emerge from the excerpts reproduced here. He justifies his participation in the process of industrialising agriculture still further by the non-existence of alternative methods of producing such large quantities of food, an argument which, despite the importance he attaches to it, appears to be outside his expertise.