Is GM Commercialisation Good or Bad? Lessons from the Global Anti-GM Movement

Head of the Berlin office of the Future Agriculture Foundation. Since his time as a Member of the European Parliament for Germany’s Green Party in the 1980s, Benny has been closely engaged with the issue of GM crops. He previously served as Head of the Berlin office of Greenpeace, where he coordinated the international Greenpeace campaign on genetic engineering, published extensively, and curated publications and organised international conferences. He is the founder of the Global 2,000 Square Metres educational programme and the Save Our Seeds campaign, and a member of the International Commission on the Future of Food.

Foodthink: How Did You First Become Interested in Genetic Engineering?

BH: That was in the 1980s. I was in my early twenties then, an environmental activist. In 1984 I became a Member of the European Parliament, working for Germany’s Green Party for five years. During that time I travelled to the United States, where I first heard about genetic engineering.

In 1986, someone in California developed a bacterial spray to help strawberries resist frost. The main ingredient was a strain of Pseudomonas syringae with a gene segment removed. That gene segment produces a protein, and without it, ice would not form.

For me, this was a completely unfamiliar topic. My academic background is in philosophy and psychology – I am no agricultural or biological scientist at all – but I felt this technology was important enough to warrant a broad public discussion, rather than being left to experts in laboratories. My instinct told me that humans do not need to teach nature what to do, and that we should certainly not intervene in living organisms – including ourselves – at the DNA level.

I believe we need to understand in depth the complexity of what we are interfering with. Genetic engineering is rather like tinkering with a computer’s hardware wiring without understanding its software programs. Of course, that will produce some kind of effect, but you cannot be sure which effect it will be. That is not a scientific approach.

More than thirty years later, I have found that the 1980s confidence in genetic engineering has vanished completely. The more we learn, the harder it becomes to justify some of the assumptions made by certain scientists at the time; things have turned out to be far more complex.

Take one example: although 95% of the seed microbiome is inherited by the plant itself, most plant microbes still come from the surrounding environment. A plant harbours more foreign microbes than its own – a rather new concept.

BH: As I followed genetic engineering more closely, I discovered it was being used to create herbicide-tolerant crops. With the spread of Monsanto’s GM Roundup-tolerant soya and maize, now 120 million hectares worldwide are sprayed with glyphosate-based herbicides, including Roundup. Alongside herbicide-tolerant crops, there is also GM cotton resistant to the cotton bollworm.

GM cotton was genuinely successful at first, but it has since become yet another pesticide treadmill – the targeted insects develop resistance to it, and where the insecticide does work, other insects (such as sap-sucking insects) fill the ecological niche vacated by the eliminated species, creating new pest problems. This is not a real solution.

BH: The ideology of genetic engineering is deeply arrogant. Its core premise is to make nature conform to our “advanced” capitalist system, which is profoundly primitive. We thought we could learn so much from nature’s efficiency, yet in reality we have plunged ourselves into deep trouble.

Foodthink: What Policy Changes Did You Drive at the European Parliament After Returning from the United States?

BH: I pushed the European Parliament to adopt Directive 90/220/EEC – the Parliamentary Directive on the Environmental Release of GM Crops (hereafter “the Directive”) – the world’s first legal framework on GM. That document subsequently became a key reference for GM legislation in the EU and across its member states, and I found myself an expert on genetic engineering. It was easy, because hardly anyone had heard of it at the time. (Laughs)

In 1989, the year the Berlin Wall came down, I left Parliament and founded a newspaper in Berlin. Two years later I joined Greenpeace and began working in China. To start with, we promoted CFC-free refrigerators (Greenfreeze), urging the industry to replace CFCs with refrigerants such as propane and butane to reduce harm to the ozone layer.

In 1996, I launched Greenpeace’s global campaign on genetic engineering, spending six years on international coordination – which naturally included China. The Chinese government never interfered with our activities on this issue; they were genuinely interested in the criticism, which I suspect was because Monsanto had a firm grip on the core technology at the time. Things are different now – after Sinochem acquired Syngenta in 2016, China became the world’s largest genetic engineering nation.

I think our first round of advocacy (from the late 1990s to the early 2000s) was quite successful – we had got off to a good start in the 1980s. In Europe, the Directive established that genetic engineering must be governed by dedicated legislation, and businesses are required to label GM products. With that transparency in place, people – at least in Europe – simply do not buy GM products. China is no different: the law requires that any food containing GM ingredients must carry a label.

Foodthink: Did You Develop a Global Strategy Back Then?

BH: Our overall strategy was: first, do not release GM crops that cannot be recalled; second, let the people of each country and region decide for themselves. One could say that consumers are our strongest allies, and that is the defining hallmark of this campaign. We achieved varying degrees of success, but our advocacy work in the United States made virtually no headway.

Interestingly, Greenpeace’s US office decided at the time not to campaign for mandatory labelling of GM crops, because they wanted to ban GM products from shelves once and for all. They saw pushing for mandatory labelling as tantamount to a compromise. For me, that was also a strategic cautionary tale – a position that is too radical risks losing everything. By contrast, our advocacy in Europe has been very successful, and the approach of requiring mandatory labelling for GM crops has carried over into the EU’s recent regulation of CRISPR/Cas9 gene-edited crops. I hope we will succeed again this time.

BH: The rhetoric on the deregulation side is that gene-edited crops are no fundamentally different from conventionally bred crops. But from a scientific standpoint, that is complete nonsense. In 2019, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) discovered through testing that gene-edited polled cattle, already in production since 2016, unexpectedly contained two new genes conferring resistance to antibiotics. So we still need to assess case by case – what risks gene editing actually poses, and which risk-assessment procedures must never be skipped.

Mandatory labelling for gene-edited crops is not just about safeguarding consumers’ right to know; it is also a traceability mechanism and a fallback. Should something go wrong, we still have the possibility of recalling products. To be clear once more, I am not against the technology itself. But to date, every genetic engineering attempt I have heard of has been profoundly short-sighted, lacking a more holistic, long-term perspective.

Moreover, genetic engineering privatises this technology by patenting genes and crop traits, completely upending the business model of conventional breeding. As climate change accelerates, the need for improved seed varieties grows ever more urgent, and the more stakeholders involved, the better. If the technology for improving seeds remains in the hands of just a handful of companies, are we not effectively boxing ourselves in?

Foodthink: Was This One of the Reasons You Launched the Save Our Seeds (Hereafter SOS) Campaign in 2002?

BH: SOS was originally launched to prevent outcrossing of GM crops – the cross-pollination between individuals with different genotypes; here, it refers to cross-pollination between GM and non-GM crops.

The EU legal framework only mandated labelling for GM products. Provided that the source of the GM ingredient is EU-approved, any product found to contain 0.9% GM content must be labelled as GM. Demanding zero contamination would drive up testing costs enormously. On this point, I do think it is essential to ensure that the law remains workable.

But the situation with seed is completely different, because seed is propagation material. After just a few generations of breeding, even the slightest contamination could have catastrophic consequences. At the time, there were cases of GM maize seed being mixed in with conventional seed. The European Commission had wanted to keep the 0.9% threshold, but through our advocacy we successfully held the line on “zero contamination” for seed: once GM content is detected in non-GM seed, it must be withdrawn from the market.

Foodthink: How Do You See the Different Roles of Policy Advocacy and Public Mobilisation in the Movement?

BH: They are equally important. In a democratic society, if the majority of people do not want something to happen, there will be forces pushing for a change in the legal framework. And enshrining something in law is usually the end point of public debate and controversy.

Interestingly, what we discovered during this campaign was the power of business. As citizens, we need legal protections. But we are all consumers too, and we need safe products. So we also tried to persuade supermarkets and major food brands to guarantee that they would not stock GM products, regardless of whether the law permits it.

A supermarket’s core function is to understand what customers want. For them, this is not just politics – it is business. At the time, many retailers asked their focus groups and target customers what they thought about GM. They realised that if they stocked GM products, large numbers of customers would switch to a competitor. In fact, if a company loses just 5% of its customers to rivals, that is catastrophic. So they also supported mandatory labelling – it was the only way to ensure a level playing field.

Politicians follow business. And yet, in the early days of the campaign, it was actually journalists and politicians who were the most supportive of genetic engineering.

Foodthink: If Supermarkets Can Be Turned into Allies, Who Is Most Opposed to This Movement – the Seed Companies Developing GM Technology?

BH: Yes. Generally speaking, an advocacy campaign needs to offer alternatives or an exit route. But we cannot exactly ask Monsanto, “Couldn’t you just do organic and conventional breeding?” For them, that is simply not an option. They like pesticides, they like GM, they like patenting plants.

If there is no genuine exit route, all we can say is, “Get lost.” In a sense, they have indeed exited. In 2018, Bayer acquired Monsanto’s shares for $63 billion, inheriting a raft of lawsuits and legal disputes, and their reputation has suffered as a result.

Foodthink: Were There Truly Inspiring Moments During the Decade-Long Advocacy Campaign?

BH: All along. In the early days of the campaign, for instance, I felt deeply encouraged when I realised this was a battle we could fight – that we could push our advocacy forward on solid, evidence-based grounds.

Then there was October 2003, when we won the “Battle of the Labels” – a truly decisive moment in history. The European Parliament adopted Regulation 1803/2003, requiring that GM products be labelled before reaching shelves. And a majority in both the European Commission and the Parliament agreed that any product containing an ingredient of GM origin must carry a label – even if the ingredient itself cannot be detected or traced. For instance, oil can be purified, and highly refined oil derived from GM crops may contain no detectable DNA, since it is free of protein and water.

This rule is actually counter-intuitive. Normally, if you want to label something, you need to be able to detect it in the product. But the EU requires businesses to prove that no GM crops were used in the production process.

BH: Oh yes, and in 1997 we put up a huge banner in protest outside the Unilever office in the Netherlands, because their Rama brand margarine contained GM soybean oil. Unilever then invited me to discuss the issue. They put a tub of Rama margarine on the table and offered me some bread to dip in it. I declined, of course – I was not going to eat there! (Laughs) They told me the GM soybean oil had already been removed – they had replaced it in the recipe with rapeseed oil. It took just two weeks from our protest to Unilever changing the formula, and it was enormously inspiring.

The straightforward ethical response of ordinary Europeans to genetic engineering was also a pleasant surprise. Throughout the genetic engineering debate, I have always tried to explain the risks of this technology. But I came to realise that people are simply not interested in that narrative. They believe, quite simply, that we should not tinker with DNA.

Foodthink: I’d Like to Go Back to the Case of GM Golden Rice (Golden Rice). How Did You Get Involved?

BH: This case is very special because Golden Rice claims that its primary purpose is to eliminate malnutrition. In 1999, I went to Zurich to meet Ingo Potrykus, Golden Rice’s developer. He had invited me; we spent two days in conversation, and he was convinced he was doing the right thing and deserved Greenpeace’s support. But I told him straight out that Golden Rice was not the most promising strategy for tackling vitamin A deficiency, and that we still knew nothing about its impact on the environment or on public health.

We also held a press conference at a major GM biotechnology conference. To show that treating vitamin A deficiency would require people to eat 9 kg of Golden Rice every single day, we bought 9 kg of ordinary rice and placed it right on the table – obviously, no one could eat all of that in a day. Potrykus was in the room, and he admitted we were right. He probably still hates me for it to this day.

BH: Yet in 2000, he made Time magazine’s cover as Person of the Year. I have never seen such lavish praise. This technology, which claims to benefit the poor, has never helped a single child in the world. In a sense, we lost the “battle of narrative.” Most people reading this rhetoric would likely believe that anti-GM campaigners would rather let children die than give up their dogmatism.

If they truly cared about children, we should make sure their diets provide enough vitamin A – by eating more carrots and sweet potatoes, for instance. We could simply provide vitamin A supplements directly, rather than using genetic engineering to create β-carotene-rich rice. Converting β-carotene into vitamin A in the human body requires sufficient dietary fat, and both storage and cooking accelerate the loss of β-carotene in Golden Rice.

Why not promote root crops like sweet potatoes and carrots? No one does, does it? Because they have no desire to actually improve the lives of the poor – they just want a good story.

Foodthink: Building on Greenpeace’s Campaign, the Farmers’ and Scientists’ Organisation MASIPAG Has Become the Vanguard of Anti-GM in the Philippines – Which Civil Society Organisations in Europe and North America Are Still Pursuing This Issue?

BH: Quite a few. For instance, the international non-profit Friends of the Earth, and all organic organisations – because organic standards prohibit the use of GM seeds. You could say they are the two pillars of today’s movement.

BH: There are also smaller consumer organisations – they may not be anti-GM per se, but they support mandatory labelling and transparency of information. And there are groups of critical scientists who have consistently emphasised that the rhetoric around GM does not align with the science.

GM crops are also a vitally important issue for farmers. Many smallholder organisations, and even larger farming associations and mainstream industrialised farmer organisations, oppose the promotion of GM crops – partly out of self-interest, and partly out of opposition to the privatisation of seed ownership. In India, the anti-GM movement has always been driven by farmers rather than consumers. The situation in the Philippines and Latin America is very similar.

Europe has very few small-scale farmers left. In developed countries where agriculture has become industrialised, the anti-GM movement is driven primarily by consumers, and our alliance with farmers is not a close one. But as long as consumers have a demand, farmers will say, “I have to follow the market.” Moreover, wherever you go, organic farmers are a powerful force against GM. And in China, both the smallholder and consumer communities are enormous – I am very much looking forward to seeing what roles they will play in the future.

Foodthink: You Have Repeatedly Expressed Concerns About New Gene-Editing Technologies Such as CRISPR/Cas9. In December 2023, the Chinese Government Not Only Approved 51 GM Maize and Soybean Varieties but Also Issued Four Agricultural Biosafety Certificates for Gene-Edited Maize and Soybean Varieties. The EU May Also Relax Regulation of Gene-Edited Crops. What Do You Make of This Trend?

BH: Scientists are once again claiming that CRISPR/Cas9 is entirely different from genetic modification, which introduces foreign genes. As I have said before, this simply does not accord with science.

What worries me most these days is the combination of CRISPR/Cas9 with artificial intelligence. We have already seen just how impressive ChatGPT’s capacity to learn and express itself is – AI models can now predict protein folding structures with remarkable accuracy. That does not mean GPT truly understands DNA; it is merely making predictions on a statistical basis.

The biggest problem is that, even though ChatGPT’s learning process was initially programmed by humans, we still do not understand how it arrives at a given conclusion. It could ultimately come down to this: scientists state what they want, and the AI says, “this is the DNA you should synthesise.” I believe this is a new form of alienation. To intervene in and manipulate living systems while only half understanding them – I find that very dangerous. If we stop mandating labelling for gene-edited crops, by the time problems are actually discovered, the chance of recalling products will be zero.

Foodthink: I Really Like the Concept of “Alienation” You Proposed. How Can Consumers Break Free from This Alienation and Deepen Our Knowledge of Food and Agriculture? What Advice Would You Offer?

BH: Rather than increasing “knowledge”, it is really about gaining “experience”. Many studies have shown that knowledge systems are volatile, and are far from being the decisive factor in human decision-making.

Nowadays, because of excessive sanitisation and declining overall nutritional standards, ever more children suffer from allergies, and ever more children fear nature. People should go out and experience nature, feeling the wonder of life firsthand. The “2,000 m²” project (2000m², Weltacker) that we launched in Berlin can play just that role.

2,000 square metres – just under half an acre – is the figure we arrive at by dividing the world’s total arable land by its total population. From a standpoint of fairness and equity, each person on this planet is entitled to the yield of no more than 2,000 square metres of land. On our model farm in Berlin, we grow the world’s major crops in proportion.

BH: Understanding food and agriculture certainly involves knowledge, but what matters more is an aesthetic experience. People should not only feel beauty, but also recognise that the mysteries of Mother Earth far surpass our comprehension – we should hold a sense of reverence. No matter how precise what you see on a screen may be, it can never rival the power of nature.

References

https://grain.org/fr/article/349-benny-haerlin-sos-save-our-seeds

https://ecommons.cornell.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/99e75d4f-9c51-42a0-a255-fb184f571ac1/content

https://food.ec.europa.eu/plants/genetically-modified-organisms/gmo-legislation_en

https://history.greenpeace.org/aotearoa/genetic-engineering/

https://theecologist.org/2019/aug/21/antibiotic-resistance-gene-edited-cattle

https://www.arc2020.eu/new-genetic-engineering-small-cause-big-effect/

https://media.greenpeace.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&STID=27MZIFLT4QH0

https://grain.org/en/article/267-sprouting-up-grains-of-delusion-golden-rice

https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2020/03/19/glyphosate-contamination-global-hotspots-in-world-first-map.html

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31254345/

Recent Changes in the Global Seed Industry and Digital Agriculture Industries

Benny Haerlin is also a specialist in the Agricultural Biodiversity Network of the Sino-German Agricultural Centre. Over the past year, 23 scientists, policymakers, farmers and activists from China and Germany have participated in cross-visits, workshops and other exchanges, both online and in person, on agricultural biodiversity. Click to read the original article and learn more about the success stories, guidance manuals and experience reports compiled by network members.

Interview conducted in Eberswalde, Germany, in June 2024

With thanks to the Sino-German Agricultural Centre, the Peasant Seed Network and Lin An for their support

Interview and write-up: Ze’en

Edited by: Wang Hao