KUFM Public Radio Commentary

February 12, 2008

By Sandy Courtnage

Running From Diversity

In my house, we don’t eat fresh tomatoes in the winter.  It’s not that they aren’t available at the grocery store, of course.  Rather, these wintertime varieties taste suspiciously like cardboard. 

In our country there is a strong marketing push for a business to duplicate, exactly, one consumer experience to the next.  Whether you eat a hamburger once, twice or dozens of times at the same place, we expect to get the same thing every time.  Sometimes there are benefits to this model, but in my opinion it fails when applied to tomatoes.

From a marketing and food processing perspective, standardization does have many practical applications.  But when it comes to agriculture, this run toward replication and away from diversity is something we need to think about clearly with an eye toward the future. 

For the first cultivators of the soil and keepers of animals, saving seed from one season for the next and carefully tending the flocks and herds, contributed to survival and was a necessity.

There’s a quote on the Seed Savers web site that says, “Insects do pest control, genetic diversity does disease control.” 

So I find it counter intuitive that there are so many large agricultural interests that are working overtime to narrow the choices for farmers and ranchers.  You have to ask:  who benefits?

When you follow the money, you find large corporations that want to consolidate, integrate and be able to duplicate.  They want every bean to be the same length, every tomato to be the same color and size, and every chicken or turkey to be just like the next.  Duplication makes the processing easier and more efficient. Taste can be sacrificed for convenience.

Last fall we had a discussion at our convention that led to a policy statement urging the development of a seed bank program to preserve genetic diversity.

It seems like a common sense and valuable thing to do.  But when the topic turns to animal health and preserving diversity, the discussion changes.  Obviously, animals can’t be stuck in a seed bank somewhere – they must be raised in order to preserve their genetic diversity. 

So we were surprised by the recent statement by the Food and Drug Administration that OK’d the eventual sale of meat and dairy products from cloned animals.  They say there are no consumer risks and that labeling is unnecessary.  They do recognize, however, that the public currently is not ready to eat cloned animals, so the FDA asked ranchers who want the technology to keep their cloned animals off the market until consumers get over their hesitations.

Evidently, beyond the “ick factor – there are other concerns that need to be explored.

Granted, the procedure is very expensive right now, so at $15,000 or more to clone a cow, most ranchers will pursue their animal breeding goals the traditional way.

 Science will always want to push the boundaries of knowledge – and there is nothing wrong with that.  But, in our opinion, the FDA should not approve something for public consumption that hasn’t been asked for by the public, and enjoyed a public debate on its ethics.  Anything less is simply another technology looking for a government-endorsed market.

Cloning is the epitome of sacrificing individuality for uniformity.  And, when you follow the money, it is another way to shift genetic ownership from farmers to corporations.

As Verlyn Klinkenborg said about cloning in a recent New York Times editorial,  “This may look like a simple test of economic efficiency.  It is really a colossal waste, of genes and of truly lovely, productive animals that are the result of years of human attention and effort.  From one perspective, a cloned animal looks like a miracle of science.  But from another, it looks like what it is:  a dead end.”

For the Montana Farmers Union, I’m Sandy Courtnage.  Thanks for listening.