Biotechnology Unglued: Science, Society and Social Cohesion

Alan Belk, Ph.D., is a sessional instructor in the Philosophy Department
at the University of Guelph.

A collection of papers around the thesis that social cohesion is
deteriorating and that in part this deterioration is due to the
manifestation of advances in biotechnology, particularly those relating
to the manipulation of the genomes of plants and animals in order to …
Well, I was going to write “produce food for North Americans,” but
that isn’t the point. Part of the point is that, unlike in, say,
Norway, in North America the supra-national firm Monsanto has been able
to introduce genetically modified seeds that are resistant to a
particular herbicide (also produced by Monsanto) and to contract with
farmers (actually, crop producers) to grow the seeds and apply the
herbicide to efficiently produce something that is an ingredient in many
of the packaged foods found on the shelves of your supermarket. It has
done so with little public debate and with little opposition from
federal agencies that are popularly thought to protect the interests of
the “consumer.”

Mehta himself looks at the small picture, which I will characterize as
the decline of the pioneer farming community and its traditional
agricultural practices. Other forces destroying our smaller social
communities include the homogeneity of suburban life, commuting from
garage to workplace, never meeting neighbours, and busing our children
to education factories kilometres from where they live so that contact
with schoolmates outside school hours is impossible (save at the mall).

Some contributors look at the big picture: “Biotechnology is a
rapidly changing area and requires large amounts of research and
development with scientists and engineers. This industrial requirement
coincides, especially in Canada, with massive a chronic underfunding of
universities [whose research agendas] are driven by commercial
interests, with biotechnology as the current commercial leader”
(Burfoot and Poudrier), or “[S]everal university researchers created
firms and managed them while retaining their academic positions”
(Dalpé, Bouchard, and Ducharme). But this is only part of the bigger
picture. The businesses that drive this research are not part of any
national society: they have no allegiance to Canada, or Norway, or
Iceland, or the United States. They are able to take advantage of
weaknesses in Canadian educational policies to serve their own ends.