Siphiwe F., PhD
“…You Gave Me to Eat…” (Mt 25: 35): Personal Perspective for a Catholic Reflection on Agricultural Biotechnology

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Introduction

In June 2003, agriculture, health and environment ministers from over one hundred and ten countries (not a single one from developed world) gathered in Sacramento, California at the invitation of the United States of America and learned first hand how technology, including biotechnology, can increase productivity and reduce global hunger. At this gathering the Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace was represented by Cardinal Martino before he was made Prince of the Church. At the insistence of the US Representative to the Holy See, Ambassador Jim Nicholson, the Pontifical Council for Social Justice convened an international symposium on this issue. This paper was then developed as a theological response to that call where the United States has increasing took a charge of being a brother’s keeper.

Jesus Christ said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength… You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:30-31). I long have pondered what this meant. Today, this may include: “You shall dedicate yourself to reducing hunger on earth.” Here I am trying to address the ethical dimensions of, and proposes an ethical framework for, assessing agricultural biotechnology in relationship to reducing hunger in Africa. The ethical terrain is so wide and so multidimensional and it requires a complex mapping.

Three things are important for this inquiry.

(a) The overall task for us is to ask: “Who are we, how are we to perceive our   world, and how are we to live in it because of God’s boundless love for creation and presence with and in it, especially as God is seen in Jesus Christ, witnessed to by communities of believers throughout time, and experienced today in the Spirit?” To examine the issue from a Christian ethical perspective, then is to jointly consider two issues:

(b) There is no singular Christian perspective on these issues.

(c) Christian ethics does not negate other religious ethics or claim to be superior.

In fact, in addressing the life and death issues facing humanity, traditions and placing them in conversation with each other to plumb their depths for moral wisdom, guidance and power to forge just and sustainable ways of life. These issues are addressed from a Christian ethical perspective, not because it is the only valid perspective, but rather because it is the tradition within which we work, and because most of the majority of Africans touched by this hunger espouse Christianity, and believe in God and His Son as their Saviour.

 

The Scope of Christian Ethics

A Christian ethical perspective considers the difference between “what is” and “what ought to be” in light of God’s   love and His presence in creation. Ethics do not cover a certain set of concerns but rather all concerns. So the challenge is not to identify certain issues as moral, but rather to map a way of approaching all issues, including those related to agricultural biotechnology and hunger in sub Saharan Africa as Christian ethical issues. It is important to refrain from thinking of biotechnology in terms of absolutes, as either “all good” or “all bad”; avoid concluding that it will either feed the world or ruin the world: allow for moral ambiguity that is the balance between moral uncertainty and the need to take a stand; allow for provisional answers; practice the humility that says, “I do not know the full answer, but at this time I must conclude that “X” is or is not morally viable”.

It is also important to keep issues in context. Just because something is morally good or bad in one context does not make it necessarily so in another. The implications should be obvious. For example, while a particular area of biotechnology research might be deemed moral in a country with adequate research safety standards, that same research may not be moral where those standards are not in place. A particular agricultural biotechnology development with positive impact on large-scale agriculture in North America might not have positive impact on subsistence farmers in sub Saharan Africa whose margins are thin. We may not uproot a moral judgment from one place and replant it in another, without accounting for the contextual difference.

Also let us not draw final conclusions from personal experiences. It is poor moral reasoning to say, “Biotechnology must be bad because it harmed Uncle Billy, or good because it saved Sis Alice’s life.” It is crucial to maintain a critical rather than positivist perspective that is being critical in the sense of questioning moral judgments based on an assumption that something is normal, natural or inevitable. People often argue that some aspect of biotechnology is immoral because it is not “natural,” or is moral simply because it is inevitable. We should challenge these bases, because they are deceptive and mystifying. People throughout history have used “natural,” “normal” or “inevitable” to justify human constructs that served the interests of those maintaining the constructs. Slavery, apartheid and subordination of women are examples.

Finally, fruitful moral deliberation engages different levels of moral discourse, and distinguishes between them. Consider at least two: gut-level and disciplined. At times it is tremendously important to express a gut-level response. Yet to substitute this for disciplined ethical reflection is dangerous. Visceral or heart felt responses of awe, gratitude, grief and anger will lead the way to faithful moral discernment. If these are combined with disciplined theo-ethical reflection, they guide the intellect and open channels of compassion and moral power.

 

Six Questions Constituting Ethical Consideration

(a)                 What is going on and why?

(b)                 What should be going on, and what moral norms help the determination?

(c)                 What are alternatives?

(d)                 What forces disable our moral power to move toward “what should be” our capacity to promote faithful change where it is called for?

(e)                 What are the sources of moral and spiritual power to counter those forces? How are we empowered to live, as we ought to?

(f)                   What practical steps should we take in terms of lifestyle, public policy, institutions, social systems and beliefs systems?

 

Here I am focusing only on the first two questions: the descriptive question and normative question.

 

The Descriptive Question

An initial dimension of Christian ethical inquiry is the descriptive task of asking: what is going on, and what are the facts and details of the case? This question is perhaps the most important and most controversial in ethical deliberation. It demands a clear and honest examination of economic, technical, scientific and political realities in order to assess their moral viability and that of alternatives.

Ethical conflict often has more to do with people’s accounts of what is the case, than with accounts of what should be the case. What we see, what we refuse to see and how we see are all morally loaded questions, bearing upon whether we choose life-saving or life-thwarting actions. In the Gospel according to Mark, Jesus asks his disciples: “Have you not eyes to see and ears to hear?” Daniel Maguire says it another way: The “bane of ethics is to ignore or inadequately see reality” (Maguire, 1984).  If we do not ask adequate reality-revealing questions, moral judgments will fall short, and possibilities for faithful response are undermined.

The descriptive has two layers: the actual ethical situation being addressed and the broader social structural context in which it occurs. If part of the moral task for Christians is to have “eyes to see” then what are the keys to seeing more clearly? What questions enable us to see going on and why? Here are a few key questions to consider: What are the power dynamics at play? Who has the decision making power to determine who eats and who does not? Who benefits and who loses? What are the long-term consequences of the present structure? Whose voices are not heard and whose perspectives are uncounted for? Whose lives, struggles and knowledge are considered and whose are not? Christian ethical reflection on any situation is fatally flawed if the voices of people whose survival, dignity or basic human rights are threatened in the situation or are not heard.

What are the historical roots of “the way things are?” Ethical discernment must be embedded in human and ecological history. If we are blind to the realities that maintain injustice, our passion and power for justice making love may be crushed before it is born. Facing social realities entails removing hindrances so that the capacity to see “what could be” is not strangled by the inability to see “what is.” 

 

The Normative Question

What should we do regarding agricultural biotechnology according to moral considerations? This is the normative question most commonly associated with ethics. It says; “Name your overall moral mandate, and then identify norms (standards or criteria) by which to discern whether or not a particular practice or policy is consistent with that mandate.”   In the Christian perspective, Jesus defines the overall moral mandate, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Together with love for God, Jesus says, “there is no greater commandment that this” (Mark 12:31). “It is the biblical view that being moral is to love well…this wild idea was at the heart of the moral revolution of Israel and of Jesus as a part of it,” (Maguire, 1993).

With this claim, several questions abound. Who is my neighbour? What does love mean? My “neighbour,” in the biblical sense, is whomever my life touches. Given the realities of globalization that link us in an intricate web of interactions and the myriad public policies, private activities and moral dilemmas, my “neighbour” is global and includes those in sub Saharan Africa whose hunger and impoverishments is linked to the enrichment of others world wide.

The call to love as a biblical notion is stunning and radical, affecting every dimension of life. It includes orienting every aspect of life around the well being of people who are marginalized, impoverished or otherwise vulnerable to those in positions of power. The Bible teaches that, in terms of the hunger issue, love does not mean only alleviating hunger; it means also challenging systemic injustice and political and economic policies that cause hunger. Where injustice exists, biblical neighbor- love involves working for justice. That is, the biblical norm of neighbor – love includes the norm of justice. It is with the mandate to love that we consider agricultural biotechnology and its relationship to hunger in sub Saharan Africa. The ethical question becomes, what practices and policies regarding agricultural biotechnology will embody that kind of love? The problem deepens. How are we to decide what practices and policies are adhering with justice-making neighbor-love? How are we to express them in secular terms? We identify norms by which to discern. The following are relevant Christian ethical norms.  

 

Correspondence

The solution must correspond to the problem. This norm questions the application of biotechnological answers to problems caused by inequalities in political and economic power. For example, when people are hungry because of international trading policies that result from “dumping” surplus food, or because profits are expatriated from Africa or people do not have adequate resources to buy food, then genetically modified seeds are unlikely to solve the problem. This does not mean that agricultural biotechnology is wrong, but it does cast suspicion on solutions that treat political-economic problems as genetic deficiencies.

 

Democracy

Democracy rather than concentrated power is normative for Christian ethics. Democracy exists where all people have power, in terms of capacities, resources and institutions; they also participate with relative equality and liberty in decision-making regarding their lives. Democracy implies that decisions are made by or accountable to those who must live with the consequences. Democracy is undermined when significant decisions about society are removed from public deliberation into the realm of a few elite.

According to this norm, moves in agricultural biotechnology research, development and application would be morally viable only if people who stand to lose as a result of the moves (often small scale farmers, rural dwellers and end-users) participate substantively in decision-making regarding them. Where that substantive participation is missing, the biotechnological development is questioned.

 

Ecological Sustainability

Everyone depends upon the regenerative health of the earth for life. The crisis of hunger and poverty is linked irrefutably to the crisis of the earth. Increasingly, those most exposed to environmental problems are the poorest. One implication for policy work is that risk analysis must include long-term and short-term ecological implications, especially for economically impoverished countries and people. Whatever dismantles the long-term regenerative capacity of specific regions of the earth, for the sake of short-term gains, especially if those gains are not for the people of that region, is morally unacceptable. If as many scientists now claim, ecological sustainability requires preservation of genetic diversity or biodiversity, then this too becomes normative. What if big countries prescribe and lead negotiations in these biodiversity talks and protocols and then decide not to be part or sign at the end?

 

Food Security

Will biotechnology increase food security for African people at the household level? Will it strengthen or threaten the long-term viability of small farmers? If food self-reliance or communal-reliance is the rule for the national level, will a decision concerning biotechnology cohere with this rule or will it generate dependence.

 

Sufficiency

The Bible is full of condemnations of material excess when it is made a way of life. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in 1993 developed a study on economic life called “Sustainable Sufficient Livelihood for All.” Sufficiency dictates that everyone has the right to what is necessary for life with dignity, and that no one has the right to more than enough if it means undermining the well-being of economically vulnerable people or countries. Sufficiency questions innovations in biotechnology that are driven by maximizing profit for executives and shareholders in large firms, if the same innovations also undermine the well-being of impoverished African small-scale farmers or consumers. Sufficiency relates to patent issues and related issues of ownership and control of biotechnology. Whose benefit will a patent serve? What policies regarding patents will uphold the criterion of sufficiency?

 

Justice

“Justice is the love language of the Bible. To practice steadfast love, you secure justice for the poor,” (Ibid, 1993). Deuteronomy 16:20 states, “Justice, and justice only, you shall pursue so that you may live.” The question is what does justice mean vis-à-vis biotechnology? It means that none shall be deprived by the excess of others of what they need to live with dignity. This claim is central in many Christian traditions.

The Christian ethical norm of justice might imply that:

Thus, the justice norm in Christian ethics asks, does a development in biotechnology serve to maintain or to dismantle the sins of class-privilege? If it is the former then, then the development is suspect. The above six norms help determine whether or not a decision about biotechnology coheres with the moral mandate of justice-making neighbour-love, which governs every aspect of life from a biblical perspective.

 

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is my hope that this presentation and framework is useful in assessing possibilities and pitfalls associated with agricultural biotechnology as it relates to hunger in Africa. Let me emphasize that, I support Africa’s right to choose whether to pursue the use of agricultural biotechnology. I support an increase in funding to build Africa’s capacity to carry out unbiased evaluations of biotechnology’s benefits and risks, establish appropriate Biosafety policies and institutions, and participate in related international negotiations. I support the restructuring of the current intellectual property rights system to protect indigenous resource and ensure access to the technology and distribution of its benefits to all, including small scale sub Saharan African farmers. I also support the right of the consumer who might be a poor inhabitant from Harare in Zimbabwe, or a rich farmer from Burgundy in France to know what is included on his tomato through “labeling”. Finally, I urge the developed world to increase support for efforts to reduce hunger in Africa. These support will include increases in effective, poverty-focused development assistance, changes in agriculture and agricultural trade policies of the industrialized countries, more funding for capacity building and biotechnology regulatory frameworks and instruments to regulate and lastly more support for peace making in Africa.

Let me end with the words of St. Thomas Aquinas:

 

“Come then, good Shepherd, bread divine

                                    Still show to us thy mercy sign;

Oh, feed us, still keep us thine;

So we may see thy glories shine

In field of immortality.

O thou, the wisest, mightiest, best

Our present food, our future rest

Come, make us each thy chosen guest

Co-heirs of thine, and comrades blest”.

 

Used References

1. Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. 1993. Economic Life Sufficient, Sustainable Livelihood for All, produced by the Dept for Studies, Division for Church Society, Minnesota.

2. Harrison, B.W. 1985. “The Power of Anger in the Work of Love.” Making Connections: Essays in Feminist Social Ethics, Beacon Press, Boston, Massachusetts.

3. Maguire, D.C.  Death by Choice. 1984. Image Books, Garden City, New York.

4. Maguire, DC. 1993. The Moral Core of Judaism and Christianity.  Fortress Press, Minneapolis, MN.

5. Ibid., 1993.

 

 

Ref.: Text sent by e-maiI from the Author for SEDOS, April 2004.