How should I teach my child to see a GMO?

There are a number challenges GMOs present to a teacher or a parent. The issue is scientifically technical, but also quite abstract and philosophical. Many of the main problems about genetic engineering are lost to adults who themselves get mired in the controversy over whether eating GMOs is safe.

In an earlier post, I expressed concern about what it would be like for a child growing up in a world where everywhere they look, from the soil under their feet to the glowing green canopies buzzing with life above them, all they see are "products" modified, manipulated and controlled by humans.

We need to protect the magic of the world. We need to give our children the chance to experience what shines through anyways, despite the genetic engineer's incursions.

On this issue, adults need to tread a careful path between demonizing genetically engineered animals and plants, and condoning them. This is the topic of today's blog post.

Children need to know that it is not okay for companies to steer the creative evolution of interconnected ecologies by short-term goals and through poorly understood processes. Children need to feel that the Earth itself has a power, an intelligence and a nurturing capacity. The Earth won't guarantee safety or health for anyone but if we consider the brutally inhospitable outside universe, we've got to realize that we're in a very special place. Children also need to learn that we can't get everything we want and that a part of living well and of fostering deep happiness comes with accepting the opportunities provided precisely by what limits us.

Parents and teachers, angry and frustrated about genetic engineering, may inadvertently teach children that GMOs are evil.

GMOs are not evil.

A genetically engineered cow or apple tree should not have been created in the first place. But now that it is here, what do we do?

We need to show our children that we can still respect this cow and this apple tree. They are alive and participating in the unfolding of our world. We do not want to encourage eugenic thinking. We do not want to fracture our children's natural world into "good" and "bad". If we do, we succumb to the same corrupt and controlling logic that we are trying to overcome.

We need to explain to our children that it is not the cow's fault that she was born the way she was. We need to show them that we still believe that the cow is beautiful in her own way, despite the invasive procedures she has been subjected to. We need to cultivate pity and empathy for the GMOs.

This does not mean that we should be encouraging their spread in ecosystems. Of course, we have to work towards the larger goal of stopping the production and release of GMOs into our environment. Our children need to know about this broader project too. And they need to understand that these are not incompatible or contradictory goals. It is completely consistent to love a GMO, as a fellow being on the earth, while working towards the cessation of their further production. In fact, both goals are one and the same: to open ourselves to the more-than-human world that underlies and floods through even our most conceited and self-absorbed schemes.

Do any of you parents or teachers have experiences about teaching children about GMOs that you'd like to share? I'd love to hear about it...

Children growing up in a genetically engineered world

If citizens don't keep putting pressure on the biotech industry and on government, within a couple decades we could easily end up in a world where most of the plants and animals around us have been engineered in some way. Food crops that have been genetically engineered, but not yet approved for commercialization or consumption, include virtually every plant and animal in our food supply. We are lucky that our continued pressure has put the brakes on the biotech industry and that they are releasing new GMOs at a rate much slower than they were intending ten years ago.

But food is actually just a fraction of the genetically engineered organisms being created in labs today. Goats are being genetically engineered to produce material for bullet proof vests in their breastmilk, cows to produce pharmaceuticals in theirs, trees to sequester carbon (to "solve" global warming), and bacteria to clean up human messes.

What is happening is clear: the biotech industry is ushering in a conceptual shift in how we view and relate to the other species with whom we share the planet.

Other species are being altered so that they function as factories for human goals. A factory, assembly line model is not just being imposed on them, as we've already seen in the horrors of industrial agriculture. It is now being imposed through them. Their very meaning and existence on earth, their very physiology and biochemistry, now function for serving the goals of corporate entities and their pursuits of profits and market shares.

While the debate about genetic engineering often ends up as an argument about whether or not eating GMOs is safe, there is a deeper, darker issue that is not often talked about. What will happen if we live in a world where most of the species around us are factories? The biotech industry actually has a word for this, showing exactly what sort of conceptual shift they intend. A cow or pig producing pharmaceuticals in its breastmilk is called a "bioreactor" by the industry.

Ignore for a moment the ethical issues behind usurping the freedom, spontaneity and right to existence of the Earth's biological community, or the cow's right to complete the stages of life, including the right to feed its own calves healthy milk.

Ignore the side effects that might ensue from our food crops becoming contaminated with bananas that produce antibiotics or vaccines and the economic damages that would entail.

Instead, consider for a moment what it will be like for children growing up in a world where every animal and every plant is not a product of the creative forces of the universe, but of the "ingenuity" of human beings. Where the nuthatch flicking down the maple tree has been altered to absorb dioxin from the atmosphere (to "clean" the air) and the maple tweaked to produce brighter leaves in the fall.

Urban children are already suffering from nature-deficit disorder, implicated with multiple cognitive and emotional disturbances. What will happen when there is nothing left that is not... human?

What will happen when everywhere children look, the magic of the more-than-human world that so inspired our hearts when we were their age, that inspiration that teaches us the wisdom of gratitude and grace, is infected with the short-term goals of capitalist profiteers and technocrats?

See also: How should we teach our children about GMOs?