Genetically Modified crops
Welfare and the role of government regulation
1.11 One fundamental purpose of public policy is to protect and promote the welfare of citizens. In this context, the concept of welfare is normally understood in terms of a list of basic securities: access to safe and nutritious foodstuffs, protection from environmental harms, and enhancement of research and development (R&D) to provide the knowledge on which the provision of such securities can be built. A fundamental question about GM crops is whether and how they promise to increase human welfare and whether their introduction may damage human welfare directly, by injuring the consumer, or indirectly, by damaging other things we value, such as a diverse environment and wildlife. Arguments about human welfare are so familiar that they are sometimes dismissed as hardly ethical arguments at all. However, the impact of human behaviour on the welfare of others imposes stringent requirements on us. Endangering the health or safety of other people is morally wrong, and in severe cases almost invariably illegal. The health and safety of citizens are also at the heart of the greater part of government regulation. Since questions about human welfare frequently raise questions about the probability of the risks and benefits involved, the ethical issues are often obscured by the scientific problems of risk assessment. But it is always possible, in principle, to distinguish between the two distinct questions of 'how bad?' and 'how likely?’ That is, we can and should separate the reasons for regarding an outcome as an evil from the likelihood of its occurrence.
1.12 The concern of government with the welfare of its citizens underlies much current regulatory practice. One of the duties of companies introducing GM crops, whether in experimental trials or for commercial use, is to ensure that they do no harm or that any harm is so slight as to be generally acceptable. The regulatory system for GM crops and their products in both the UK and the European Union (EU) is predicated on this simple proposition. The prevention of harm is sometimes extended to promote the adoption of the so-called 'precautionary principle' (3). This puts the avoidance of harm to consumers and the environment at the head of the list of regulatory goals. The blanket adoption of the precautionary principle risks an imbalance between the avoidance of harm and the achievement of a positive good. This is because some interpretations of the precautionary principle require us to give an absolute priority to the first goal before we attend to the second.
1.13 The precautionary principle can be understood as a simple welfare-based principle. As such it raises familiar problems, of which the most important is to define the conditions under which the avoidance of harm should take priority over the attempt to do good. Ordinarily, we balance the good we hope for against the bad we would wish to avoid, a process which economists have elaborated into 'cost/benefit' analysis. Common sense suggests that the development of crops that substantially reduce hunger or improve nutrition in the developing world would justify running the risk of modest damage to the interests of well-off consumers or the environment. Conversely, critics argue that GM crops will bring benefits only to the producer or farmer, not to the consumer, and that any risk of harm cannot be justified. Both views imply that it is right to balance the good achieved against the harm imposed.
1.14 A stringent interpretation of the precautionary principle would preclude such balancing. It may, however, be best interpreted, not as part of our cost/benefit calculation, but as a principle governing how we should engage in such calculations. Consequently, it is treated sometimes as a rule of thumb that regulators should adopt a wary attitude to new technology and sometimes as a reminder that if the harm anticipated is very great, we should be attentive to very small risks of it occurring. As some of our respondents have suggested, the precautionary principle may also be understood as a reminder that human beings are all too easily carried away by excitement and novelty, and need to be warned against hubris. However, other respondents have treated the precautionary principle as a distinctively moral principle, which emphasises the intricacy of the natural world and which urges us to take that intricacy with proper seriousness. Understood in either of these ways, the principle does not yield very definite prescriptions, but does urge caution upon scientists, governments and farmers. We agree that a precautionary approach to so novel a technology as that of GM crops is justified, as we say below, but we would not wish concerns about very small risks to the inhabitants of developed countries to inhibit the R&D that can benefit the inhabitants of the poorer world.
Footnotes3 The 'precautionary principle' is incorporated in the Maastricht Treaty. It is the rule that permits governments to impose restrictions on otherwise legitimate commercial activities, if there is a risk, even if not yet a scientifically demonstrated risk, of environmental damage. Its interpretation is disputed and we return to it in subsequent chapters.