This report seeks to evaluate the ethical and social issues raised by genetically modified crops and food, against the integrated perspectives of a Christian understanding. European churches have been addressing these since the early 1990’s, and we seek to reflect areas of general consensus and also points where we differ. In the current controversies over GM issues, the churches have also played an important role in providing neutral space to bring different sides together in dialogue, and in helping clarify the value positions of stakeholders.

The report was produced by the working group on Bioethics and Biotechnology of the Church and Society Commission of the Conference of European Churches.
The Conference is the regional ecumenical organisation for the whole of Europe comprising 126 churches of all traditions (Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican, Old Catholic) except for the Roman Catholic Church.
In January 2002, the Executive Committee of the Church and Society Commission commended this document to the member churches of CEC for study, reflection and, where appropriate, action. Its working group on Bioethics and Biotechnology consists of specialists in areas such as medicine, genetics, bio-chemistry, theology, ethics and law.


Executive Summary

The GM crisis revealed a series of ethical issues which challenge the technology of genetic modification and its consequences. We have examined these in turn.

We consider various arguments by which some within our churches would oppose genetically modified food in principle. Whilst we do not find sufficient grounds for intrinsic opposition to GM, neither could we endorse an uncritical acceptance of all aspects. We propose a theology of creation that seeks to balance permissible human intervention through biotechnology with due restraint arising from care for our human neighbours and for the rest of God’s created order.

In this context, we would not agree that GM is intrinsically unacceptable because it is more "unnatural" than selective breeding. While species integrity is important, it does not seem to us to represent an absolute limit. Some concerns about GM food seem to apply also to selective breeding. Rather than draw a line between the two we would set ethical limits within both.

The uncertainties involved in switching of genes without reference to normal constraints of species, however, calls for caution. Exaggerated technological optimism and commercial pressures to develop GM as fast as possible should therefore both be resisted.

On the other hand, the safety conditions required for GM crops should be proportional to what can be fairly expected of human actions within God’s creation, where absolute safety is illusiory.

The uncertainties merit a generally precautionary approach towards environmental and health risks, but a complete rejection of all GM crops on risk grounds would not seem justified. GM applications should only be done if they confer significant human or ecological benefits. It is prudent to avoid applications that are more likely to spread their genes or threaten biodiversity.

In response to the excesses of industrial agriculture, organic methods offer many advantages, but should not be seen as the exclusive solution. Priority should be given by the EC to a wide range of sustainable methods of agricultural production. These may include some GM applications.

An especially great concern among the churches over GM crops is the injustice in the power structures which control the technology, and the failure to make it publicly accountable. The open disregard for public values by both multi-national companies and the EC in allowing unlabelled and unsegregated GM food products on to the European market should never happen again.

Despite the high moral claims made for sweeping human and ecological benefits, GM crop technology has been primarily directed to corporate commercial benefits in food production. This economic mind-set was one of the main underlying causes of the GM crisis, yet it is perpetuated in the draft EC strategic vision for biotechnology. The primary justification for GM is presented in economic terms above any public or environmental benefits. This view must be reversed.

Only the food biotechnology which finds common cause with EC citizens will produce economic benefits. For GM crops to have any future in the EC will depend on the extent to which the public is given an effective say in policy development and true choices in labeling.

An essential precondition for public acceptance is a mandatory labeling of all GM derived foodstuffs by process, not merely by measurable content. We welcome the recent EC proposals for this and for segregation and traceability. We recognize the difficulty in implementation and risks of abuse, but these are far less important considerations than the present unacceptable labeling situation which gives no effective choice either way. Ethically, any burden of cost should properly fall on the GM innovator, not on the producer of existing, accepted non-GM food.

GM crops may offer more potential benefits for the developing world than for the EC, but we share the concern of many Christians at the power of multi-national corporations in impressing their technologies on vulnerable farmers in the South. GM developments should only be applied if they are genuinely the optimum solution, and can be done within the context of providing sustainable livelihoods for their own farmers, in enabling the poor to feed themselves.

If the EC’s claims for GM as a tool to help ‘feed the world’ are to be taken seriously, they require a radical reorientation of its priorities of GM research, to redirect skills towards addressing real hunger problems in the developing world. As the vitamin A rice example shows, promising developments will only be realized if substantial additional funding is provided by the public sector, and if necessary technology is made available free of patent and other restrictions.

The question of food for the world is part of a much bigger issue of global justice, which underlines the need for the EC to play a stronger role in the global arena to establish clear and fair rules aimed to enable the poor to feed themselves.


Bioethics and Biotechnology Working Group
Church and Society Commission
Conference of European Churches
19 December 2001