[This article was submitted to the China Times to express the Foundation's position, and on 2014/11/11, after abridgement, it was published as Have Something to Say - Risk control is not the pursuit of zero risk]

Regarding Mr. Lin Chi-hsing's two articles, "Genetically modified foods cannot beat electoral genes" on October 30 and "Blind reasoning cannot protect food safety" on November 5, which criticized the recent actions of the Homemakers United Foundation Environmental Protection Foundation, even describing it as "roadside shouters who do not understand genetic technology," portraying the Foundation as populists manipulating candidates before the election, and saying that screening imported Japanese irradiated food instead caused psychological trauma to the people far exceeding the material harm to health and so on, we must make a solemn response and explanation here.

The Foundation largely agrees with Mr. Lin. The contemporary era we live in has long been a "high-risk society," with risk everywhere. We should rationally weigh costs and benefits between well-being and risk; pursuing absolute safety or zero risk is merely self-deception. Therefore, the Homemakers United Foundation has never pursued "zero risk," but rather "risk control to the lowest level"! Looking at the development of industrialized food technology, GM crops, irradiated food, veterinary drugs, gutter oil, industrial additives mixed into food, excessive pesticides and fertilizers… the health risks produced by the above, in combined and interacting ways, far exceed what today's science and medicine can grasp. The content of our daily diet is no longer as simple as that of the previous generation; it is increasingly complex, and ordinary homemakers (fortunately, many in the Foundation are homemakers who are highly educated intellectuals) are therefore forced to learn more specialized scientific knowledge and rationally weigh costs and benefits between well-being and risk.

In order to promote GM seeds, GM seed companies have engaged in ugly political protection in the United States (please google [Bill 933]), and academic persecution has also occurred in France and Argentina (see http://gmo.agron.ntu.edu.tw/cases/Seralini.htm for details). The American Academy of Pediatrics also found that from 1996, when GM foods came on the market, to the present, childhood asthma and allergies have increased by as much as one fifth, and suspects a high positive correlation with eating GM foods. Mr. Lin does not discuss these facts and looks at GMOs only from a scientific perspective, so he cannot understand why the American people, who have eaten GM crops for more than ten years, have been rising up in various places since 2011 to demand that the government label GMOs and return the right to choose GM foods to the people?

Back to irradiated food, this point is even simpler. There are two kinds of radiation, natural radiation and artificial radionuclides, just as there are two kinds of coloring agents, one natural and one artificial. Natural coloring agents are greatly beneficial to the human body, while artificial coloring agents based on fossil fuels harm the body. Likewise, humans have coexisted peacefully with natural radiation since ancient times, and problems such as thyroid cancer have not been as severe as with artificial radiation leaks from nuclear power plants. What the Homemakers United Foundation disputes is self-evident.

Most members of the Homemakers United Foundation are mothers. As meal providers and family caregivers (although we would prefer that household labor and division of duties fall more evenly on both sexes), what we care about is whether the "health risks" to our families can be reduced to the lowest level. As women, life practitioners, and even intellectuals, we cannot discuss matters from a purely scientific perspective alone, but must also discuss them from the perspectives of life, emotion, cultural context, and environmental justice involved in science. Before GM foods are proven completely harmless, we should all be cautious and conservative. If, twenty or thirty years later, GMOs are proven harmless, society as a whole will not have suffered any loss from being unable to eat GM foods. If it is proven that there is a direct causal relationship between human carcinogenesis and genetic mutations and GMOs, we invite those in power and all citizens to take preventive action now and refuse GM foods. Only this truly possesses scientific and democratic literacy.

(The author is deputy director of the Taichung branch of the Homemakers United Foundation Environmental Protection Foundation and a university lecturer)

1. China Times [Current Affairs Commentary] Genetically modified foods cannot beat electoral genes (Lin Chi-hsing) 2014/10/30
2. China Times [Current Affairs Commentary] Blind reasoning cannot protect food safety (Lin Chi-hsing) 2014/11/05