The Knight's Tale Behind Genetically Modified Salmon

Text | Huang Jialin

The Legislative Yuan has just passed on third reading partial articles of the School Health Act, prohibiting the use of genetically modified fresh ingredients and their primary processed products in campus meals at senior high, junior high and elementary schools. Netizens immediately linked this to the recent approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of commercial farming and sale of genetically modified salmon, making salmon the world's first GM animal to reach the dining table, and asked whether GM salmon would also be banned from entering Taiwanese schoolchildren's campus diets in the future.

In theory, it would seem so. Yet comparing GM salmon with Taiwan's current social issues and election fever happens to offer us a new angle from which to dissect the candidates' food safety policies.

The running mate of Democratic Progressive Party presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen is Chen Chien-jen, a Catholic holding titles including "Knight of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem." Two days after the news broke that GM salmon had won marketing approval in the United States, Tsai Ing-wen publicly stated that promoting Taiwan's entry into the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) would be one of the important goals of her future administration. The many controversies surrounding the TPP remain to be discussed and clarified, and among the twelve signatory countries opposition has never entirely subsided. Issues highly relevant to Taiwan include permits for GM planting and imports of GM foods, which bear on national food safety and the autonomy rights over the local agricultural and food ecosystem. GM soybeans and corn have been part of Taiwanese life for more than a decade; GM crops for edible oil use such as rapeseed and canola have just been legally approved for import; not long ago even GM sugar beets successfully cleared customs; GM potatoes are said to have submitted applications awaiting review; and now GM salmon, debated for nearly twenty years, has officially won U.S. approval for market launch. Could more GM foods affect the nation's dietary life in the future?

With Tsai Ing-wen's declaration of a policy position in favor of joining the TPP, the answer seems plain as day.

So what does this have to do with her running mate? Academician Chen Chien-jen, who may soon assume the second-highest position in Taiwan's national leadership, must, in the face of the damage GM crops and foods inflict on ecological ethics and social justice, and with his public health governance expertise that earned him a papal honor, unavoidably respond on the one hand to the strong doubts about GM raised by Catholic Pope Francis in his June 18 encyclical on ecology, "Laudato Si': On Care for Our Common Home"; and on the other hand take responsibility for the political role he has assumed, namely the TPP policy of his running mate Tsai Ing-wen.

Hailing from Argentina, one of the world's top three countries in GM crop cultivation and production, Pope Francis became the first global leader of the Catholic Church to offer an analysis of both the scientific and social dimensions of genetic engineering. While acknowledging that GM development may contribute to the economic life of certain regions, he also pointed out that GM technology enables a minority, wielding the absolute advantage of their knowledge and economic power, to exploit natural ecosystems and disadvantaged groups by manipulating technology, so that economic growth in certain industries or regions comes at the cost of monopolized farmland, violated survival rights of small farmers, and destroyed biodiversity.

The United States, a major GM crop country, has joined forces with GM corporate giant Monsanto for many years, pushing GM soybeans, corn and their processed products such as salad oil and high-fructose corn syrup into countries around the world at very low prices through diplomatic and trade channels, altering the global food chain ecosystem; Taiwan, with a very low food self-sufficiency rate, is naturally not spared. In its management of GM foods, the United States adopts the "substantial equivalence principle" - a stance that GM foods need not be mandatorily labeled - which is vastly different from our country's "precautionary principle," which requires all foods using GM ingredients, including restaurants selling GM foods, to be labeled. In the future, under U.S. pressure in TPP negotiations, will Taiwan be able to resist "investor-state dispute settlement" (ISDS) and hold firm to its position on GM food labeling? Will it abandon the agricultural and fisheries policy that has so far strictly restricted permits for GM crop cultivation, and throw the doors wide open to permit local commercial production of GM crops?

Vice-presidential candidate Chen Chien-jen once declared with conviction that he entered politics out of the religious value of loving all people and all things. But can he embody the Catholic Pope's call for global leaders to stand on the side of safeguarding global ecology and prioritizing the poor, to fulfill their duties as guardians and stewards, and to safeguard the food safety and agricultural and food autonomy of the people of Taiwan? Regarding the position on GM policy in Taiwan's future entry into the TPP, we call on the "Knight of the Holy Sepulchre" to respond as soon as possible.

Parts of the text were originally published on November 26, 2015 in Apple Daily's Focus Commentary, "Knight of the Holy Sepulchre and GM Salmon.