The Environmental and Post-Environmental Politics of Genetically Modified Crops and Foods

The movement against genetically modified (GM) crops/foods has become progressively ‘environmentalised’ in recent years, but making environmental risk the focus of the movement's critique of GM crops is probably, for activists, a strategic mistake, for the issue is not self-evidently simply an environmental one. When anti-GM activists, pro-GM interests, and policy makers refer to ‘GM crops and foods’, they are not always referring to the same thing. Terms like GM, genetic engineering, biotechnology, transgenics, molecular biology, and basic research are used interchangeably, even though they mean quite different things. Some rethinking of the meaning of GM and of sustainability, combined with recent developments in the biological sciences, offers potential for alliances between scientists and activists in efforts to move away from GM crops and toward sustainable agriculture.