Aqua Bounty: The genetically engineered Salmon that investors hope will reap big returns. World Hunger, a by product of the market will remain.

My local paper reports today that an “advisory” committee convened by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration)) has told the agency that the Genetically Engineered Salmon known as Aqua Bounty is safe for humans to eat.

The Aqua Bounty was “created” by a Massachusetts genetic engineering company and grows twice as fast as natural salmon. My first thoughts, before reading on, were athletes that take steroids. These steroids have quite devastating effects in some cases and have been proven to be detrimental to a person’s health in the long term. I am not a geneticist or a biologist; I dug ditches for a living most of my life. But, I am a bit concerned.

I am not opposed to science and using science to benefit humanity as it has over the centuries, but when I hear that the CEO of the corporation that created the fish says that his “company’s fish is safe and environmentally sustainable” my instincts kick in. I recall seeing a book in my supervisors office one day when I was in there in my capacity as shop steward, he went out for a minute and I glanced at it and saw this quote that reveals how they conjure up all sorts of ways of lying to us,  "If you're going to strive to motivate workers through autonomy and empowerment, it's important to remember that the primary burden is to make sure employees believe what you say. Don't tell them you want them to be empowered to increase the company's profits. Tell them you want them to be empowered because it's the best way to remain competitive and guarantee everyone their jobs."  

So the advantages of a faster growing fish, the capitalist will tell us is that it can solve world hunger. We are supposed to believe that their motivation for developing such a product is egalitarian. But saving hundreds of millions of starving people in the world is not what drives the CEO of this genetic engineering company or any other capitalist. The object of his activity is profit. Adam Smith might argue that that’s OK, all humanity benefit from individual self-interest or greed. But Smith is wrong.  We can simply change a few words from the above quote when it comes to food production, "Don't tell them that we increase the rate at which we can get the food (salmon or beef) to market in order to make more profits, tell them it's to feed starving children. and end world hunger."

Great, who can oppose that?


The report in the paper touches on this issue when it points out that “the potential benefits---and profits—are huge.” It’s the profits that are the issue for them; the benefits, if there are any, are incidental. They pump all sorts of drugs and chemicals in to the animals we eat to fatten them faster and get them in to the market quicker. The reason for this is that the added value in the commodity, cattle, in this instance, is “realized” when the meat is sold and consumed. The private owners of the food production business can then take their profits, re-invest some in production and buy their yachts and expensive art or send their kids to Harvard with the rest.

I don’t think we have to be familiar with Marx’s Labor Theory of Value or the details of the Labor process and circulation of commodities to see the dangers here. For most workers if we think about it for a moment, all we have to know is that the CEO of a corporation says it’s safe to eat.

Environmental and food safety groups point out that this fish could not only cause allergies and other complications with humans but also seriously damage the natural habitat of regular salmon including the decimation of the wild salmon altogether. Like safety in mining or oil drilling industries, it's level  will be determined after workers are killed or the environment savaged.

I am opposed to these fish. If we think the Asian Carp can cause havoc, we haven’t seen nothin’ yet. I am opposed to private corporations and CEO’s of corporations producing the food we eat. No working class person really believes that Donald Trump is an egalitarian acting in the interests of all humanity, even if they say they aspire to get where he is. It’s not that I think we should opposes science, science is liberating unlike religion. But science cannot be separated from society, scientists are not operating in a vacuum, they are part of capitalist society and subject to its control and influence. Food production, including the use of science to improve it, cannot be left in the heads of private corporations; the same people who brought us the present economic crisis.

The solution to world hunger, disease and poverty is the collective ownership of the means by which we produce the necessities of life rather than in private hands and set in to motion for individual gain and profit for a tiny minority in society. How we produce these necessities, and how we can do it in harmony with nature, this is what will liberate humanity and science from the clutches of global capitalism and its rapacious thirst for surplus value.