Subject: SPEECH: Code of Ethics for Agriculturalists (fwd)
From: [email-masked] (Gabriel Hegyes)
Date: 24 May 1994 12:55:00 -0400
Newsgroups: alt.sustainable.agriculture

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 12 Apr 1994 07:17:53 -0400
From: Sam Coghlan <[email-masked]>
To: Multiple recipients of list RURALDEV <[email-masked]>
Subject: Code of Ethics for Agriculturalists

This paper on ethics will prove highly interesting to you and/or to some of your
colleagues.  Please pass it along to whomever may be interested.

I make this request, primarily for the sake of spreading ideas and provoking
thought and discussion.  Secondarily, however, I am attempting to convince Alex
Sim of the merits of the internet.

Alex Sim is a special man.  He has spent several decades as a sociologist and
social activist, usually in the field of adult education and in a rural context.
His writing has stimulated my thinking and his example has provoked me to become
active in the interest of improving the quality of rural living.  Alex
+ introduced
me to concepts such as the Danish folk schools, community soundings, and the
+ Farm
Radio Forum.

Unfortunately, Alex is losing his hearing and it pains a person to see him at a
meeting, not being able to fully participate in excitement of idea exchange.
Alex also claims to be a little wary of new technology, an interesting assertion
from a man who brought adult education experiences directly into the living
+ rooms
of Canadians in the 1940's to 1960's through the wonders of radio.

So, read this or pass it along.  Any responses you send to me, I will forward to
Alex in hardcopy so that he can see the spontaneity that email breeds.  If you
wish to contact Alex through snail mail, his address is:
      Alex Sim
      108 Glasgow Street North
      Guelph, Ontario, Canada  N1H 4W3
      Phone:  (519) 824-5547

Alex has said the following about making copies of his work:
      "Reproduction is authorized if the source is acknowledged and a copy
      sent to the author at 108 Glasgow Street North, Guelph, Ontario,
      Canada N1H 4W3."

                   A CODE OF ETHICS FOR ALL AGRICULTURALISTS,
                              NOT JUST FOR FARMERS

by R. Alex Sim

* NOTES for an address delivered at
  Nova Scotia Agricultural College, Truro, Nova Scotia
  January 22, 1994
  at an International Conference on Agricultural Ethics

ABSTRACT

      An ethical framework for agriculture must eventually be reduced to
a code to which individuals would subscribe.  Such a code would be
reminiscent of the Hippocratic oath since it would involve the health and
survival of plants and animals including the human family.  That is to
say environmental as well as consumer protection is implied.  Given the
complexity of the food chain today, farmers are not the only players
whose ethical behaviour impacts on the health and survival of our
biosphere.  Whether or not farmers should act independently is
problematic, as are the differences that separate the various types of
farm operation.  An ethical code or codes cannot be effective when
enforced by governments or professional associations unless public
opinion insists on changes in the values attached to food and the land
and to prevailing morality in the cultures of commerce, scientific
inquiry, and technological innovation.

      A CODE OF ETHICS FOR ALL AGRICULTURALISTS, NOT JUST FOR FARMERS
                                                           by R. Alex Sim

      My approach to the theme of this conference has led me to shift the
emphasis from agriculture to agriculturalists, to shift from the industry
to the individuals involved in it.  I also propose to shift the emphasis
from a framework of ethics to a code of ethics to which individuals can
subscribe.  It goes without saying that we all follow a standard of
behaviour in everything we do.  There is even honour among thieves, or so
I am told.  There is black, white and grey ethics.  A code would force us
to agree on a standard for agriculturalists against which the public can
judge what we do, and more explicitly, what we produce.  The emphasis on
an ethical framework is also valid, but a code puts a spotlight on what
each of us actually does in practice.

      It will be a challenge to see if we can codify moral values in a
culture that puts great emphasis on profits and other material benefits.
In doing so, I am mindful of the code of Hippocrates that has helped to
define medical ethics since the 4th century B.C. in spite of enormous
changes in medical technology. (1)  It will be an additional challenge to
see if a code can be hammered out which applies not just to farmers, but
to ministers of agriculture, deans of agriculture, presidents of chain
stores, and chemical cartels: not just the heads of these enterprises,
but all those working under their authority.  We have all basked in the
praise of our unprecedented productivity, now we must share the
responsibility for dangerous side effects.  We cannot say we were not
warned.  Rachael Carson was one of many who spoke but was ignored.

      I know that the operations of the agricultural industry include
much more than the production, processing, and marketing of food
products.  It includes equally momentous custodial responsibilities for
the land and a wide variety of plant and animal species.  Nevertheless, I
will emphasize "food", for if agriculture is an industry, then its
product is not like the rest.  We don't eat automobiles.  We don't eat
newspapers, though we often have trouble "swallowing" what they tell us.
We can't eat the other gadgets produced by industry today.  We may love
them but we can't eat them.  Moreover we eat, or hope to eat, three times
a day.  No other industry, no other occupation, not even the medical
profession is burdened with such a responsibility for human welfare, yet
agriculturalists are without a code of ethics.  Even with an ethical
tradition, medical people are no more exempt than agriculturalists from
agonizing moral doubts about the new possibilities offered by
biotechnology.  Nonetheless, doctors have a code and are expected to be
ethical.  Farmers are expected to make money, or give up.

      Let me make my personal viewpoint crystal clear.  As a retired
farmer, and an activist in farm, and broader rural movements since the
early 1930's, I believe our society, and the earth itself, is in an
advanced state of crisis in which modern industrial agriculture is
implicated.  I have no faith in shallow solutions and simplistic
remedies.  I believe with Charlene Spretnok that "efforts to radically
transform all institutions in an (ailing) society must necessarily fall
short.  Only if the powerful dynamics and historical tenacity of core
values are understood, can the depth of the transformative task be
embraced." (2)  A code identifies core values.

                        ETHICS AT THE END OF AN ERA

      Ethics (3) is a branch of philosophy that has to do with values and
moral behaviour while metaphysics is another branch which deals with
questions of being, meaning, and truth.  Both must come into play in
searching for a code.  We know, of course, values and agreements about
what is the true significance of being change with bewildering frequency
at the end of an epoch in human history.  The very words that represented
unassailable veracity in my childhood are used sparingly today because
there is so little agreement about their meaning.  I refer to words like
progress, efficiency, rural, farmer, honesty, God, and sin.

      As a child and youth, I was given a very precise understanding
about such words.  For instance, my grandfather cautioned me against the
sin of whistling on Sunday.  When I asked "But can't I whistle a hymn?"
he replied, "No, for there would be the temptation to slip into a merry
tune."  How I wish I had his certainties when I address my grandchildren.
How I wish I had so little to warn them against.  Much has changed since
I was a 10 year old, but we still have good and evil, though defined
differently.  Grandfather may have been right in suggesting whistling
"Nearer My God To Thee" was not the best approach to the ineffable
presence of the Creator, but the lesson that there was sin and temptation
made its indelible imprint.  His strictures did not instruct me to resist
the temptation to commit monoculture thirty years later.  Nevertheless,
he did teach me to observe closely the way things grew or failed to grow
in his own small well-fenced fields.  But his influence, and that of my
devout father did not equip me to appreciate that the runoff from my farm
had anything to do with the health of the whales in the Gulf of St.
Lawrence.

      What was wrong with grandfather's ethics was its limited
understanding of nature.  He did not take into account the universe in
which his small farm and small village were grounded.  His piety, though
sincere, was restricted.  It was closed to questions raised by George
Santayana "Why should we not", he asks, "look on the universe with piety?
Is it not our substance?  Are we made of other clay?"  (4)  Our piety and
our moral values excluded mother nature.  We believed we stood outside of
nature and could ignore its laws.  We did not recognize our kinship with
the biosphere (an unheard of word).  We totally misread the scriptural
promise that we were to have dominion over all living things.  Our
theology gave us permission to treat land and out produce as commodities
whose value changed constantly, items to be bought and sold.  Looking
back at his attitudes and my own behaviour as a practical farmer, we
still inhabited a pre-Galileo world.  It all revolved around us and
victimized us, not just the weather about which we constantly complained,
but the social order and markets over which we and as it appeared God,
had no control.

      Ethics and metaphysics always intersect.  Our values will always
reflect our view of the cosmos and our sense of our place in it.  For
instance, when Galileo was put on trial for his views that the earth was
not flat, not the centre of the universe, truth and meaning were at
stake.  His ethics or morals appeared to be on trial in the courts of the
church, when actually the issue was a metaphysical one:  the truth about
the nature of nature, the truth about the nature of mankind, and
ultimately, the nature of God.  It must have appeared to the bystander
observing that medieval court, that the church was trying Galileo.  Today
it appears that Galileo was trying the church, and by implication,
medieval civilization.  It was an episode during a great upheaval in
human history not unlike the present turmoil, then science was beginning
to separate itself from religion, then the state began to separate itself
from the church.  Then morals or ethics began to be separated from
business, politics, and eventually science.  Then morality began to be
separated from everyday life. (5)  These separations are widely
recognized as a cause of the fragmentation of family and community life.
It has reduced transactions for food to the snake pit we have witnessed
on TV of the Chicago Commodities Exchange where the inmates are fighting
over soybeans and sow bellies.  Hammering out a moral code in an immoral
society will not be easy.  It entails searching out core values and
separating them from the shallow conventions that tend to dominate the
market place and everyday life.  As in the Hippocratic oath, we must
search for principles that will endure, ethical guidelines that will help
us restore balance and harmony in our biosphere.

      In my lifetime, I have seen a modern industrial state plan and
execute the holocaust; I have seen the universities produce the theories
and the engineering expertise that led to the destruction of Hiroshima.
I have seen big business and science providing farmers with the means of
degrading the environment and of producing food in torrential quantities,
some of it of questionable quality.  In contrast to the holocaust and
Hiroshima, great explosions of evil, there are creeping disasters like
the depletion of the ozone layer, which sneak up on us, it would seem
without warning.  These latter day environmental risks in which we as
agriculturalists have been involved in, at times as perpetrators, and
times as victims, are morally challenging.  (6)  What is disturbing in
looking at these man-made disasters is the complexity of the chain of
events leading up to them.  Behind them all lie countless individual
transactions, in university labs, in the boardrooms of corporations, on
individual farms, my own included.  These transactions were doubtlessly
performed by men and women without any evil intention.  Most of them were
simply doing what they were told.  Most of them asked no questions about
the consequences of their work.  Most of them had mortgages, payrolls and
personal agendas to think about.  Most of them would be judged by others
and themselves as morally upright citizens of the world.  Many of them,
no doubt, had a code of ethics, either personal or professional, yet evil
effects are upon us, those already visible today, and those predicted and
feared for tomorrow.

      It is sobering to realize that both types of disaster were
conceived, managed and sold to the public by the highly educated and
privileged, not by those of limited education and small influence.
Admittedly, in our society, ordinary citizens need not be helpless and
silent bystanders in contrast to totalitarian ones.  By doing nothing, in
a sense, we agree to policies history will condemn, even though our
consent is undoubtedly manipulated, and information we need on which to
judge is systematically withheld.  Even so, most of us could ask
questions and protest but we choose to remain silent.  Innocence or
ignorance is no excuse for complicity.  The Nurenberg trials established
that conclusion.

      As a consequence of these musings, I have chosen, in addressing the
theme of this conference, to emphasize the morality of individual
behaviour in everyday life.  In doing so I am not ignoring the presence
of structural evil built into law, custom and institution.  I am
suggesting that it is not impossible to take a stand in our society when
we can see in brutalizing tyrannies elsewhere that there are individuals
who choose not to perform an evil act, or not to be co-opted into
behaviour that will have evil consequences.  Ours is a time, apparently
the end of an era, when there is little consensus about public or even
personal morality.  We have no alternative but to make our own choices
and to seek like-minded others.  In fact, there are moral and political
implications in everything we do.  When I urge the framing of a code of
ethics for agriculturalists it is to help us face the consequences of
what we do, and don't do.  I am aware that the children of Israel were
given the 10 commandments and the Mosiac law while they wandered in the
wilderness between slavery and a land of promise.  For them too, it was
the end of an era that required a new code.  Some admonitions were
addressed to the Israelites as a whole, elsewhere the law read "Thou
shalt not."

      It appears that when Galileo was facing his learned tormentors on
such esoteric subjects as the shape of the earth, practical-minded
navigators were sailing further and further away without falling over the
edge into oblivion.  Every day experience moved ahead of establishment
theology and its concept of the cosmos.  Today, conventional wisdom
opines there is no alternative to the present globalization of the food
industry even when it is evident the whole system would collapse if all
the environmental costs were factored into the price.  In the face of
present peril, it is reassuring to know that there are thousands of
farmers and gardeners searching out new methods of producing food without
much encouragement from business, science or government.

      As each one of us struggles through our own collective and personal
wilderness, I believe we have to accept an unyielding truth; that we
cannot mess with nature without setting off a series of unpredictable
dislocations.  It is like lifting one marble out of a saucerful.  They
all shift as a result.  When I committed monoculture on my farm in the
Ottawa Valley I ignored this truth, as did my neighbours, the salesmen,
and the agronomists, who assured me it was the efficient thing to do.
Efficiency is another word calling for redefinition if we are to
understand the crisis in agriculture.  All of the above share
responsibility for what I did, but ultimately I made the decision to
conform.  I began to question conventional wisdom when I noticed that the
farm next to mine with a large dairy herd and a system of crop rotation
had corn that looked better and yielded more than mine where I was
practising continuous cropping.

                    OBSTACLES TO THE FINDING OF A CODE

      In searching for an ethical framework for agriculture I have
encountered a series of discouraging road blocks.

      The first problem is the lack of an existing code of ethics upon
which to build.  There is, of course, a legal structure that applies to
adulteration of food stuffs, cruelty to animals, respect for property of
others, and so on.  But these are restraining orders not moral
guidelines.  It is significant that only now agrologists are attempting
to spell out professional principles.  I see this happening in the
efforts of the Ontario Institute of Agronomists to develop standards for
a profession which calls for high technical competence and personal
behaviour in which honesty and integrity are manifest.  However, agronomy
is still an unregulated profession.  In contrast to law, engineering,
medicine, and dentistry, there is no licence required to practice, no
powers to withdraw licensing, or to impose discipline, and no
requirements for periodic re-examination.  In the literature of the
institute which I have seen "client" is not defined. (7)  For some
agronomists engaged in research, the client is an abstraction, in
reality, the agency providing funds for research.  For civil servants, as
I learned, the minister and the party in power is the client.  For other
agronomists, the client is the farmer, in which case it is difficult to
see how the farmer and the agronomist can subscribe to the same code of
ethics.  Ultimately, one would hope the consumer would be recognized as
the client.

      The second problem is to decide for whom such a code is designed.
Agriculture is a broadly based activity.  The food assembly line has many
twists and turns from farm gate to consumers' plate.  Obviously, a code
of ethics should apply to everyone involved in the process.  The more
complex the system, the more links forged into the food chain.  Each of
the many players will demand protection of their interests.  These
interests are often in conflict, especially where farmers produce under
contract.  In a film shown recently on CBC's Country Calendar, we saw a
totally integrated poultry meat operation controlled by one corporation,
I noticed there was no place in it for independent farmers, not I would
suggest, an ethical justification for the way it operates.  The birds
were so tightly packed, that the wire, or whatever they were standing on,
was invisible to the camera.  Their feed must be laced with antibiotics
in order to control infection.  If I were a farmer producing under
contract with that corporation, I would not want to share an ethical
responsibility for what is offered to the consumer.

      The third problem arises from the ethical chaos that prevails in
the world today.  A moral code does not spring easily out of a manifestly
immoral culture in which greed and immediate gratification are dominant
themes. (8)  We must recognize the absence of morality in the presiding
idealogy that informs and justifies commercial relations and scientific
investigation.  We live in effect, in a culture of individualistic
anarchy that provides very few constraints on scientific investigation,
or engineering innovation.  Every problem is a Mount Everest to be
conquered simply because it is there, to hell with the consequences.
Organized religion has a limited voice as it had in Nazi Germany, South
Africa, and Reagan's America.  Too often it speaks on both sides of its
prophetic mouth.  It is difficult to generalize on the roll of the church
in times of social upheaval.  Each denomination and sect responds
differently, and within each there is subtle, and occasionally noisy
debate in the upper echelons of the organization and among its scholars.
As new doctrinal positions evolve in response to new circumstances,
individual adherents and local congregations are often confused and
marginalized.  At such times, the pastors trying to lead their flocks are
exposed to anomalous, even dangerously exposed positions.  There is no
need to go to Latin America to observe conflicts surrounding liberation
theology. The same drama is played out in a subdued way, typical of
Canada, in every rural parish.  If ethics is the province of the
churches, we have a right to ask for leadership on issues of social
justice and protection of the biosphere.  One can only applaud when such
initiatives occur.  One can demand much more (as one does from the
agricultural establishment) while recognizing the double bind of
upholding tradition and of expressing a prophetic vision at the end of an
era.

      The fourth issue concerns the possibility of farmers developing
their own code of ethics.

      At first I resected the notion of a separate code for farmers since
so many other occupations were involved in the production of food.  This
is still a valid objection, but if we decide to settle for a code limited
to primary producers, there is an additional problem.  It springs from
the differences among farmers themselves.  The most obvious is between
small scale organic farmers, many of whom do their own marketing, and
large-scale specialized farmers who are locked into agribusiness
relationships.  An interesting case in point is the refusal of the Dairy
Farmers of Canada to oppose the use of the b ST hormone on dairy cows.
This is only one of many issues created by biotechnology which raised
ethical questions that cry out for open debate. (9)  It also illustrates
the separation of milk producers from other farmers, most of whom buy
their milk as other consumers do.  There is a similar split between grain
growers and those who buy grain to finish beef and hogs.  There are many
other wrenching problems.  There is the case of tobacco farmers, the
switch from growing a lucrative crop which is a known killer to a less
profitable one is not easily taken.  In my own case the termination of a
profitable program of continuous cropping of corn took time and ingenuity
even when I understood the negative consequences to my land, and the
river that ran along my southern border.  Perhaps an ethical code might
have helped me resist the temptation to practice monoculture.  To say
"no" would have been easier if the agronomists, machinery companies, and
my neighbours had subscribed to the same code.  Yes, we need an ethical
code for agriculturalists, but it will take time.

                             IT WILL TAKE TIME

      After examining my original goal of insisting on a code for
everyone involved in the present food industry, I am forced to the
conclusion that the fashioning of a universal code for agriculturalists
of all kinds is impossible at the present time with the food system as it
is now constituted.  It is not only because the gap is so wide between
the few power figures who exercise increasing control over commerce in
food and the many powerless who work on the land and on the assembly
lines of food processing and distribution.  It is not only because the
very concept of a code implies separate codes for the numberless fields
of specialization, it will take time because the food industry operates
without an informing and controlling ideology in a society that lacks a
high ethical framework.  We cannot forge a universal ethical code for
agriculture because the food industry as it is now constituted functions
on what appears to be an immoral foundation.  How can an ethical code be
hammered out so long as the food industry is integrated into a globalized
world economy which is marked by starvation, violence, homelessness, and
mounting numbers of poor?  For convincing evidence, we need only point to
the exploitation of scarce and unrenewable resources, the extinction of
native species, the denial of folk wisdom based on the uniqueness of
locale and place, and the withering of rural community life.

      I will not be impressed with the brave talk about sustainable
communities, and sustainable agriculture until the destructiveness and
injustices perpetrated by a global economy are repudiated and rectified.
The distance between the frantic bidding on the futures of soybeans and
sow bellies and the joy and fellowship of a Thanksgiving dinner is too
great to be bridged by cosmetic changes in the food industry.  As yet,
there are not enough Galileos defying conventional wisdom.  There are
increasing numbers of farmers and gardeners who are experimenting with
new trends, or rediscovering very old ones.  But progress has been
hampered because the agricultural establishment has been so reluctant to
encourage their efforts, and so niggardly in putting its enormous
resources to work on new directions for agriculture.  There is movement
in that direction, but change is far too slow.  There is also
insufficient pressure coming from our client, the consumer.  There is
some demand for improved, even guaranteed standards, but alas, too many
are satisfied with a Coke and Big Mac.

      As I go back to my original purpose of devising an ethical code for
all those engaged in the food chain I can only perceive obstacles of such
magnitude that I cannot see us arriving at a consensus on basic
principles for such a code, even for farmers, much less for all the other
players in the food industry as it now operates. On the other hand, the
obstacles that I do perceive simply reinforce the urgency of working on
the task which this  conference is tackling.  It is none too soon.  I
will go so far as to suggest that if we cannot find a way to agree on a
moral order that would govern the behaviour of those engaged in producing
and distributing food, then the system itself is condemned.  It does not
deserve to survive.  In fact, it will not survive for I believe the
ecosphere, our earthly home, is doomed it we do not change soon. (10)

      I close with a note of pessimism, but let me quote from Kenneth
Hare, a middle of the road scholar and scientist who has been asked to
assess realistically the seriousness of the environmental crisis.  "My
best bet", he says, "is to prepare for a greenhouse future.  I have tried
to be objective about the uncertainties in the environmental sciences,
and I have tried to address the legitimate concerns of business and
government.  But, I must make clear that my own anxieties about this
question arise from a different set of personal attitudes.  I am a
naturalist.  I care deeply for the welfare of the planet, not because it
is our home, but because it is what it is: the marvellous, beautiful, and
staggering end-product of millennia - of eras - of natural and biological
evolution.  I have a strong bias in favour of protective action because
of this desire to bring to an end what some have called, "the rape of the
earth".  I hope that the actions we now take will serve, not only to
enrich our own futures, but to let the planet go about its own
dispassionate but superb business." (11)

                                   NOTES

(1)   Hippocrates 460-380 BC. It states: In purity and holiness I will
      guard my life and my art upon which I swear by Apollo and all the
      gods and goddesses.  I will guard my patients from harm and
      injustices, respect their confidentiality, maintain a healthy diet,
      and in house visits there will be no mischief.  There is also
      recognition of special obligation to my teachers.

(2)   A special edition of the Jesuit journal COMPASS, September 1993
      carries articles by Charles Taylor, Peter Timmermon and David
      Cayley on "Ethics and Ecology".

(3)   E. John Widderley has written extensively on the application of
      ethics to agriculture.  In an unpublished paper he states ethics
      "is concerned with the value systems that make up the practical
      moral philosophy underlying conduct deemed acceptable to society,
      and for many people going beyond in setting standards acceptable to
      God".  See also his "Agricultural Ethics: The Neglected Dimension?"
      AGRICULTURAL PROGRESS 66:76-79.  See also back issues THE JOURNAL
      OF AGRICULTURAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS, published at the
      University of Guelph

(4)   From George Santayana's REASON IN RELIGION quoted in Charlene
      Spretnak, STATES OF GRACE: THE RECOVERY OF MEANING IN THE
      POSTMODERN WORLD, Harper/Collins 1991, p.109

(5)   This dualism is the focus of a mounting critique of modern and
      postmodern life.  There is a vast literature.  I will cite only my
      recent reading in addition to Spretnak and COMPASS there is: Rupert
      Sheldrake, THE REBIRTH OF NATURE: THE GREENING OF SCIENCE AND OF
      GOD, Bantam 1991, and John Ralson Saul, VOLTAIRE'S BASTARDS: THE
      DICTATORSHIP OF REASON IN THE WEST, Penguin, 1992

(6)   For a carefully documented analysis of the food system see Anthony
      Winston, THE INTIMATE COMMODITY: Food and the Development of the
      Agro-Industrial Complex in Canada, Garamond Press, 1992 and
      Brewster Kneen's monthly newsletter Ram's Horn, and his TRADING UP:
      How Cargill, the World's Largest Grain Company is Changing Canadian
      Agriculture, NC Press, 1990

(7)   The president of the Ontario Institute of Agrologists made
      available to me a kit on ethics and professionalism still in draft.
      See also James White "The Goal of Professionalism", AGRISCIENCE,
      October 1992.  In the writing, I have seen the identification of
      "client" is a stumbling block, yet the protection of the client is
      the object of the ethical code for physicians and other occupations
      aspiring to professional status.  A code also implies the risk of
      malpractice suits from which a professional organization is
      expected to provide some protection.  This is an added reason why
      farmers should not be the only ones with a code.

(8)   See section on Ecological Postmodernism in Spretnak p. 19-22

(9)   Brewster Kneen has presented the case against the b ST hormone in
      several issues of RAM'S HORN but there seems to have been avoidance
      of presenting the case for it.  According to a report in Quebec's
      Farmers' Advocate Dec. 1993, the president of Quebec's powerful UPA
      (Union des producteurs agricoles) refused to take a position
      stating in effect it is out of our hands, it's up to the government
      to decide.  At other times, the UPA has not been shy to tell the
      government what to do.  In the same article, Tim Finkle of the
      Dairy Farmers of Canada expressed a fear that there could be a
      negative consumer reaction adding trustfully "If Health and Welfare
      Canada say it's safe, then it is safe."  The dairies that have no
      trouble offering the consumer milk with several types of butterfat
      content is opposed to labelling milk from herds treated with the
      hormone.

(10)  I can think of no issue more troubling to agriculture than tobacco.
      In a recent article in the New Yorker (September 1993), Stan Sesser
      notes the tobacco companies have responded to declining sales in
      North America by promoting their product elsewhere.  He describes
      Marlborough's sales campaign in China.  He estimates that a 2%
      increase in cigarette sales in that country would result in the
      unnecessary early death of two million Chinese from cigarette
      related disorders.  This is three times the number of Americans
      killed in wars in this century.  This count does not include those
      who will die needlessly in the rest of Asia and Africa.  Surely,
      this is a species of foreign aid the third world could do without.
      While tobacco is, one hopes, the most lethal product of
      agriculture, others may have negative consequences not yet
      appreciated by society, nor by agriculturalists involved in their
      production.

(11)  F. Kenneth Hare, "Environmental Uncertainty: Science and the
      Greenhouse Effect" from the ENVIRONMENTAL IMPERATIVE, G. Bruce
      Doern, Editor, C.D. Howe Institute, 1990

XXXOOOXXXOOOXXXOOOXXXOOOXXX                   XXXOOOXXXOOOXXXOOOXXXOOOXXX
Sam Coghlan                            Harrington, Oxford County, Ontario
Home:  R.R. #3, Embro, Ontario, Canada  N0J 1J0            (519) 475-4097
Work:                              Chief Librarian, Oxford County Library
                                              93 Graham Street, Woodstock
                                                 Ontario, Canada  N4S 6J8
                              Voice: (519) 421-1700   Fax: (519) 537-3024~Z