Genetically modified organisms and the age of (Un) reason? A critical examination of the rhetoric in the GMO public policy debates in Ghana

• Published in: Futures : the journal of policy, planning and futures studies planning and futures studies, 2016-10, Vol.83, p.37-49
• Main Authors: Kangmennaang, Joseph, Osei, Lydia, Armah, Frederick A., Luginaah, Isaac
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Civil society; Genetically altered foods; Genetically modified organisms; GMOs; Health risk assessment; Health risks; Human health; Idioms; Multinational corporations; Narratives; Policy; Rhetoric; Risk; Studies
• ISSN: 0016-3287; 1873-6378
• DOI: 10.1016/j.futures.2016.03.002

•The public debate on GMOs is one of the most controversial science-policy issues of the 21st century.•In sub-Saharan Africa, where food shortages and food insecurity are rife, the polar debate on the socio-economic benefits and human health risks of GMOs has been mounting in the past decade.•Increasingly, scientists, advocacy groups and civil society have coalesced around key policy issues in the debate in Ghana and several parts of the African continent in order to shift the thinking of the public on one of the most contentious environmental debates of our time.•These local advocacy coalitions are legitimised by their partnership with international forces and in their use of evidence-based narratives and rhetoric. Using narrative policy analysis we examined the adversarial rhetoric of claims-makers in their bid to undermine alternative and conflicting accounts of GMOs as environmental and human health risk and to forestall any challenges to the scientific authority of the technological deterministic account of the GMO policy debates in Ghana. The study shows that the GMO discourse was built with the rhetorical frames of smallholder farmer vulnerability and entitlement used in the account it contradicts, thereby legitimating its own appeal for responsive remedies. Civil society claims attacked GMOs as discriminatory and as an environmental and human health risk. Government and scientists engaged in unsympathetic counter rhetorical strategies in hopes of debunking or neutralizing the claim made by civil society. In other words, Government and scientists were denying the claim that GMO was discriminatory and posed significant human health risk, as well as the call to action to do something about GMOs. Civil society adapted the counter rhetoric of insincerity, claiming that scientists had some kind of “hidden agenda” behind their claim, such as eagerness to just earn money from their patents on GMOs. It is imperative that communication on GMOs includes the underlying assumptions, the uncertainties and the probabilities associated with both best and worst case scenarios. This is a necessary condition to minimise misinformation on GMOs but may be insufficient to completely erase conspiracy theories from the minds of the public especially when scientists and government are perceived to be biased towards multinational corporations that are ostensibly preoccupied with making profits.