'Silent Springs' of Foot and Mouth Disease, GM Food, and Mad Cows
Brigitte Nerlich and Nicholas Wright
In 1962, Rachel Carson published her famous book Silent Spring (Carson 1962/2000)1 in which she examined the dangers of chemical pesticides such as DDT to plants, animals, and humans. It made people think about the environment in a way they had never done before and inaugurated the environmental movement. The book demonstrated for the first time that a new technology that seems harmless and beneficial might have serious long-term effects on the environment, on wildlife, and on human health.
Over four decades the book Silent Spring has permeated public consciousness and the image of a 'Silent Spring', which its title conjures up, has been used repeatedly as a rhetorical resource in debates about the impact of science on society and on the environment. Revisiting this work once more is timely, for parallels can be drawn with the use of language, especially metaphors, in debates around recent countryside issues, such as Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE - also known As "Mad Cow Disease"), genetically modified crops (GM) and Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD). Silent Spring highlighted for the first time the seeming complicity between government, (global) industry, and scientists, which undermined trust in these institutions - a topic still very much with us today in the debates about all these topics.
For this article we have examined the use of the book and the metaphor 'Silent Spring' in British broadsheets between 1998 and 2002 (for a more detailed analysis see Nerlich, in press2) in three types of debates: the debate about pesticides and their threats to birds and humans (where environmental and agricultural discourses intersect); the debate about GM food (where genetic, agricultural and environmental discourses intersect); and the debate about FMD (where agricultural and environmental discourses intersect).
The majority of articles are short and matter-of-fact, but some deserve a closer look in terms of the rhetoric and images used to convey a specific message. We shall therefore analyse some salient articles in more detail, one on the disappearance of songbirds, the theme that is most intimately connected with the phrase Silent Spring, one on GM crops and two on FMD.
An article published in The Observer by Nicci Gerrard in March 1999 takes as its title "The Silent Spring"3. It displays a particularly dense profusion of metaphors and images. Carson's book itself is not mentioned. However, from a reading, many readers would recognise and respond to cultural echoes emanating from the 1960s original and more recent imprints. The article begins with a description of a normal spring (at least normal in Western culture). This is evoked by phrases such as: "the dawn chorus", "sounds of birds singing", "sweet, high sounds", "web of sound, up and down the scales", "world of sound", "singing their hearts out", "din", "hoarse-voiced rooks clattering from their nests", "reassuring call of the wood pigeons", "the great chorus resolves into the less rapturous songs of daytime", "liquid sound". Not only are we submersed in sound by the descriptive writing of the author, but we are also implored to listen: "There's a greenfinch singing. Do you hear, do you hear?"
This web of sound portrayed in print by evocative imagery captures and stereotypes aspects of spring in the British countryside. This provides a stark contrast against which 'the Silent Spring' of contemporary Britain is evoked: "all that's missing is the soundtrack", "in search of a dawn chorus", "the dawn chorus is becoming muted in Britain; and it is changing its chorus line", "their voices have faded from the countryside", "it is empty and silent." Such an abrupt narrative transition is an emotive process, one of loss, sadness, despair, and regret. For we, the reader, are taken from the 'joy of spring' as nature bursts forth, immediately to a 'reality' where the web of sound has been ripped from the countryside.
This linguistic device is used by Gerrard to simultaneously inform and sensitise, almost politicise, the reader to the dramatic and scientifically verifiable fall in numbers of song-birds, as recorded for example by Krebs, Wilson, Bradbury, Siriwardena (1999), in their paper for Nature entitled "The second Silent Spring?"4. On the one hand this loss is hard to narrate, for as Gerrard says, "It is more difficult to see and hear an absence". On the other hand the metaphor of 'Silent Spring' and the network of associated but absent sounds and images actually allow the readers or listeners to do just that: they can see, hear, and feel an absence. The emotive dimension of the writing seeks to spur readers into action - to do something to restore the soundtrack of spring, to banish the silence that lies over the countryside by engaging in active protection of the environment.
Gerrard portrays absence and silence as symptomatic of changes in agriculture and food production, in particular: intensive farming, subsidies, the use of pesticides and the introduction of GM crops. These agents are guilty of nothing less than the Killing of the countryside as adjudged in the book of the same name by Graham Harvey5. Gerrard, too, deploys metaphors of death. She talks about 'a living shroud', and 'a landscape of the dead'. This portrays metaphorically what in her eyes was a literal murder.
The 'Silent Spring' metaphor can also be found in the body and title of an article published in The Times on GM foods in 19986. In it Nick Nuttall, environment correspondent, exploits yet again the auditory associations surrounding the 'Silent Spring scenario'. The article begins in the style of a sci-fi story, echoing Carson's own 'fable for tomorrow.' This began her 1962 book and depicted a neighbourhood devoid of birds, having been gripped by a mysterious avian disease. Both Gerrard and Nuttall continue this fable, seeking to warn us how fact and fiction are blurring, prophesying a bleak near future.
"It is the year 2020 and the most silent of Silent Springs, apart from the rustle of genetically engineered oil-seed rape, wheat, maize and other "designer" crops nodding in the breeze. Songbirds such as the lark, linnet, and mistle thrush, long in decline, have finally fled the English countryside because the seed-producing weeds on which they depend have been eradicated from fields and hedgerows by relentless chemical spraying made possible by biotechnology. Meanwhile, the hum of bees and other insects has also been silenced, thanks to the planting of genetically altered crops that produce insect-resistant toxins. They annihilate not only aphids and other pests but also beneficial insects on which birds and bats depend. Native wildflowers are in retreat, but "superweeds", resistant to chemical treatment, have emerged. This is the nightmare scenario surrounding genetically modified plants, echoing that of Rachel Carson's classic book about the pesticide DDT, Silent Spring."
While the debate about GM and the future of the British countryside was still raging, another threat to the countryside broke out, surprising both farmers and politicians alike. This time, it brought about not a silence of the birds and the butterflies, but a 'silence of the lambs'.
"This year is like the enactment of some apocalyptic, millennial fantasy; we have already had storms, floods, and blizzards. Agriculture is still linked to BSE, e-coli, salmonella, bovine tuberculosis and swine fever. Now there's a visitation from a virus, reappearing from a painful, long-ago memory, and burning through the ecology of commerce like wildfire."
This is how Paul Evans, the Guardian's countryside diarist, described the situation in March 2001 in his article entitled "The Silent Spring".7 A feature of the FMD virus much commented on, indeed picked up by Paul Evans, is its ability to spread rapidly. A highly contagious animal disease, it is not harmful to humans or necessarily fatal to animals, but undermines economic competitiveness, especially of a country with a previously disease-free status. Eradication was an economic imperative. The policy ready for use in such outbreaks has been sitting on the shelf since the beginning of the 20th century, that of slaughtering all infected animals8. This policy was extended in 2001 to include millions of uninfected animals - effectively creating 'firebreaks' to halt the spread of the 'wildfire' that was the epidemic. This was seen as the only way to 'win the battle' against the disease, to bring the disease under control and thus to control nature.
The war metaphors used during the FMD epidemic were quite similar to those used in the 1960s in the 'war against insects. This was the 'conflict' that deployed DDT as a weapon, which caused the environmental damage so lucidly invoked and described in Carson's Silent Spring. Now as then, scientists and policy makers, or, more often than not, the public, projecting assumptions on to these groups, tried to control nature. The 1960s saw the indiscriminate use of pesticides while 2001 witnessed the slaughter of millions of animals based on best estimates rather than precise science. In the 1960s many did not foresee the wider effects that the use of pesticides could have on the environment, on wildlife and on humans. Similarly, in 2001, the wider socio-economic and psychological impact of the slaughter policy were not foreseen. Silent Spring captured the negative emotions that underpinned popular resistance to pesticides and might yet sway popular opinion against slaughter in favour of vaccination when FMD comes round next time. In both cases, silence followed after the noise of the battle against pests or a virus had subsided. Silence was in fact a major motif in many poems written during the FMD crisis. Here is only one example of many:
Silence….
Lots of silence
No moo, no baa, no neigh.
No more sheep to round up no more.
Silence…
(Matthew Whitehouse, Age 11 from Settle Middle School9)
In a second article on FMD in 2001, "Scrubs up a treat," Paul Evans turned the metaphor of 'Silent Spring' denoting death and despair on its head10. A 'Silent Spring' was used as a symbol of hope. He argues that while FMD metaphorically and literally silenced cows, sheep, and pigs, it gave back a voice to wildlife. Ground-nesting birds, normally 'drowned out' by industrial farming and overgrazing, benefited from habitat created by the reappearance of scrub. Evans wrote:
Out of silence, a debate will emerge about what shape the future of the countryside will take. It will be motivated by competing interests and cultural, political, and economic agendas. Despite the feelings of despair surrounding the present countryside crisis, there are many options. […] It could be argued that the present countryside crisis is the opposite of Silent Spring: as agriculture suffers, wildlife flourishes. […]
While a simple contrast of powerful images makes a good story, most conservationists would acknowledge that the reality of habitat restoration and maintenance is much more complex than 'removing agriculture to let wildlife flourish.' This is evident in a number of habitats where biodiversity is dependent on continued grazing. Indeed, notice the qualification apparent in Evan's use of the word "could". As King has written previously in ECOS11, "This could be a great opportunity to restore the upland landscape with a combination of low intensity pastoralism and habitat restoration" (Emphasis added, p.23). Unfortunate though it is, no simple choice exists to allow us to choose between the 'Silent Spring' that silences the voices of wild animals and 'the Silent Spring' that silences the voices of domesticated animals. There are no simple choices between a 'war on nature' of an FMD slaughter policy or 'the peace' of a vaccination program. The use of and, as importantly, the interpretations of the metaphors 'Silent Spring' and 'war' can easily be used to frame and 'sell' policies, but we need more than metaphors to decide which policies are the right ones. While we often talk of seeking to live in 'harmony with nature', such a phrase can be deeply misleading. There is no choice between nature and culture, the natural and the artificial, or between civilisation and wilderness. We need to seek, discuss, and make explicit the trade-offs that are always part of decisions about what level and type of impacts are acceptable to the environment and to ourselves as part of the environment. In negotiating such a path, we cannot abandon science and just go 'back to nature. ' We need science to help us understand the long history of human- environment interactions as they are now and in the future and as they continually evolve. In imparting the complexities of the relationship between conservation and farming, metaphors can be an aid, but they should not be our guide.
1. Carson, R. (1962/2000) Silent Spring, Penguin, London
2. Nerlich, B. (in press) Tracking the fate of the metaphor 'Silent Spring' in British environmental discourse: Towards an evolutionary ecology of metaphor. Metaphorik.de (Special issue on 'Metaphor and Ecology')
3. Gerrard, N. (1999). "The Silent Spring." The Observer March 21.
4. Krebs, J.R., Wilson, J.D., Bradbury, R.B. and Siriwardena, G.M. (1999) The second Silent Spring? Nature 400, 611-612
5. Harvey, G. (1998) The Killing of the Countryside, Vinatge, London
6. Nuttall, N. (1998). "Silent Spring." The Times July 13, pp. 15.
7. Evans, P. (2001). "The Silent Spring: Why do we fear nature's retribution." The Guardian March 7.
8. Woods, A. (2002). Foot and Mouth Disease in 20th Century Britain: Science, Policy and the Veterinary Profession. Unpublished Doctorate of Philosophy, University of Manchester.
9. West Craven Foot and Mouth Action Group, ed. (2001) Children's Thoughts on Foot and Mouth 2001, Lamberts Print and Design, Settle
10. Evans, P. (2001). "Scrubs up a treat." Guardian April 11.
11. King, M. (2001) Any room for scrub? ECOS 22 (2), 21-24
Brigitte Nerlich directs a project looking at the social and cultural impact of foot and mouth disease, funded under the ESRC's Science in Society Programme at the Institute for the Study of Genetics, Biorisks and Society, University of Nottingham.
Nick Wright is a research associate for this project. Linda Lear - www.rachelcarson.org
