Changing animals for food

This lesson asks you to analyse the effect of trends in agriculture, such as genetic engineering, on food supply and production. The museum holds one resolution that defines such foods, names the aims of the modification and sets conditions for eating them; it does not measure any effect on supply, which your class's sources must do. ¹

Read the aims the resolution lists. Choose the ones that could change how much food is produced, and write down what data your class would need to see whether they do.

Read the resolution of the International Islamic Fiqh Academy slowly, and look at the aims it names and the conditions it sets. The Academy noted that the aims of modifying animals are to make the animal more resistant to disease, improve its nutritional value, speed its growth or adapt it to particular environments ². It permitted consuming these foods on conditions: the modification is done by safe methods that neither contravene the sharia nor harm health; it takes place between two animals that are lawful to eat; and the necessary information about the modified food and how it was produced is disclosed ². The first condition concerns the method, the second the animals, the third what the public is told. This is a collective resolution of an organ of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, adopted as resolution 266 at its 26th session in Doha ².

The resolution is a text issued by a collective body, so it witnesses what the Academy resolved ²; the museum records it as a historical document attributed to the body that issued it, and issues no ruling ². The record says the Academy's council considered the research and deliberations on these foods ², and it neither prints that research nor names who prepared it. The resolution names no animal, no product and no figure for production or supply. It witnesses what was permitted and on what conditions, not what the modification does to food or to markets.

Resolution 266 requires safe methods that neither contravene the sharia nor harm health, and names no body that judges them safe ². Resolution 265 requires that the whole process of cultivated meat run under a trusted specialist authority, and that it supplement animal meat rather than replace it ³. What does each text suggest about who decides, what in its wording shows this, and why does it matter to someone studying how such foods affect supply?

• Resolution 266 on genetically modified foods of animal origin: the definition, the aims and the three conditions.
• Resolution 265 on cultivated meat: its six conditions, among them that it supplements animal meat rather than replacing it.
• The fatwa on cloning plants: Jordan's General Iftaa Department's answer on plants, with its reasoning.

Read the resolution on genetically modified foods of animal origin. List its aims and its three conditions, then pick one aim and plan a short research question about its effect on supply.