Biotech article, from the times (london) tomorrow
<<THE biotechnology industry has never seen anything like it. More than 10,000 scientists, company executives and regional development officials converged on Boston this week for BIO 2000, the annual state-of-the-sector gathering organised by the American industry's trade association.
Attendance numbers were almost double those of 1999, one indicator of the extent of the sector's revival. Twelve months ago scores of companies were grimly contemplating running out of money in the face of widespread investor apathy. Yet today more biotech drugs are being approved, more companies are profitable and more money is being made than ever before.
Luminaries such as Senator Ted Kennedy and Christopher Reeve, the wheelchair-bound actor, turned up to urge the industry to redouble its efforts to find and develop more "miracle drugs". Seeking to capture the mood, the biotechnology industry organisation was even running television commercials with the tagline "biotechnology - a big word means hope".
For all that, BIO 2000, which ends today, has not been quite the party it looked set to be. The joint Blair/Clinton statement urging free access to genetic information has pricked the genomic's bubble, cutting the valuations of some leading biotech companies by almost two thirds.
Moreover, there was a distinct nervousness about those outside the convention hall who were protesting against genetically modified food. The main protest parade on Sunday was a typically good-natured New England affair - young people dressed as cloned sheep and in other genetically modified costumes, acting out strange tableaux in the spring sunshine. Nonetheless, 2,500 protesters were a reminder that, for some people, biotechnology is a word that means not hope, but fear.
America's farmers and food companies are fearful too - fearful that the media "hysteria" that has driven GM food from the shelves of European supermarkets is about to take hold of American consumers.
In Europe, the GM issue attracted a storm of hostility despite the early stage of field trials and the limited availability of GM products. In the US, GM soya and corn is already deeply embedded in the American systems of agriculture and food processing. Sue Harlander, vice-president for biotechnology development and agricultural research at Pillsbury, said that 32 per cent of the corn and 60 per cent of the soya beans grown in the US last year was biotech-enhanced.
The loss of European markets that have rejected GM crops could have a devastating effect on American farmers. Tom Vilsack, the Governor of Iowa, said that even the loss of a small percentage of the export market "can make the difference between being on the farm and not being on the farm".
Harlander estimates that nearly all of the processed food sold in the US contains some traces of GM ingredients, because of the versatility of both corn and soya beans in providing oils and other derivatives used in a wide range of foodstuffs. "The food industry has a huge vested interest," she says. "If consumers do not accept the products, we have to deal with the consequences."
Gerber, Heinz and Frito Lay have already taken a stance against GM ingredients. Harlander believes that if several companies of the stature of Unilever or Nestl‚ were to reject GM ingredients "the entire industry will follow suit".
At conference sessions, the advocates of agricultural biotechnology put their case in hurt and bewildered tones, clearly at a loss to understand the opposition that GM food has encountered in Britain and Europe. Surely everyone can see the benefits of soya beans that require the use of less pesticides? Surely they can see the potential for GM crops that offer improved yields, better nutrition or protection against disease? With its potential impact on world hunger, Governor Vilsack suggested that agricultural biotechnology "may be one of the greatest humanitarian efforts we have seen for quite some time".
Val Giddings, BIO's vice-president for food and agriculture, was one of many to insist that the food derived from GM crops "had been subjected to more scrutiny in depth and detail than any other food ever introduced". The constant refrain is that scientists need to take up cudgels to combat the criticism of GM and "genetic pollution" put forward by the media-savvy Greenpeace and the rest of the anti-GM lobby. American consumers are nervous of GM foods but, according to polls, most are ill-informed and still persuadeable.
The belief is that if American consumers are given accurate and balanced information, they can be trusted to take the "right" decision on biotech foods. However, the food companies are fiercely resisting attempts to introduce compulsory labelling of foods containing GM ingredients.
Gene Grabowski, of the Grocery Manufacturers of America, argues that labelling is simply playing into the hands of the critics. Labelling any foodstuff as a GM product would be tantamount to posting a health warning. Of course, for those concerned with the longer-term consequences of genetic modification, that is precisely the point.
The industry is stymied even over the terms of debate. Harlander said: "We need to avoid words like 'genetically modified', 'genetically altered', 'genetically engineered' - in fact genetically anything." Even if scientists use these terms neutrally they set off alarm bells for consumers.
The battle for the minds of European consumers is already lost. The Americans partly blame cultural differences. Problems such as the British experience with BSE and the French scandal over HIV-infected blood have tarnished the credibility of regulators.
The backlash against GM foods threatens the introduction of much more valuable biotech crops that really could have an impact on world hunger and malnutrition. One shocking example concerned a strain of rice, developed by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology to provide vitamin A, a lack of which causes learning difficulties and blindness in tens of millions of children in the Third World.
Incredibly, a leading British supermarket is discouraging a number of countries from adopting the rice - on the ground that it will not take rice from a country that grows transgenic rice, for fear of GM contamination. So poor children living in the developing world could go blind so that well-fed Westerners can reassure themselves that they are not putting themselves and their environment at risk of genetic poisoning.>>
the-times.co.uk |
