Agricultural Biotechnology

Agricultural biotechnology has been a topic of considerable social and environmental controversy since it was first pursued by researchers and later adopted by industrial agriculture. The term usually refers to living agricultural inputs, such as seeds that use genetic engineering, though some institutions define it much more broadly. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, biotechnology means the application of science and technology to living organisms and their parts, products, and models thereof and to alter materials for the production of knowledge, goods, and services. Such a broad definition applied to food and agriculture can describe everything from beer brewing and bread baking to all of plant breeding since the start of sedentary civilization. The international Convention on Biological Diversity defines biotechnology in similar terms in its biosafety protocol and revenue-sharing agreements for genetic resources. The use of broader meanings normalizes genetic engineering techniques and lumps them together with traditional and conventional plant breeding.

The first pronouncements of the promise of agricultural biotechnology in the early 20th century suggested that bioreactors could produce single-cell proteins that could feed the poor. Similarly, today agricultural biotechnology proponents cite the promise of genetic engineering solutions to mitigate hunger, chemical pollution, fertilizer use, and soil erosion. The use of genetic engineering techniques allows scientists to move and manipulate an organism's DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), which gives them an unprecedented range of novel genetic combinations. The rapid adoption of genetically engineered corn, soy, canola, and cotton on over 100 million hectares by 2008 has led some to call this seed technology the most rapidly adopted in history. These seeds predominantly (>99.9%) exhibit the traits of either insect resistance (using genes from Bacillus thuringiensis, Bt) or herbicide tolerance, though many other kinds of crop traits are in development.

The first product of agricultural biotechnology to receive considerable public attention was the deliberate release of the “ice minus” bacterium developed by a University of California biologist. The concern with this genetically engineered organism (GEO) aroused local legal reactions in the California Bay Area cities of San Francisco, Berkeley, and Oakland. The project was to spray potatoes in Northern California with an “ice-nu-cleation-active” bacterium in order to inhibit the formation of frost on the plants. The National Institute of Health's Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee eventually approved these field tests. But the activist Jeremy Rifkin, of the Foundation on Economic Trends, obtained a court injunction to stop the release, arguing that the experiment posed an environmental hazard and that there were no adequate containment protocols in place. The fallout from the controversy led to a new round of discussions about how GEOs should be regulated, ultimately leading to a decision by the U.S. Congress in 1985 to regulate them through [Page 34]the existing regulatory system. Under what is known as the “Coordinated Framework,” the U.S. Food and Drug Administration evaluates food safety concerns, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency oversees concerns about toxicity from mobile plant tissues such as pollen and root exudates, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service oversees problems related to increased weediness and biological invasion. Many activists and ecologists simply saw the Coordinated Framework as an effort to manage GEO introduction instead of regulating it.

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