From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@www.aeiveos.com)
Date: Mon Aug 23 1999 - 10:56:45 MDT
On Mon, 23 Aug 1999, Brian D Williams provided
a comment on the genetic engineering of rice to provide
both vitamin A and iron.
This goes back to some degree to the "nutriceuticals"
that I had to run through at the Extro4 conference.
People will find engineered crops *much* more acceptable
if you tell them they are *better* for *them* instead
of being *better* for the farmers (with insect resistance).
I'll be interested to see what happens if they engineer
say something like cabbage to take out the toxins
that are "theoretically" carcinogenic. Then you
market the engineered cabbage as *less* toxic than
natural cabbage (with data from some scientific
studies proving it to be the case). I'll lay odds
that the "naturalists" will still be unimpressed.
All of the crops I've seen so far have either been
for the benefit of the farmer (Bt-enhanced crops),
the consumer's pocketbook (i.e. the Calgene
tomato & indirectly the Bt-enhanced crops) and
perhaps the seed producer (by engineering
in ways to make the crop sterile, so you have
to by more seed from the seed producer).
It is interesting that if public labs get into
the business of producing engineered enhancements
in non-sterile seeds, then industry would be forced
to follow suit. For many years industry didn't want
to do genetically engineered crops because they
couldn't figure out how to make them sterile.
It interesting that this is a case where government
"competition" could force technology development
in industry.
Robert
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