Safe Food_ Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism - Marion Nestle [91]
These applications could increase world food production, especially given the conditions of poor climate and environmental degradation characteristic of many developing countries, and they also could improve the nutritional quality of indigenous food plants on which so many populations depend. The potential for such improvements explains why industry leaders refer to food biotechnology as “the most important scientific tool to affect the food economy in the history of mankind,” “the single most promising approach to feeding a growing world population while reducing damage to the environment,” and an innovation that will “create miracles to help us feed a hungry world efficiently and economically.”3 Such statements promise that food biotechnology will improve the food supply more effectively than conventional genetic techniques—those that involve selecting plants with desired traits, cross-pollinating them with related stock, and selecting and growing the progeny for many generations under field conditions. As this chapter explains, food biotechnologists consider such methods to be slow and imprecise and far inferior to their own.
TABLE 11. Theoretical and current applications of food biotechnology
Food Plants (for human use)
Improve flavor, texture, or freshness.
Increase levels of vitamins, protein, and other nutrients.
Increase production of chemicals such as sugars, waxes, or nutritionally important components.
Decrease levels of caffeine or other undesirable chemical substances.
Reduce saturated fatty acids in plant seed oils.
Produce drugs such as antibiotics, vaccines, or contraceptives.
Crop Plants (mainly for animal feed)
Introduce herbicide resistance to improve weed control.
Permit growth with minimal use of fertilizers, pesticides, or water.
Increase resistance to damage by insect, fungal, viral, or other microbial pests.
Increase resistance to “stress” by frost, heat, salt, or heavy metals.
Permit fixation of atmospheric nitrogen.
Increase grain content of scarce amino acids.
Food Animals (for human use)
Increase the efficiency of growth and reproduction.
Strengthen disease resistance.
Develop veterinary vaccines and diagnostic tests.
Increase milk production.
Produce milk containing pharmaceuticals.
The promise that food biotechnology will provide food for a hungry world, however, has yet to be fulfilled and is unlikely to be realized in the immediate future. Many of the applications listed in table 11 pose technical problems of formidable complexity. It is not easy to identify genes for desired traits, isolate them, insert them into plants, and provide the additional molecular components needed to make them function properly. The slow progress of biotechnology in addressing world hunger does not imply that this problem cannot be solved; given sufficient time, commitment, and funding support, the technical barriers could well be overcome.4
FIGURE 11. This political commentary, “Genetically Modified Specials,” appeared as an “op-art” opposite the editorial page of the New York Times, July 15, 2000. (© 2000 Jesse Gordon and Knickerbocker Design. Reprinted with permission.)
Technical problems, therefore, are a temporary barrier and are not the most important one. Instead, the main barrier to producing more food for the developing world is economic. Food biotechnology is a business, and businesses must generate returns on investment. In the food biotechnology business, economic aims (the reality) compete with humanitarian aims (the promises). These purposes conflict: one goal is to produce more and better food for an increasing population, but another is to produce foods with a competitive advantage in today’s global marketplace—particularly “value-added” foods processed in ways that generate benefits for consumers and higher profits for manufacturers.5 Although genetically modified foods might well be expected to meet both goals,