Evidently the GE landscape is a bit more diverse than it once seemed!

Big Biotech companies dont just release random genes onto the market – the technology has to be proven effective, proven in multiple current germplasms, and proven safe before release. This is another reason why small companies struggle to release commercially viable biotech products – the scale of trials required to prove efficacy of a product is frankly mind boggling (multi-year, multi-location) and without massive resources not exactly easy to do – another reason why small companies (and even big companies) collaborate on getting genes to market (BASF and Monsanto collaborate to take advantage of Monsanto’s capacity to test on a massive scale combined with the increased knowledge base from both companies for example)

On the impact on consumption, health and environment – all of these are debatable – consumption? Yes, I guess you are essentially ‘forced’ to consume the GE products, but whether this is meaningful or not is up in the air. Health? No evidence of adverse health effects – and the potential for improving health (vistive III soybeans as an example of a soon to be released product(recent submission for regulatory approval in the US)) is certainly there. Environment? Again debatable whether this is positive, negative, or neutral environmentally – all the data so far suggests decreases in environmental impact from the 2 big commercial GE products out there (Insect Resistance and Herbicide Tolerance) combined with the lower land requirement for similar output which preserves as yet unused land (there was an interesting article in science recently which suggested that biodiversity per unit yield in a set geographic area was infact increased if farming was done under intensive conditions with little within field biodiversity due to the massive reduction in biodiversity caused by even low impact farming – the difference being the smaller geographic footprint required for the same yield from the intensive ag) – also going forward water efficient and nitrogen efficient crops offer reduced environmental impacts.

These impacts you are bringing up need to be defined to be discussed properly – are they based on any evidence or are they just pulled from the general feel that big business has been bad in the past, and GE crops are evil?

Concern for me is not that GE plants and animals exist and that these companies are making a buck, but it’s the fact that they exist and we consume them without knowing about it. You name these large corporations that we have to trust because their GMO products are automatically assumed to be safe and there is little independent testing going on to confirm that. And a million dollars to get new GE plant approval is nothing compared to a drug trial that would cost several hundred times that and yet these plants have not only impact on our consumption and health, but they seem to come with a price for environment too.

Finally, it’s not the universities or small companies that lobby the hardest against any regulation or labeling and it’s not the small companies that hide the most behind patents and trademark protections of their business practices.

You being a researcher in the field, I wonder what your take is on this.

Crops With Attitude

Poor nations are now starting to shake off the old ‘Frankenfood’ taboo.

Pannar, an African seed company

There’s also Exelixis. I didn’t even realize they had a plant division. http://www.exelixis.com/discovery_agriculture.shtml

Arcadia Biosciences, referred to here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ethicalman/2009/03/is_the_green_movement_part_of_the_problem.html

Protalix is an Israeli company (I’m starting to hear a lot about Israeli biotech, actually…) they make a human protein in carrot cultures that treats Gaucher disease. http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/ticker/article.aspx?Feed=AP&Date=20091015&ID=10494825&Symbol=PLX

ArborGen LLC makes that blight resistant chestnut tree I discussed in the forum http://www.prweb.com/releases/American_Chestnut/UGA_Research/prweb2629434.htm

In the case of Mendel Biotechnology, I believe they are licensing their soybean yield trait to Monsanto, who may be footing the bill for the testing.

It makes you wonder if the regulations are there to keep the big corps in power…? They certainly help keep the smaller ones from getting involved.