This article is continuing: “How Food Became a Casualty of Biotechnology’s Promise”

Biotechnology’s promise began to pay out in 1978, a landmark year for the industry. Genentech announced that it had, for the first time in history, manufactured a human protein outside of the human body. The company had successfully managed to coax insulin from an E. coli bacterium by splicing human genetic instructions into its
intracellular workings.
Today there are over 30 protein-based medicines on the market and an additional 371 in the research and development phase. Every one of these new drugs has been made possible by advances in recombinant DNA processes and techniques. The only problem for the industry is that using single cells to produce biotech drugs, also known as biologics, is a complicated and time-consuming process. These hybrid cells must be fermented or cultured in enormous 10,000 liter “bioreactor” stainless steel tanks. This presents difficulties for the smooth circulation of capital through the production process. A biotech production facility can cost upwards of $400 million and take three to five years to complete. In addition, the genetically engineered cells will only produce the target proteins if precise conditions are maintained. If the temperature, oxygen, acidity, or other variables in the bioreactor are not stable, the culture will fail. And finally, certain compounds are too complex to be manufactured using single cells. The complications of biologics have pushed the pharmaceutical industry to pursue the promise of biotechnology in the figure of “pharming”. Pharming, a coined term combining “farming” and “pharmaceutical,” is the practice whereby genetic material from a foreign species is inserted into a plant or animal with the express intent of extracting novel pharmaceutical products from the resulting tissues, fluids, and organs. From 1991 to 2004 over 300 field sites encompassing hundreds of acres of land30 and an unknown number of animals, estimated to be in
the thousands, were pharmed. The pharmaceutical conglomerates are investing in pharming because they anticipate that products that they cannot physically or affordably engineer mechanically may become feasible when the task is delegated to genetically engineered plants and animals. For example, Mich Hein, the president of Epicyte, claims that his company’s plant-based production technology can make the same annual quantity of drugs with 200 acres of corn and a few million dollars in expenses that a $400 million factory can produce using a mammalian cell-based system. Pharming is the ultimate pursuit for those companies performing research and development in the field of agricultural biotechnology. Billions of dollars have been invested in agricultural biotechnology, not to ensure more food or more nutritious food for the hungry, but to sell longer lives to the wealthy. Because as Robert Fraley, the executive vice president and chief technology officer at Monsanto, observes: There’s a limit to the genes that simply help farmers grow the same old commodities . . . They’re limited by the value of those crops. But think of genes that actually make the harvest more valuable! What if plants could be engineered to produce new products: oils, nutrients, or even pharmaceuticals for which consumers would pay high prices?

Soon, a few animals in a laboratory will be more valuable then all the livestock in all the coops, pens, and stockyards of the world. Think genetically engineered pigs incubating human hearts. In fact, flocks of sheep with partially human hearts, livers, and brains are already a reality on a farm operated by the University of Nevada just miles outside Reno.
Ancient alchemists dreamed of transmuting base metals into gold, discovering a universal cure for disease, and indefinitely prolonging life. Biotechnologists have inherited this dream, promising to convert soil and sunlight into the building blocks of human life. Disturbingly, our food has become a casualty of this promise. Seventy percent of the groceries on US supermarket shelves now contain GE ingredients not because GE seeds are higher yielding or bear more nutritious crops then their conventional counterparts (under many growing conditions GE crops actually exhibit yield drag and are less nutritious). Our food contains GE ingredients because single-trait genetic manipulations of corn and soybean plants are the foundations from which more significant interventions in human genetics are being launched.

Extracted from “How Food Became a Casualty of Biotechnology’s Promise“, by By Michael Heimbinder, Fellow, Oakland Institute.
This article continues in: “Propping up the Biotech Market“

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