This article is continuing: “Propping up the Biotech Market”

In addition to the financial advantages the agricultural sector offers the pharmaceutical conglomerates, there are ethical advantages to transforming the farm into biotechnology’s frontier. The commercialization of genetically engineered corn, cotton, and soybeans introduces the world to biotechnology, yet these products insinuate themselves into our lives largely unnoticed because they are not primarily for human consumption and are not animate in ways that normally invite anthropomorphism. Contrast society’s general acceptance of GE corn, cotton, and soybeans with GE wheat: Monsanto’s plans
to introduce Roundup Ready wheat have been repeatedly delayed as farmers continue to express concern over consumer acceptance of a product that is largely for human consumption. Consider also the reaction to GE animals: although the animal biotechnologies were “developed as early as the plant biotechnologies . . . they have taken longer to come to fruition because of greater scientific and regulatory challenges.” Transgenic pigs were developed as early as 1986 but as of this writing not a single biotech animal has been approved for commercial sale. But with corn, cotton, and soybeans, the pharmaceutical industry found a secure space within the regulatory networks of agriculture that grants them carte blanche to genetically manipulate and commercialize complex organisms. This is a crucial next step, after the microbe and the single cell, in the quest for proprietary technology platforms that will be used to develop the next generation of health care products: plant and animal derived human proteins
and human organs. Thus, a clear pattern emerges: the taxes we pay have supported the failures of biotechnology, increasing the demand for GE seeds through government supports, subsidizing their supply through public research, and helping to create a
regulatory framework in which these products might receive society’s stamp of approval. All this has been done in the name of creating a more productive agriculture. These claims are a smoke screen for the development and monopolization of proprietary biotechnology platforms, which ultimately will be deployed toward more profitable ends than making more corn.

Extracted from “How Food Became a Casualty of Biotechnology’s Promise“, by By Michael Heimbinder, Fellow, Oakland Institute.

This article continues in: “A brighter future for farming is possible“

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