Let Them Eat Precaution: How Politics Is Undermining the Genetic Revolution in Agriculture

Biotechnology has brought visible and profound benefits to consumers and farmers for more than a decade. It has helped to reduce malnutrition dramatically and to double life spans in parts of the developing world. Yet, for all its achievements and promise, this technology is mired in a rancorous, trade and cultural war between Europe and the United States inflamed by a politicized media. As a result, the technology remains dramatically underutilized, with tragic consequences for millions of starving people in Africa and other poverty-stricken regions. Let Them Eat Precaution provides background and offers solutions to the current impasse. Authors address the risk and rewards of genetic modification (GM); the differing dialogues on genetic manipulation in Europe and the developing world in contrast to the United States; the debate's impact on new product development; and how to foster more constructive discussion of the costs and benefits of GM--taking into acount political, social, moral, and economic as well as scientific issues--to bring about more rational and internationally coordinated public policy. The next generation of genetically modified foods offer many more benefits--such as higher nutritional content--than current GM products, but potentially more risk and certainly more controversy. The manufacture of transgenic and cloned animals and the likelihood that they will become part of our food supply raise moral, ethical and cultural questions that science cannot resolve and that neither industry nor government can ignore. Crops modified to produce pharmaceutical and industrial substances create the possibility that GM organisms will turn up in breakfast cereal, pasta, oils,and sweeteners. Does this new technology pose genuine health or environmental risks?

The often-confrontational debate over the development of agricultural and pharmaceutical products made with the help of genetic modification has drastically limited the exploitation of this still new technology. This book focuses on the risk and rewards of genetic modification, the differing paths the dialogue on GM has followed in Europe and the developing world in contrast to the United States, how the debate impacts the commercial realities of companies developing new products, and what strategies might foster more constructive discussion over the costs and benefits of genetic manipulation to bring about more rational and internationally coordinated public policy.

This book brings together experts from a variety of perspectives on bioengineered food, which holds the promise of radically reducing hunger in the third world but which is mired in political controversy.