Fighting Mother Nature with Biotechnology - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 443

the safest and most nutritious ever. Most pathogens and vermin are almost eradi-
cated, the nutritional quality of today's produce is at least equivalent to traditional
or heritage varieties, and increased quantities mean nutritional consumption is
enhanced.
Modern Technologies to Sustain Humans
We humans will likely continue this approach, using both traditional and modern tech-
nologies, including genetic engineering (GE or rDNA technologies) to further push
back the time of human demise to perhaps long enough for clever humans to devise a
true long-term sustainable solution.
Genetic engineering arose in the early 1970s and generated considerable anxiety,
even among the scientific community developing the application of the technology.
The Asilomar conference of 1975 was a gathering called by scientists themselves,
who publicized the potential risks in applying GE (Berg et al. 1975). The meeting
and subsequent discussions led to a code of conduct and regulatory scheme to over-
see GE research and researchers. In the USA, applications of GE to agriculture came
under the watchful eye of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
(OSTP) coordinating the regulatory offices of the FDA, EPA, and USDA in evaluat-
ing the safety of new foods and feeds bred using GE technologies. The first govern-
ment regulated field trials in the US were conducted in 1988, with the number of
such trials, the crop species developers, and traits all expanding rapidly in the fol-
lowing years.
The first GE food on the commercial market was cheese made with chymosin, pro-
duced by GE microbes. The first whole food was the now defunct FlavrSavr tomato,
from Calgene, in 1994, followed soon after by approved GE cultivars of corn, soy, cotton,
canola, papaya, squash, flax, and others.
Over the years, various groups and individuals have expressed their fears concerning
the safety of GE-derived foods. The US National Academy of Science conducted a series
of studies into the basis of the fears (see, e.g., National Academy of Science 1987, 1989,
2002, 2004, 2010) as did similar scientific authorities in other countries, such as the UK's
Royal Society (2002, 2009) and the French Academy of Sciences (ADSF 2002). In addi-
tion to these august national bodies, other professional medical and scientific bodies
undertook investigations into the charges of potential hazards associated with geneti-
cally modified organisms. In these studies by professional scientific and medical groups
such as the American Medical Association (American Medical Association Council on
Scientific Affairs 1991), the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD, 1986) and the American Dietetic Association (2006), the basic conclusions
were the same: GE is not inherently risky, and the risks associated with specific applica-
tions are the same as those risks seen with conventional technologies. Worthwhile not-
ing here is the fact that conventional technologies are not without risk. Several examples
exist where potentially hazardous crop varieties had to be recalled at various stages in