Biotechnology at the forefront of agriculture

Abstract

Without public acceptance, the applications of genetic engineering may be regulated out of existence. The long regulatory cycles will crush smaller biotechnology companies, and focus on a few large companies who have the funding and time to wait out the regulatory storm. Scientists and informed lay people must emphasize to the public that genetic engineering is engineering is a method to hybridize different organisms, to graft one or several genes from one organism to another. The plant and animal breeder has a limited number of useful traits—genes—with which to work into his crop seeds and animals. Genetic engineering offers a much larger menu of potentially useful traits and can enormously speed up the process of hybridization.