May
15
Posted under
agriculture,
Benefits of biotech crops,
biotech industry,
Biotechnology,
Blog,
Companies,
Diagnostics,
Farmer Gene,
Food And Agriculture,
Funding,
global food crisis,
Medical Devices,
Medical Supply,
Pharmaceuticals,
Plant biotechnology,
Startups,
Sustainability,
Universities,
Videos by biotechnow@bio.org (Biotechnology Industry Organization)
In recent weeks, there’s been a lot of new discussion around the biotech labeling debate. On May 10, the International Food Information Council (IFIC) released its latest “Consumer Perceptions of Food Technology” survey, which showed that very few Americans cite biotechnology as an information need on food labels.
Earlier this month, the California Right to Know initiative announced at various rallies held around the state that it had collected the prerequisite number of signatures to get its proposal on the November ballot. The initiative would require biotech foods (also known as Genetically Modified Organisms, or GMOs) and foods containing GMO ingredients to be labeled.
A number of mainstream media outlets reported on the California activity. Andrea Billups’ piece in the Washington Times and Jack Kaskey’s article for Bloomberg nicely sum up why the broader agriculture and food manufacturing community is opposed to the measure:
The California campaign is the best chance for biotech labeling in the United States after the failure of similar bills in 19 states and the rejection of a petition to the Food and Drug Administration last month.
But the California voter initiative is likely to meet fierce resistance from agricultural and business interests, who predict it will prove costly both for growers and consumers. Opponents warn the measure constitutes a “right to sue” initiative that will undercut sales of numerous food items that have been consumed safely for years.
Monsanto opposes labeling modified ingredients because the move risks “misleading consumers into thinking products are not safe when in fact they are,” said Sara Miller, a Monsanto spokeswoman.
The initiative is a “back door” way to hurt the $13.3 billion biotech crop industry, according to Richard Lobb, managing director for the Council for Biotechnology Information. The Washington-based council represents Monsanto and five other biotech-seed developers. “They basically are trying to scare consumers through labeling,” Lobb said in a telephone interview. “The obvious objective is to push biotechnology out of the market altogether.”
Biotech labeling has never been endorsed by the FDA. The agency says crops engineered to tolerate herbicides or produce insecticide pose no greater health risks than conventional foods.
The California Farm Bureau opposes the ballot initiative, along with the California Chamber of Commerce, the California Seed Association, the California Grain and Feed Association, and California Women for Agriculture.
Jamie Johansson, vice president of the California Farm Bureau and an olive farmer from Oroville, Calif., said the initiative puts an enormous burden on growers and packagers, and it prevents any processed food from being labeled as “natural.”
An apple, for example, wouldn’t require a label, but it would if it were ground into apple sauce. The same for almonds: They are fine picked raw, but ground into almond butter, even without any other ingredients, they would not pass the test under provisions of the proposed label law.
Food labels should be reserved for “critically important food safety and nutritional information,” said Brian Kennedy, a spokesman for the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which opposes the California initiative.
The California proposal would mandate a label for foods in which more than 0.5 percent of the product is a genetically modified ingredient. The proposal exempts meat, dairy foods and beer.
The label “would be the equivalent of a skull and crossbones” that would drive away customers and force food producers to stop using engineered ingredients, Joseph Mercola, the labeling initiative’s leading funder with $800,000 in donations, said. Mercola is an osteopath who promotes natural remedies at his clinic in Hoffman Estates, Illinois.
Martina Newell-McGloughlin, director of the University of California Systemwide Biotechnology Research and Education Program, called the labeling proposal “completely blown out of context.”
“To me, the issue with this as a scientist is you are focusing on the labeling of process rather than the labeling of product,” she said. “The issue for safety should be on the product itself if you are going to look at risk-assessment and whether something should be of concern to the consumer.”
“You don’t have a label on sausage telling you how they are made and you probably wouldn’t want one. For biotech products, the issues are an individual’s right to know. If you were going to ask to supply all information made on a processed crop, you’d have a whole encyclopedia attached to everything on your grocery shelf.”
Chris Shaw, a New York-based analyst, said labels identifying genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, won’t change most consumers’ buying decisions. “People who are buying Oreos aren’t going to care if there is GMO soybean oil in there,” Shaw said. “It’s going to be a marginal group of people that will care.”
That’s the consensus of consumers who participated in the IFIC survey. Seventy-six percent of respondents could not think of any additional information (other than what is already required) that they wish to see on food labels. Of the 24 percent who wanted more information, only 3 percent (or about five people and less than 1 percent of all surveyed) wanted more information about biotechnology. In addition, 87 percent of Americans say they have not taken any action out of concern about biotechnology.
IFIC President and CEO David Schmidt said the strength of the methodology used in the IFIC survey sets it apart from other surveys looking at food technology issues.
“In the public landscape, we often see polling that tries to provoke or frighten people into giving a certain desired response,” Schmidt said. “We don’t believe in leading consumers to any conclusion. We believe our open-ended methodology used at the beginning of our survey provides a more accurate view of concerns on Americans’ minds, and the survey is the most objective and long-term publicly available data set on U.S. consumer attitudes toward food and agricultural biotechnology.”
The survey, formerly the “IFIC Survey of Consumer Attitudinal Trends toward Food Biotechnology,” is part of a series that has been conducted since 1997.
Apr
12
Posted under
biotech industry,
Biotechnology Industry,
Blog,
Business and Investments,
Companies,
Diagnostics,
Funding,
history,
Life Science,
Life Sciences Foundation,
Medical Devices,
Medical Supply,
Pharmaceuticals,
Startups,
Universities,
Videos by biotechnow@bio.org (Biotechnology Industry Organization)
By the Life Sciences Foundation
“If a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation.”
- Scottish politician Andrew Fletcher (1653-1716)
Why History Matters
Biotechnologists are in the tomorrow business. They strive to innovate, invent, and make progress. They must; survival depends on it. Biotechnologists are future-oriented.
Yet, biotechnologists are also steeped in history. They swim in the past, and strive constantly to remember it. They must; survival depends on it. Biotechnologists are history-oriented.
Dubious? Consider this. In order to innovate, bench scientists must review technical literatures – histories of discoveries. In order to protect intellectual properties, patent attorneys must reconstruct and document histories of inventions. In order to secure funding, manage crises, and devise effective strategies for the success of life science companies, biotech executives must draw on business lessons, skills, reputations, and networks of relationships acquired over time. History matters crucially to these people.
In order to understand the present of the biotech industry and to plan for its future, participants are obliged to consider its past. The same is true for the general public, the press, and policymakers. People can’t make good decisions about biotechnology if they don’t know its history.
The Mission of LSF
The Life Sciences Foundation (LSF) has been established to help people understand. LSF documents, preserves, and disseminates the history of the field – it tells the biotech story. The non-profit charity is headquartered in San Francisco. Regional chapters are in formation in Boston, San Diego, and other key centers of biotech research and development.
Industry leaders have recognized the pertinence and value of the project. Founding partners in LSF’s good work include Burrill & Company, Celgene, Eli Lilly & Co., Genentech, Genzyme, Merck, Millennium, Pfizer, Quintiles, and ThermoFisher. Serving on the organization’s Executive Board are G. Steven Burrill, CEO of Burrill & Company, Joshua Boger, former Chairman and CEO of Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Dennis Gillings, Chairman and CEO of Quintiles, John Lechleiter, Chairman and CEO of Eli Lilly & Co., Henri Termeer, former Chairman and CEO of Genzyme, and Arnold Thackray, LSF President and CEO. Dr. Phillip Sharp, Institute Professor at MIT, serves as the organization’s academic advisor.
By various means (web presence, publications, archives, educational outreach programs, exhibitions, conferences, etc.), LSF seeks to raise levels of scientific and technological literacy, and to inform the public about the social, cultural, political, and economic dimensions of bioscientific progress.
The foundation’s small staff of writers, researchers, archivists, and educators has launched a highly-acclaimed, content-rich website (www.biotechhistory.org). The site features digital archives, photo and video galleries, illustrated historical timelines, articles about technologies and companies, and interviews with industry veterans. LSF is also publishing a tri-annual magazine, rescuing historical artifacts and papers, collecting oral histories from biotech pioneers, and conducting research for a major book on the origins and development of the commercial biotechnology industry – the first definitive history of the field at large.
Making History
LSF operates on the premise that history is a cultural force – but only if preserved and published. It is an asset that must be deployed. So far, the biotech industry has not made good use of it. “See for yourself,” says Arnold Thackray, LSF President and CEO, “google ‘history of biotechnology.’ The results are fragmented, uneven, and rather paltry.” Thackray also points out that “If you don’t write your own history, somebody else will do it for you, and they may be hostile.”
LSF Advisory Board co-Chair Joshua Boger echoes these sentiments: “Biotechnology is one of the most important drivers of progress in our time, but people generally don’t know us. They know little about what we do. They don’t know the stories. We’re looking at huge deficits in public understanding.”
Bits and pieces of the biotech story have surfaced, and some are captivating – The Billion Dollar Molecule by Barry Werth, a book about Boger’s company, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, is a fine example. But due to an overall paucity of popularizing accounts, the science remains imposing to lay audiences, and those who have made important contributions to the field remain mostly anonymous.
Informing the Public – the Importance of Biotechnology
LSF is trying to help biotechnology enhance its public profile. Mark Jones, the foundation’s Director of Research, believes the life sciences have been neglected: “Ask people on the street who was responsible for their iPhone or iPad. They’ll tell you. Millions rushed to bookstores to purchase the Steve Jobs biography. Jobs was a fascinating character, and Apple makes wonderful products, but life scientists are trying to save lives, feed the world, and solve our pressing energy problems. There is plenty of compelling drama in biotech. We intend to put it on exhibition.”
Jones explains that a big part of LSF’s mission is to ‘humanize’ the biosciences. LSF intends to tell tales about people – scientists, inventors, entrepreneurs, managers, executives, and financiers – the men and women who work to advance scientific knowledge, generate technological innovations, secure material prosperity, and improve lives around the world.
These stories are full of color. They take place in laboratories and clinics, universities and research parks, pharmaceutical factories and chemical refineries, boardrooms and executive suites; on Sand Hill Road, Wall Street, Capitol Hill, and at the FDA; in the corn fields of Iowa, rice paddies in Asia, and African yam gardens; in the Gulf of Mexico, where genetically engineered microbes are cleaning up an oil spill, and the world’s oceans, where vast reserves of biodiversity are being mined for valuable goods. Biotech stories are set wherever processes of life have been used to transform and enhance the human condition.
Arnold Thackray emphasizes that the message is for students, teachers, scholars, journalists, and policymakers. “There is a valuable heritage here. The life sciences will shape the course of the 21st century. We need to preserve their history. We need to teach young people about the world in which they live.”
According to Thackray, the task is urgent; biotech industry is still young, but the founding generation is already passing away: “Records are being scattered, memories are fading, stories are disappearing. Once lost, they’re gone forever.”
How You Can Help LSF to Achieve its Mission
You will enable LSF to record history and increase public understanding of science and technology by:
- Spread the word that it is time to capture the rich heritage of biotechnology;
- Contact the foundation with information on archives, historical records and ancillary publications;
- Suggest candidates for the foundation’s oral history initiative (or develop a memoir of your own);
For more information visit the Life Sciences Foundation website. To sign up for the foundation’s newsletter or to contribute archival materials or ideas, email alicia@biotechhistory.org.
BIO President and CEO Jim Greenwood talks with Arnold Thackray, President and CEO of the Life Sciences Foundation (LSF), about how the life sciences will shape the course of the 21st century.
