Biotechnology Challenges

Introduction

The accumulated experience and research of previous years found expression in the second half of the 20th century, when new paradigms of scientific technology were formulated. This was technological revolution at its best (Robert, 83).

There are three main applications of food biotechnologies. First is the genetic modification of microbes, which companies use, for instance, in the production process for cheese. Second is the development of herbicide-tolerant and insect-resistant crop varieties for commercial agriculture production.

To date, commercially grown genetically engineered organisms in agriculture have been limited to a few major grain and legume crops that function as industrial inputs for the modern food system and less effort into the manipulation of animals. The first wave of crop biotechnology emphasized traits to increase the economic efficiencies of large-scale farming. The two most common traits engineered into seeds are naturally occurring insecticides and tolerance to herbicides. The second wave is poised to deliver traits desirable for consumers, such as nutritional or health benefits. The third wave will bring factories to the fields in the form of crops that produce pharmaceuticals or industrial chemicals. From one perspective, it is merely the technological improvement on conventional plant breeding. But from another vantage, it poses the threat of serious ecological and social disruption. Genetic engineering is a highly controversial practice among some producers and consumers in industrialized nations, more so in Europe and Japan than in the United States. Its proponents regard it as a panacea for the world's food and environmental problems. But its critics charge that it will maintain worrying trends in industrial agriculture.

The past few years have witnessed a sudden spur in research activities aiming to understand the development of the human body. Newer and more advanced technology has proven to be a major spur in the pace of such activities, and the new field that entails application of biological organisms to industry and medicine is called biotechnology (Mitchell, 63). This field also encompasses a whole set of procedures for altering biological organisms in accordance with the needs of the community. Over the past three decades, biotechnology has been used by the Western scientific establishment to refer to laboratory—based techniques (Lacy, 35).

Some suggest that the earliest products of biotechnology were plants domesticated through human selection. Others date the beginnings of biotechnology to Egyptian beer brewing and the use of yeast to bake bread. The work of Louis Pasteur on microbial origins of fermentation is often described as the earliest scientific work in biotechnology with significant implications for industry. The work of Pasteur led to the widespread adoption of pasteurization. In The Uses of Life, Robert Bud takes this broad definition for biotechnology to mean any technology that directs life processes toward production or product development. He bases his definition on the language commonly used to describe fermentation reactors in the early to mid 20th century.

Thus, although the new paradigms of science and its technological processes may offer promising potentials to the scientific community, they also warn us of the plausible dangers these ...