TRANSGENICS IN BIOCONTROL

The year 1996 will be viewed as historic in agriculture. The first generation of crops engineered for insect resistance (corn, cotton and potato), herbicide tolerance (canola, corn, cotton, and soybeans), and virus resistance (yellow squash) became commercially available. Many additional transgenic crops, and the first transgenic microbes and arthropods, should become commercially available over the next few years.

In a previous study on public perceptions of agricultural and environmental biotechnology applications (including the commercialization of engineered crops - see that project section on our Home Page), two different subsets of issues emerged. Twenty-four issues were identified under eight categories, however, the frequency scores from scientific and public sources were different for 14 of the issues. Those appearing most frequently in public sources (popular press, newspapers, surveys) included:

Health and ethical issues with transgenic animals,
Nutrition, value, and labeling issues with transgenic foods,
Ethical considerations in creating biotechnology products,
Public safety and input into the regulatory process,
Decisions on the use and availability of biotechnology products, and
The impact of biotechnology education (e.g. TV and the press).

In contrast, those issues appearing most frequently in scientific sources (technical/regulatory) included:

Risks and environmental impacts with transgenic microbes,
Gene transfer in transgenic plants,
Safety issues with engineered foods,
Patenting and freedom of information,
Regulatory structure and risk assessment process, and
Safety and product availability in foreign countries.

The issues that appeared most frequently from public sources are represented graphically in Figure 1 where the issues from the two different sources are compared against their frequency scores. These scores, expressed as percentages, represent the number of times an issue appeared in the two types of sources.

Our Transgenics in Biocontrol Project used the same approach and methodology to identify issues from different sources that dealt primarily with the general field of biocontrol and specifically with the use and commercialization of transgenic products.

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