Well, at least Ed Shonsey, President of Novartis Seeds, got
this part right--, "Ignorance on the part of a group of
people, who... have imperiled the near-term future of
agricultural biotechnology"
Yup, there was an ignorant group of people that chose to
ignore input from an important group of stakeholders. The
stakeholders had legitimate concerns about the risks
of a new biotechnology (some of which (the concerns) have
since been born out) being widely dispersed in the
environment. The heads of the companies in question chose
to ignore (root of ignorant) these legitimate concerns,
tactically focusing instead on the gleam of large
short-term profits. This turned out to be a large
strategic blunder. Now, an interesting and possibly useful
technology has been tainted in the public mind due to the
haste and greed of company leaders too willing to
externalize environmental/social costs upon the rest of
society. I'm not sure the idea of "terminator technology"
improved biotech companies' corporate images, either...
The analogies of adoption of biotech with the widespread
use of pesticide technology (and the resulting
environmental side effects) should've been obvious to even
company CEO's--after all, the companies pushing biotech are
many of the same companies that manufactured and sold
synthetic pesticides--at least the parallels were obvious
to the European public...
The biotech companies have only themselves to blame for the
present cloud of distrust and suspicion which hovers over
them and their products. Rex Dufour
> Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 21:06:30 -0400
> From: Jim Weaver <jaweaver@epix.net>
> Reply-to: jaweaver@epix.net
> Organization: GCES
> To: sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu
> Subject: Check this out
> Ignorance imperils future of agriculture
>
> Farmers are in fight or flee mode; they are confused,
> scared and angry, observed Ed Shonsey, the president and
> CEO of Novartis Seeds, Thursday in an Iowa speech. "And
> you know what bothers them the most?" he asked. "It's not
> the government. Or the weather. Or even the seed
> companies. What has farmers upset -- so upset their
> eternal optimism is in serious danger of becoming
> permanent pessimism -- is ignorance. Ignorance. Ignorance
> on the part of a group of people, who, in the name of
> protecting the environment, have imperiled the near-term
> future of agricultural biotechnology." He makes an
> impassioned case for the science behind, and the
> potentially great benefits of biotechnology. Read the
> full text of his speech here:
>
>
> http://www.agriculture.com/scgi/notebook/nb.cgi?FNC=Corres
> pondents__Anb_list_html___780
>
>
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