We weren’t imagining things when we reported on Tuesday that Gregory Jaffe, the Center for Science in the Public Interest’s top biotech researcher, was urging calm and rational discussion of the benefits of genetically improved foods. In a new Christian Science Monitor opinion column, Jaffe wrote: “The first few engineered crops are already providing remarkable benefits,” but “activists have burned fields and bombed labs.
” Jaffe also points out the larger risk in letting anti-technology zealots control the debate: “US farmers may be forced to forgo the advantages of engineered crops,” he warns. “And most public and private investment in agricultural biotechnology would dry up.”
