The Hoover Institute’s Henry I. Miller writes in Canada’s National Post: “Foes of agricultural biotechnology lambast it as unproven, untested, unnatural and uncontrollable, and worry that ‘rogue genes’ in the modified crop may contaminate wild (or domesticated) relatives. These fears are unfounded.”
Miller continues: “Early biotechnology — the application of biological systems to technical or industrial processes — dates back at least to 6000 BC… And genetic engineering can be dated from man’s recognition that animals and crop plants can be selected and bred to enhance desired characteristics… Putting it another way, ‘nature’ didn’t give us seedless grapes and fungus-resistant strawberries: The genius of farmers and plant breeders did. And during the past half-century, better understanding of genetics at the molecular level has added to the sophistication of the genetic improvement of all manner of organisms…
“Applications of conventional biotechnology, or genetic engineering, represent scientific, technological, commercial and humanitarian successes of monumental proportions… new gene-splicing techniques already have yielded many important new research tools and commercial products. They have only begun to change the way we do biological research and to increase the choices available to farmers, food producers, physicians, and consumers.”
