"Good ideas are growing"

[Carl Remick]

These are white-knuckle times (outside China, at least) for those bent on 
commercializing genetically modified food.

The Wall Street Journal notes that the seven biggest life-sciences companies 
have just anted up $50 million for the first year of a PR campaign -- theme, 
"Good things are growing" -- to try to prevent Europe's anti-GM movement 
from taking hold in the U.S.

This is welcome news.  As a European spokesman for Greenpeace, Charles 
Margulis, is quoted as saying:  "The biotechnology industry just isn't aware 
that the more people hear about biotechnology, the more concerned people 
get."

Margulis isn't just blowing smoke.  The WSJ reports:

"The last big public-awareness effort on behalf of biotechnology was mounted 
by Monsanto in 1998 in Europe, where it backfired in spectacular fashion.

"Monsanto decided to promote biotechnology to the European public because a 
soybean plant it had genetically modified was flooding into the region's 
supermarkets.  Europe depends on American soybeans for protein, and many 
U.S. farmers had switched to Monsanto's new seeds.

"But European consumers figured that Monsanto couldn't be trusted to tell 
the truth about the safety of genetic engineering since the company had the 
most to benefit from its public acceptance.  The company's efforts ended up 
feeding resentment about the growing power of American companies in overseas 
markets."

Meanwhile, U.S. farmers' support for GM is already beginning to erode.  On 
Friday, the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture reported that the nation's farmers 
plan to plant 24% fewer acres of GM corn this year after planting 
successively more GM acreage for the previous three years.  They're also 
planning to plant less GM soybeans and cotton.

Carl
______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com