Mommy, Is Aunt Sally in the Rice Puffs?
Mommy, Is Aunt Sally In The Rice Puffs? by Don Fitz http://www.swans.com/library/art11/dfitz01.html (Swans – May 9, 2005) Would it be worse to find a finger in your chili or guzzle human DNA when you down a beer? In the recent furor over the potential for “pharmed” rice to destroy Missouri’s rice growing industry, something is being downplayed: corporations are proposing to put human DNA into plants whose neighboring cousins could end up being eaten (or drunk) by people. Ever since Ventria Bioscience announced its intentions to plant genetically engineered rice, it faced strong opposition from environmentalists and local rice farmers. “Pharming” is an experimental method of inserting human or animal genes into plants so they will become biofactories for producing pharmaceuticals. Ventria claims that its pharmed rice would produce the proteins lactoferrin and lysozyme, which would go into medicines for dehydration and diarrhea. But Friends of the Earth spokesperson Bill Freese says that
