Why, if GMOs are a problem, have seed companies committed so much to them?
The availability of technology that effectively allows one to search all of life, rather than only within the same species, for genes that can then be moved into microorganisms, plants and animals opens up such a staggering range of possibilities that many companies concluded that not to invest in using this technology would mean failure to compete against those companies who did so. The promise of rapid payoffs from such investments did not materialize as hoped, and a number of venture capital firms formed in the 1980’s to try to exploit these technologies failed, in large part because it proved more difficult than expected to move genes and to make them work when and where needed. And, some of the changes that people expected to be able to make easily proved to be impossible to make, and some targets for GM were poorly chosen. While the wait for a return on investment was longer than expected, Bt corn and herbicide-resistant GM crops in the mid-1990’s were accepted eagerly by produce
