The May 5 edition of the San Diego Union-Tribune published a commentary by ASPP member Maarten Chrispeels (University of California San Diego) on the genetic engineering of plants. The Union-Tribune has a circulation of several hundred thousand readers.

In addition to informing subscribers to the newspaper, letters to the editor are read and can be considered by editors who help develop the newspaper's own editorial opinion on a topic. For advice from a newspaper editorial page editor to ASPP members on how to get your letter to the editor published, see the ASPP homepage.

Portions of Chrispeels’ commentary follow.

Trusting Science to Help Feed the World's Billions

The greatest challenge facing humanity today is how to make food production sustainable in the face of the burgeoning human population, which is growing by 80 million people each year and is forecast to reach 9 billion within this century. Solving this problem will test our human ingenuity and our political will to the limit.…

The environmental and food-production benefits of genetically engineered crops are clear. Yet the application of these powerful new tools to feed the world's burgeoning population is being hampered by opponents of agribusiness who have frightened consumers into believing that these genetically modified crops are unnatural or may harbor hidden toxins. Last month, a National Academy of Sciences panel concluded that crops genetically engineered to produce their own pesticides are safe, just as safe as other crops. However, protests continue in Europe, Latin America and Asia, threatening U.S. food exports and raising questions among lawmakers here over whether such foods should be labeled separately from other food, which ironically may contain more chemical pesticide residues. A study just released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows that genetically engineered corn contains lower levels of cancer-causing mycotoxins, because the grain is much less damaged by insects and therefore free of the molds that produce mycotoxins.

Proponents of organic agriculture say that they would prefer that we return to the practices of yesteryear, when agriculture was sustainable. By their own calculations, this type of agriculture can only feed about 4 billion people. "Which 4 billion?" is a question that is never answered.

Organic agriculture is now practiced by hundreds of millions of resource-poor farmers in Africa, South America and Asia, and they don't see the advantages. Only the upscale consumers in developing countries, who can afford the products of organic agriculture, see it as the solution to the world food problem.

Genetic engineering is an easy target and scapegoat, because so far only biotech companies and farmers have benefited from genetic engineering. Few benefits have as yet flowed to the consumers, especially the consumers in poor countries.

Benefits for rich and poor consumers are in the pipeline. The recent announcement that vitamin A– rich "golden" rice will help cure blindness and child mortality in countries where rice is the staple is but one example.

There is little doubt that this new technology, which represents the culmination of 25 years of research in plant molecular biology and genetics, is here to stay. It is the latest development of our 10,000-year-long march that started with harvesting grasses in South China and the Fertile Crescent of the Near East. It represents a technological breakthrough in the last decades of the 20th century akin to the development of the computer. And, in concert with sustainable agricultural practices, it holds the potential to produce a new, environmentally friendly Green Revolution that can feed our planet's burgeoning population.