ublic on synbio as the "foundation for the future of sustainable food." The group publicized the meeting and asked to attend. The industry initially demurred but ultimately invited FOE to send a representative.
Dana Perls, FOE's food and technology campaigner, accepted the invite and filed this report of the event. She writes:
Topics not discussed included risks to the environment; potential impacts on hundreds of thousands of small, low-income farmers; the lack of independent, transparent health and environmental assessments; and the lack of federal and international regulations. When I brought up these glaring omissions, my concerns were generally dismissed.
Instead, Perls reports, the meeting focused on language—the industry should avoid phrases like "synbio" (too close to "sin") and "genetic engineering," and focus instead on terms like "fermentation derived" and "nature identical.”
In a future post, I'll look at some of the concerns raised by Perls and ignored by the participants.