Onerous approval regulations and activist opposition are keeping beneficial GMO developments off the shelf, says noted fruit industry research scientist Kevin Folta of the University of Florida.
Folta wants the public to understand the costs of what he considers irrational resistance to genetic modification.
“An industry will likely be gone before the solution can be implemented,” he said during a presentation at the University of Manitoba’s Richardson Centre for Functional Foods and Nutraceuticals Oct. 23.
Folta was referring to genes that can be inserted into orange trees to make them resistant to the effects of citrus greening, which is presently ravaging Florida’s citrus fruit industries.
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Regulations that delay GM crop approvals for years and prevent many GMO innovations from going forward will hold back the development of resistant orange trees until at least 2019, he said.
He said it’s just one example of stymied crop development caused by GMO regulations and activist campaigns to stop GMO crop commercialization.
Others include:
- allergen-free peanuts
- wheat that wouldn’t provoke gluten intolerance
- disease resistant tomatoes that would allow organic farmers to eschew heavy copper use
- disease resistant grapes that would help California growers and all Florida farmers to grow the crop
- golden rice that could eliminate vitamin A deficiency in millions of children in developing nations
- disease resistant strawberries that would no longer need heavy fungicide treatments
Folta said his laboratory has developed the disease-resistant strawberries but is nowhere near commercializing the crop because of the regulatory challenges.
“We can’t even do the test,” he said about field trials.
Folta described the resistance to GMO crop development but the acceptance of mutation breeding as “the Frankenfood Paradox.”
He said growers’ inability to grow something that solves critical human problems is absurd, especially with crops like Golden Rice and allergen-free peanuts.
“It’s really an atrocity that we can’t use this kind of technology to help people,” said Folta.
“It’s (Golden Rice) been done. (Allergen-free peanuts are) done. It already exists. So why do we have kids walking around with EpiPens and people freaking out about peanut dust on Southwest Airlines?”
