It has been a Dickens of a time lately for agricultural biotechnology: the best and the worst of times and also in between. Many recent events, announcements and reports, whose overall import and eventual impact are being interpreted differently, suggest that sharp differences of opinion on the future of this technology are still far from settled.

Some events are clearly positive for the agbiotech industry. For example, on May 21, the Canadian Supreme Court sided with Monsanto of St. Louis, Missouri in its patent infringement lawsuit against canola farmer Percy Schmeiser. Four days earlier, the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations released a report, “The State of Food and Agriculture 2003–04,” lauding the potential of agbiotech but also asserting that “many crops and traits of interest to the poor are being neglected.”

“I certainly think it's an optimistic time,” says Val Giddings, who is the Biotechnology Industry Organization's (BIO) vice president for food and agriculture. For example, he says, “The FAO report is huge...and is nothing but positive, even though some say that it criticizes industry for not focusing enough on developing countries, [which] is the responsibility of governments and foundations.”

Whether the current war of rhetoric between agbiotech proponents and opponents will be quelled soon seems doubtful, however. Calling the FAO report a “public relations exercise to support the biotechnology industry,” the members of a Barcelona-based international coalition of grassroots organizations and agbiotech critics are blasting FAO for “breaching its commitment to consult” with them and similar groups, and they also are calling the report a “stab in the back to the farmers and the rural poor.”

Similarly, critics are unhappy with the Canadian Supreme Court ruling that Schmeiser infringed Monsanto patents that protect the company's genetically modified (GM) canola seeds. For example, Kristin Dawkins, vice president at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy in Minneapolis, calls that ruling “a major setback for farmers in Canada” and says that such “legal liability issues are another reason why this technology has not benefited farmers, and instead has been designed to benefit biotech seed companies.”

However, in this case as well as in a similar US case involving Mississippi farmer Homan McFarling, who bought Roundup Ready soybean seeds but later planted seeds from GM crops that he harvested and saved, Monsanto's attempts to obtain damage assessments were rejected by the Canadian Supreme Court and by a federal appeals court on April 9, respectively.

Whether the current war of rhetoric between agbiotech proponents and opponents will be quelled soon is doubtful, however

Critics further complain that agbiotech brings few direct benefits to consumers and also continues to be regulated largely in secrecy. For example, although the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) reports receiving 16 new applications for “biopharming” permits in the past 12 months, virtually every detail about them “is shielded from public view,” says Greg Jaffe of the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington, which released a report on this subject June 2. “It is unnecessarily risky to use crops like corn or rice without a much stronger and more transparent regulatory system,” he adds.

To be sure, USDA Secretary Ann Veneman announced last January a comprehensive review of its biotech regulatory procedures, a review that Giddings and his colleagues at BIO say is sure to improve transparency. And a panel of the World Trade Organization was expected in June to begin reviewing US, Canadian and Argentinean claims that European countries are unfairly delaying reviews of would-be imports of agbiotech products.

Such reviews may be necessary to stem the trend of large agbiotech firms canceling product development because of public resistance. On May 10, Monsanto announced it was deferring plans for marketing GM herbicide-tolerant wheat in the United States and Canada “until such time that other wheat biotechnology traits are introduced.” Instead, the company will “realign” agbiotech research “to accelerate the development of new and improved traits in corn, cotton, and oilseeds” ( Nat. Biotechnol. 22, 645, 2004 ). On May 19, Basel-based Syngenta announced its decision not to market its GM sweet corn, despite being authorized by the European Commission to begin selling but not yet growing that product (see p. 795). Similarly, at the end of March, Bayer CropScience, in Monheim, Germany, announced that it was giving up attempts to commercialize its GM maize in Britain as a forage crop despite obtaining conditional approval, citing “constraints” and “undefined timelines.”

But Giddings maintains the agricultural sector of the biotech industry is sound and is “continuing to grow...with no retrenchment, but a sharper focus on areas that are likely to deliver. In looking at the numbers that cross my desk, there are no trends in the wrong direction.”