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by Lisa Dry
Richard Hamilton is the president and chief executive officer of Malibu, Calif.-based Ceres, Inc., a biotechnology company that uses plant genomics to develop products for use by the food, feed, fiber, chemical and pharmaceutical industries. Hamilton also chairs the BIO Food and Agriculture Governing Body. Recently, BIO News had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Hamilton to get his views on the current state of agricultural biotech and where the industry may be headed.
What do you see as the biggest challenge for the agricultural biotechnology sector in the coming year?
I think the challenges are the same ones that we have been addressing for the past several years. We need to continue to ensure that we have clear, science-based regulation of agricultural biotechnology. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) continues to utilize science-based approaches to the regulation of agricultural biotechnology products as do the Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department of Agriculture. They remain firm in their resolve to not move towards non-science based or "precautionary" approaches to regulation that handicap farmers and economies in some parts of the world and prevent them from accessing the best tools available for productive crops and more nutritious foods.
We also need to push internationally for a unified intellectual property framework, so that inventors can recognize the appropriate rewards for their innovations. If the United States is to remain one of the world's top knowledge-driven economies, this type of protection is critical not only for agricultural biotechnology but for a wide range of industries, including software, telecommunications, pharmaceuticals and many others.
Lastly, we need to maintain and extend the large amount of consumer support that exists in the United States and around the globe for agricultural biotechnology products. I think a large part of why agricultural biotechnology products have more support here in the United States versus Europe is that we have a science-based regulatory process and that at the end of the day, the average U.S. consumer trusts the FDA far more than the misinformation they might get from various activist groups.
With the emergence of plant-made pharmaceuticals, are we seeing a trend towards the merger of the agricultural and pharmaceutical sectors of the industry? Isn't this also true in the industrial/environmental sector and their alliances with chemical entities? Will there be an intersection of all these interests, or will they remain discrete industries?
This was a concept that was also popular several years ago with the advent of genomics, combinatorial chemistry and high-throughput screening. The idea was that because both the agchemical and pharmaceutical industries used these technologies, companies in these areas would eventually merge to form "life science" companies. I remain skeptical of that concept. I think that while to date biotechnology has been utilized predominantly by the pharmaceutical and agricultural industries, as technology costs continue to come down we will see biotechnology be utilized by more and more industries. Perhaps some day biotechnology will be as ubiquitous as personal computing technology, which is utilized today by nearly every industry one can think of.
What positive changes in the industry have you observed during your career?
There have been so many positive changes it is difficult to list them all. Certainly the scientific and engineering innovations, polymerase chain reaction, automated sequencing, microarray expression analysis rank near the top. I think that it is also fulfilling to see the widespread acceptance and support that biotechnology has in the United States today and remember that this was not always the case. Twenty years ago there were plenty of nay sayers and doom prophets decrying all aspects of biotechnology. Remember when Cambridge, Massachusetts was going to be declared a "recombinant DNA free zone"? Time has demonstrated these detractors to have simply been wrong. In many respects a lot of what we see with regard to agricultural biotechnology in Europe today parallels the misinformation and misconceptions we had here in the U.S. 20 years ago.
What do you hope to accomplish during your tenure as chair of the Food and Ag Governing Body section?
I would like to strengthen the relationship between the Food and Ag section and the rest of BIO, particularly the pharmaceutical section. Many of the companies in the Food and Ag section also have efforts in plant-made pharmaceuticals. We have, in many respects, a common legislative and regulatory agenda and our individual strengths can contribute towards the greater good of the biotechnology industry.
Can you predict when and if consumers will see a benefit from biotech-enhanced foods in the supermarket? Whole foods, not ingredients?
Clearly consumers in the United States and many other countries around the world are already benefiting from biotech-enhanced foods, albeit indirectly via the many environmental benefits of these crops, such as decreased soil erosion, increased carbon sequestration, increased yields and others. There are several companies developing biotech-enhanced consumer products, such as oil crops with enhanced levels of healthy oils like omega-3. I would expect that these will reach the market in the next five to seven years.
If you could shape the future of ag biotechnology, what would your vision be for five years into the future?
All the farmers around the globe who have been given the opportunity to adopt genetically-enhanced crops have done so enthusiastically. I think this trend will continue, even in Europe, as the safety, environmental benefits and economic advantages of growing genetically-enhanced crops continue to be demonstrated. At the same time, I would imagine that many of the myths and misinformation regarding these products will continue to fade into irrelevance. Furthermore, I think we will see plant biotechnology being used in many non-agricultural industries, such as the chemical and pharmaceutical industries.
Lisa Dry is a BIO communications director.
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