Bioliteracy, Bitter Greens, and the Bioeconomy
The success of biotechnology innovations is predicated not only on how well the technology itself works, but also on how society perceives it, as Christopher Gillespie eloquently highlights in “What Do Bitter Greens Mean to the Public?” (Issues, Winter 2024), paying particular attention to the importance of ensuring that diverse perspectives inform regulatory decisions.
To this end, the author calls on the Biden administration to establish a bioeconomy initiative coordination office (BICO) to coordinate between regulatory agencies and facilitate the collection and interpretation of public acceptance data. This would be a much-needed improvement to the current regulatory system, which is fragmented and opaque for nonexperts. For maximum efficiency, care should be taken to avoid redundancy between BICO and other proposals for interagency coordination. For example, in its interim report, the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology formulated two relevant Farm Bill proposals: the Biotechnology Oversight Coordination Act and the Agriculture Biotechnology Coordination Act.
In addition to making regulations more responsive to public values, as Gillespie urges, I believe that increasing the general public’s bioliteracy is critical. This could involve improving K–12 science education and updating it to include contemporary topics such as gene editing, as well as amending civics curriculums to better explain the modern functions of regulatory agencies. Greater bioliteracy could help the public make more informed judgments about complex topics. Its value can be seen in what befell genetic use restriction technology (GURT), commonly referred to as terminator technology. GURTs offered solutions to challenges such as the efficient production of hybrid seeds and the prevention of pollen contamination from genetically modified plants. However, activists early on seized on the intellectual property protection aspect of GURT to turn public opinion against it, resulting in a long-standing moratorium on its commercialization. More informed public discourse could have paved a path toward leveraging the technology’s benefits while avoiding potential drawbacks.
Greater bioliteracy could help the public make more informed judgments about complex topics.
Gillespie began his essay by examining how some communities and their cultural values were missing from conversations during the development of a gene-edited mustard green. The biotech company Pairwise modified the vegetable to be less bitter—but bitterness, the author notes, is a feature, not a flaw, of a food that is culturally significant to his family.
This example resonated keenly with me. I have attended a company presentation on this very same de-bittered mustard green. Like Gillespie, I do not oppose the innovation itself. Indeed, I’m excited by how rapidly gene-edited food products have made it into the market, and by the general lack of public freakout over them. But like Gillespie, I was bemused by this product, though for a different reason. According to the company representative, Pairwise’s decision to focus on de-bittering mustard greens as its first product was informed by survey data indicating that American consumers wanted more diversity of choice in their leafy greens. My immediate thought was: just step inside an Asian grocery store, and you’ll find a panoply of leafy greens, many of which are not bitter.
Genetic engineering has opened the doors to new plant varieties with a dazzling array of traits—but developing a single product still takes extensive time and money. Going forward, it would be heartening to see companies focus more on traits such as nutrition, shelf stability, and climate resilience than on reinventing things that nature (plus millennia of human agriculture) has already made.
Vivian Zhong
PhD Candidate, Stanford University
Policy Entrepreneurship Fellow, Federation of American Scientists
Christopher Gillespie notes that inclusive public engagement is needed to best advance innovation in agricultural biotechnology. As an immigrant daughter of a smallholder farmer at the receiving end of products stemming from biotechnology, I agree.
Growing up, I witnessed firsthand the challenges and opportunities that smallholder farmers face. So I am excited by the prospect that innovations in agricultural biotechnology can bring positive change for farming families like mine. At the same time, since farming practices have been passed down in my family for generations, I directly feel the importance of cultural traditions. Thus, the author’s emphasis on the importance of obtaining community input during the early development process resonates deeply.
Such public consultation, however, often gets overlooked—to common detriment. In the author’s example of gene-edited mustard greens, the company behind the innovation could have greatly benefited from a targeted stakeholder engagement process, soliciting input from the very communities whose lives would be impacted. Such a collaborative effort can not only enhance the relevance of an innovation but also address cultural concerns. I believe that many agricultural biotechnology companies are already doing public engagement, but how it is being done makes a difference.
Such a collaborative effort can not only enhance the relevance of an innovation but also address cultural concerns.
In this regard, while the participatory technology assessments methods that Gillespie describes represent an effective way to gather input from members of the public whose opinions are systemically overlooked, it is important to recognize that this approach may hold certain challenges. Companies might encounter roadblocks in getting communities to open up or welcome their innovation. This resistance could be due to historical reasons, past experiences, or a perceived lack of transparency. Public engagement programs should be created and facilitated through a decentralized approach, where a company chooses a member of a community to lead and engage in ways that resonate with the community’s values. Gillespie calls this person a “third party or external grantee.” This individual should ideally adopt the value-based communication approach of grassroots engagement, where stories are exchanged and both the company and the community connect on shared values and strategize ways forward to benefit equally from the innovation.
Another step that the author proposes—establishing a bioeconomy initiative coordination office within the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, focusing on improved public engagement—would also be a step in the right direction. But here again, it is crucial that this office adopt a value-based inclusive and decentralized approach to public engagement.
Though challenges remain, I look forward to a future filled with advancements in agricultural biotechnology and their attendant benefits in areas such as improved crop nutrition, flavor, and yield, as well as in pest control and climate resilience. And I return to my belief that fostering a transparent dialogue among innovators, regulators, and communities is key to building and maintaining the trust needed to ensure this progress for all concerned.
Modesta N. Abugu
PhD Candidate, Department of Horticultural Science
North Carolina State University
She is an AgBioFEWS Fellow of the National Science Foundation and a Global Leadership Fellow of the Alliance for Science at the Boyce Thompson Institute