The England, Wales, and Northern Ireland division of Friends of the Earth (FoE EWNI) is an example of such an NGO.
they do not categorically condemn technologies such as synthetic biology but remain open to see if they could possibly produce benefits and, if so, under what conditions.
Other environmental NGOs often express a more nuanced view on new technologies, i.e. This is not to say that the ETC Group represents a view shared by all environmental NGOs. For instance, in the Ecover case discussed below, the ETC Group started a petition against the company Ecover which was signed by 17 other NGOs. Although this might be seen as only one actor, the ETC Group often represents a broad group of NGOs and thereby a widely shared societal perspective. In the cases mentioned, criticism is most clearly articulated by the ETC Group, Footnote 1 a Canadian NGO opposing specific technologies such as synthetic biotechnology (synbio). Based on the issues that are central in these cases, we arrive at five general societal themes relevant to industrial biotechnology, namely: (1) What is sustainability and how can it be measured? (2) What is natural? (3) How should risks of emerging industrial biotechnologies be managed? (4) How will industrial biotechnological trajectories develop? and (5) Who benefits from these new technologies? They point out clashes in perceptions and underlying values. These cases can be taken as indicators for the social and ethical issues that are relevant for industrial biotechnology in general. Recent controversies in industrial biotechnology are here shortly described by using three examples, namely, the production of artemisinin, vanillin and algae-based oil.
#Industrial biotechnology pdf how to#
In the last part, we provide suggestions on how to deal with these ethical and societal aspects based on the approach of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). These clashes in the public opinion bring out salient ethical and societal aspects for industrial biotechnology. In each of these themes, clashing public opinions fuel the public debate on the acceptability of new industrial biotechnology. We claim that current societal and ethical issues in industrial biotechnology centre on the following five themes: sustainability, naturalness, innovation trajectories, risk management and economic justice. We will also consider the wider societal debate on the bioeconomy as can be found in public reports, newspapers and websites. We mainly focus on the development of a bio-based economy (or bioeconomy), here understood as an effort to derive high-quality and highly sustainable products from biomass. We did not include pharmaceutical products, because that would make the chapter too wide ranging. Where relevant we will refer to this debate. We do not include a case on biofuels, because the public debate on biofuels has already been documented extensively.
We will illustrate this with some recent cases, such as the development of synthetic artemisinin (see also Schürrle, this volume), synthetic vanillin and vegetable oil produced by engineered algae. In this chapter we aim to give an overview of the main societal and ethical issues that are currently voiced around industrial biotechnology.
With industrial biotechnological applications becoming more abundant, these public concerns do increase within the broader debate on bio-based economy, sustainable development goals and climate change, but also towards specific technological issues. The societal and ethical issues which do emerge around industrial biotechnology are more broadly oriented to its role as enabling technology with its many claims on applications aimed at sustainability, such as biofuels and biochemicals. Until now industrial biotechnology has not received the same kind of public scrutiny as plant biotechnology has, especially not in relation to genetic modification. In some cases this has led to the failure of otherwise promising innovations. We show that current societal and ethical issues in industrial biotechnology centre on the following five themes: sustainability, naturalness, innovation trajectories, risk management and economic justice. We will illustrate this with some recent cases, such as the development of synthetic artemisinin, synthetic vanillin and vegetable oil produced by engineered algae.
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