Practice 1　　If chief executives of leading U. S. agri-biotech companies have been suffering from heartburn lately, it isn’t because of anything they’ve been eating. Rather, it’s the unsettling knowledge that long-simmering European anxieties over genetically modified (g. m.) crops, like ocean-hopping viruses, are spreading across the world.　　Unlike Britons, whose concerns about what they eat have been on the rise ever since “mad cow disease” (even though it had nothing to do with genetic engineering), Americans have seemed indifferent to g.m. foods. If foodmakers can no longer count on the public’s unquestioning acceptance of their products, it’s not just because of activist theatrics and shrill agitprop. With billions of dollars at risk, the biotech industry has begun to fight back, forming corporate alliances and launching a major p. r. effort that includes lobbying, new research efforts to still public fears and TV, radio and newspaper ads. So far, the regulators have approved dozens of genetically modified plants for human consumption. But if public pressure grows, it may be forced to go slower in the future. One possibility: the FDA could begin applying to g.m. foods the powers it already has to regulate food additives. By overreacting to fears fanned by well-fed consumers in the industrialized world, food producers might uproot an industry that could someday provide billions of people in the rest of the world with crops they desperately need.

发布日期：2022-07-17

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