17) This house believes that the pursuit of biotechnology is only going to harm the

environment

Agriculture of any type - subsistence, organic or intensive - affects the environment, so it is

natural to expect that the use of new genetic techniques in agriculture will also affect the
environment.

Biotechnology is simply defined as the development of products by using a biological process.

Production may be carried out by using intact organisms of bacteria, fungi and other microbes, or
by using natural substances created by the organisms, such as enzymes.

How does biotechnology harm the environment ?

1) Health and environmental concerns in conventional plant breeding

Prior to the advent of genetic engineering, plant breeding was not subject to a great deal of
regulation. Seed certification standards ensure the purity and quality of seeds, but little attention
has been paid to the possible food safety or environmental impacts of new plant varieties derived
from conventional breeding.

Conventional plant breeding differs considerably from natural selection. Natural selection creates
resilient biological systems; it ensures the development of an organism that contains properties
that adapt it to a variety of environmental conditions and ensure continuation of the species.
Artificial selection and conventional plant breeding break down precisely these resilient systems,
thereby creating gene combinations that would rarely survive in nature.

Conventional breeding has been responsible for a few cases of negative effects on human health.
In one case a potato cultivar was found to contain excessive levels of naturally occurring toxins,
and in another case a celery cultivar conventionally bred for high insect resistance caused a skin
rash if harvested by hand without protection.

2) Environmental biotechnology - the bad side

Environmental biotechnology could also imply that one try to harness biological process for
commercial uses and exploitation.

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from 1.1 (below)

But the counter argument would be that whether these newly introduced microorganisms would
create an imbalance in the environment concerned.The mutual harmony in which the organisms
in that particular environment existed may have to face alteration and we should be extremely
careful so as to not disturb the mutual relationships already existing in the environment to which
we are introducing the newly discovered and cloned microorganisms. Analysis of both the
benefits and the disadvantages would pave way for an improvised version of environmental
biotechnology. After all it is the environment that we strive to protect.

3) It is hard to prove that substances from biotechnology, when released to the

environment, does not bring harmful effects.

There is a dilemma with biotechnology concerning on-going research. What takes place on a
small scale under controlled laboratory conditions is completely different than what occurs in a
large scale "real world" situation. An example is in cheese manufacturing where thousands of
pounds are made at one time with microbes added prior to aging. It would be very difficult to
make a one pound batch with the same characteristics as a large batch because of the
transformations caused by the microbes and enzymes. With new biotechnology, large projects
generally outperform smaller test projects.

4) May cause trait effects on non-target species

Some transgenic traits - such as the pesticidal toxins expressed by Bt genes - may affect non-
target species as well as the crop pests they are intended to control (ICSU). Scientists agree that
this could happen but they disagree about how likely it is (ICSU, GM Science Review Panel). The
monarch butterfly controversy demonstrated that it is difficult to extrapolate from laboratory
studies to field conditions.

(monarch butterfly controversy)

The second most widely grown transgenic crop in the United States are maize (Zea mays)
cultivars that have been engineered to express genes for various insecticidal protein endotoxins
(Bt toxins) from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis. The principal target species for Bt toxin-
expressing maize (Bt maize) is the European corn borer (Ostrinia nubilalis), one of the most
damaging pests of maize in North America. Losses attributable to European corn borer damage
exceed over $1 billion annually in the United States alone. Bt toxins are widely believed to be
selectively toxic, only affecting those insects (e.g. lepidopteran larvae) that have a gut alkaline
enough to activate the Bt protoxin by enzymatic proteolysis. Receptor binding by the C-terminal
domain of the active toxin is the major determinant of host specificity by the different Bt toxins.

Given the growing agricultural importance of Bt maize as well as Bt cotton (Gossypium hirsutum)
and Bt potato (Solanum tuberosum), it is not surprising that a storm of controversy arose
following the publication in Nature of a preliminary study by Losey et al. (1999). This paper raised
serious concerns about the ecological safety of Bt maize cultivation to non-target lepidopterans,
in particular the larvae of monarch butterfly (Danaus plexipus). On the basis of laboratory assays,
the authors concluded that monarch larvae reared on milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) leaves
dusted with pollen from Bt maize ate less, grew more slowly, and suffered higher mortality
than those reared on leaves dusted with nontransformed maize or on leaves without
pollen.

5) Indirect environmental effects

Transgenic crops may have indirect environmental effects as a result of changing agricultural or
environmental practices associated with the new varieties. These indirect effects may be
beneficial or harmful depending on the nature of the changes involved (ICSU, GM Science
Review Panel). Scientists agree that the use of conventional agricultural pesticides and
herbicides has damaged habitats for farmland birds, wild plants and insects and has seriously
reduced their numbers

Biotechnology does not cause harm to the environment.

1) The harmful effects of biotechnology(namely plant-breeding) are close to nil in most
cases

Similarly, the potential impacts of conventionally bred crops on the environment or on farmers'
traditional varieties generally have not given rise to regulatory controls, although some of the
concerns associated with genetically transformed crops are equally applicable to conventional
crops. Most of the world's major food crops are not native to their major production zones; rather,
they originated in a few distinct “centres of origin” and were transferred to new production areas
through migration and trade. Highly domesticated plants are grown all over the world and
migration outside cultivated areas has only rarely caused a serious problem. Even when grown in
their centre of origin, as with potatoes in South America or maize in Mexico, hybrids between
cultivated and wild species have not been permanently established. There are several reports of
gene flow between cultivated plants and their wild relatives but in general this has not been
considered a problem.

2) Environmental biotechnology - the good side

Environmental biotechnology is when biotechnology is applied to and used to study the natural
environment

The International Society for Environmental Biotechnology defines environmental biotechnology

as "the development, use and regulation of biological systems for remediation of contaminated
environments (land, air, water), and for environment-friendly processes (green manufacturing
technologies and sustainable development)".

Environmental biotechnology can simply be described as "the optimal use of nature, in the form of
plants, animals, bacteria, fungi and algae, to produce renewable energy, food and nutrients in a
synergistic integrated cycle of profit making processes where the waste of each process becomes
the feedstock for another process".

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1.1 Consider an environment in which pollution of a particular type is maximum. Let us consider
the effluents of a starch industry (aka Sago industry) which has mixed up with a local water body
like a lake or pond. We find huge deposits of starch which are not so easily taken up for
degradation by micro-organisms except for a few exemptions. We isolate a few micro-organisms
from the polluted site and scan for any significant changes in their genome like mutations or
evolutions. The modified genes are then identified. This is done because, the isolate would have
adapted itself to degrade/utilize the starch better than other microbes of the same genus. Thus,
the resultant genes are cloned onto industrially significant micro-organisms and are used for more
economically significant processess like in pharmaceutical industry, fermentations...etc.

Similar situations can be elucitated like in the case of oil spills in the oceans which require
cleanup, microbes isolated from oil rich environments like oil wells, oil transfer pipelines...etc have
been found having the potential to degrade oil or use it as an energy source. Thus they serve as
a remedy to oil spills.

Still another elucidation would be in the case of microbes isolated from pesticide rich soils These
would be capable of utilizing the pesticides as energy source and hence when mixed along with
bio-fertilizers, would serve as excellent insurance against increased pesticide-toxicity levels in
agricultural platform.

3) Biotechnology can be used to save the environment

The use of new biotechnology for cleaning up major environmental concerns may be in its
infancy, but practical applications are underway. Many problems associated with water, air, and
soil contaminants can be fixed with new biotechnology. Modern biotechnology is currently being
used in soils for growing better crops, in wastewater for eliminating odors and meeting regulatory
requirements, in toxic waste clean-up and many other areas.

Historically, industry has had difficulty dealing with wastewater problems. Sewage treatment
plants around the world have included the use of native microbes that exist in their conventional
treatment systems. By using biotechnology, the treatment process can be optimized with the
proper strains of selected microbes. These microbes are more efficient at eating the waste,
which causes high Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) in the water. Special nutrients enable
the microbes to reproduce and thrive in the system. The treatment plant becomes more efficient
without incurring the major expense of building larger facilities. The waste is more completely
broken down for safer discharge, the BOD is decreased, and the corresponding odors are
significantly reduced or eliminated.

The world faces many environmental challenges that can be effectively resolved using
biotechnology. The focus on handling these challenges should be to treat the waste on-site and
avoid transferring the problem to a landfill or municipal sewer system. Modern biotechnology can
meet these challenges. This safe method of resolving complex problems is rapidly emerging as
the most cost effective solution available.