Session Seven

This week we were concentrating on Agribiology, Environmental Life Sciences and Industrial Biotechnology. And it was today I found out that there are four colors to the different biotechnology sectors. I understood why green was assigned to agriculture biotechnology and blue to aquatic biotechnology. But I am wondering why industrial biotechnology was assigned white and human biotechnology red.

We went through very interesting concepts such as farmers vs. farmists, discussed organic and GM foods and the ever dominant issue of food security. What the prof said made a lot of sense, “When we are able to grow the resources we need, we will finally be on the road to sustainability”. I was shocked to find out that Singapore’s method of sustainability was to produce just to the minimum to save. But what producers might not be realizing is that they are still producing finite resources. So the little they do manage to save will run out soon. And that is not sustainability because to be sustainable you need to be able to be able to do things etc. for a long time. Thus back to prof’s point, if we are able to grow the resources that we need, we would then really be on the road to sustainability.

All the presentations today were about GM food (vegetables and meat). One presentation I found really interesting was that of Michelle’s. She did a presentation on the growth of cows through GM. Gideon mentioned that he ate at a restaurant in Japan. They had a picture of the cow, the cow had a name and even the parents were mentioned. That is related to Michelle’s discussion question about how much information is shown to the consumers. Prof mentioned how the government decides what kind of food is to be brought in the market for the country thus limiting consumer’s choices. This leads to the more specific version of the usual general question we always ask: Is it the government’s job to decide what we are eating? Will they do a good job?

I give this an 8/10 because I learnt a lot on agriculture. But the last two points are lost because of the lack of in depth discussion on Environmental Life Sciences and Industrial Biotechnology. That was something we could have discussed more.