-Caveat Lector-
Imagine the world's food crops displaced by millions and millions of
acres of plants producing PLASTIC needed by industry ...
Monsanto says can make plastic from plants
By Christopher Lyddon
LONDON, Sept 28 (Reuters) - Biotechnology giant Monsanto Co <MTC.N>, faced
with mounting European opposition to genetically modified foods, said on
Tuesday that it can produce biodegradable plastic from plants with gene
implants.
"We've been looking at producing plastic without using non-renewable
resources like oil," Monsanto's UK director of corporate affairs Tony Combes
told Reuters.
But the opponents of genetic modification remained opposed to any use of the
technology in agriculture.
"It's a public relations stunt using what is perceived as a beneficial use of
GM to repair their damaged image," said Friends of the Earth campaigner Pete
Riley.
Monsanto's Combes said the company's scientists had been working on the
technology since the early 1990s. The process involves inserting four genes
into oilseed rape or a type of cress.
"The great thing about it is that it is biodegradable," he said. "The problem
at the moment is that you don't get enough of the (plastic) polymer. It's at
least a decade away from commercialisation."
Meanwhile Monsanto would be working to gain acceptance for the technology.
"We're obviously going to use this time to talk about this with as many
interested parties as possible."
But, he said, there were no definite plans at present to move forward with
the new technique.
YEARS OF RESEARCH
Monsanto is not the first to look at plastic from agricultural crops. Zeneca
researched the area in Britain in the early 1990s, with researchers saying
then that commercially viable crops could be available in the early years of
the next century. A spokesman for Astra-Zeneca Plc <AZN.L> <AZN.ST> said that
its research had been sold on to Monsanto.
Australia's A$1 billion a year raw sugar industry is moving to follow
Brazilian researchers into a new industry producing biodegradable plastic
from sugar cane, a researcher told Reuters in August.
Australia's sugar-to-plastics plan is based on technology held by Procter &
Gamble Co <PG.N> which uses sugarcane genes to produce a plant which produces
the polymer poly(3-hydroxibutirate) (PHB).
Brazilian sugar, through the largest industry co-operative Copersucar, is
well advanced in an ambitious non-genetic project to produce PHB slightly
differently, using bacteria to convert raw sugar.
Friends of the Earth campaigner Riley remained vehemently opposed to the
commercialisation of a genetically modified crop. "There's a huge amount of
research needed before anything should be contemplated that involves letting
it out into the environment," he said.
The long term consequences of genetic modification would not be seen for 10
or 20 years and were highly unpredictable.
At least where bacteria were used they could be kept in a sealed vessel.
"They're trying to make out that what they're doing is not dangerous, but
beneficial to the planet," he said.
Riley felt society had to address its use of plastics. Monsanto's work was "a
technical fix answer to plastic in the environment." But people should not be
throwing so much plastic away in the first place. "If we're worried about
plastic we need to deal with the human end."
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