Agrochemical manufacturers and related companies are focused on maintaining and increasing their grip, according to the first speaker in this video, from Humboldt University. I can accept that. The use of simply more technology is often blindly touted as the roadmap toward greater sustainability. I can accept that too. Yes, that would be tunnel vision.
That said… Below is my running commentary while I was watching this video (so I don’t always know at the time of typing where the speaker is headed, but as you can see below, Angelika Hilbeck’s approach really started to concern me at some point).
Interestingly, I registered for this event, but I couldn’t get access when it took place. I kept receiving emails asking me to provide the organizer with more information, but I had already provided that. This meeting was announced on EventBrite, after all; it was supposed to be open to the public. I attend a lot of meetings, often because I genuinely really want to attend them, but sometimes out of mere curiosity, to see what new knowledge I might acquire from it. Learning that something is not of sufficient interest to me is also valuable knowledge.
20:23 Shouldn’t these lock-ins become regulated – and in part prohibited – as was introduced for for example Windows computers in the past? Why aren’t they?
30:00 Hear hear. More of the same is not the answer. Digital technology has passed the point up to which it helped us speed things up; after that, it started to slow us down simply because of everything that became possible and then humans started to cater to it instead of the other way around.
31:30 There is greater awareness of these complications in particularly the bioethics world and also among others who look at applying technologies like CRISPR on humans.
36:00 You seem to state on the one hand that we don’t know how genome-editing works out in real life, yet then you proceed to say that CRISPR has been around for 10 years and that it is problematic that there is no CRISPR’d food at the supermarkets. That appears to be in contradiction. (You say that we shouldn’t rush this and then you seem to criticize the developments for going too slowly.) There have also been patent battles and decisions and the matter of whether countries allow CRISPR’d foods. (One solution for our exploitation of non-human animals, for example, is lab-grown meat, but some countries and states are banning that.)
In 2018, the USDA said that it was not going to regulate CRISPR’d foods. (Doesn’t that mean that we don’t know whether there are CRISPR’d foods in our supermarket basket, in the US?) https://www.wired.com/story/crisprd-food-coming-soon-to-a-supermarket-near-you/
The European Commission only tabled a proposal for a regulation for NGTs (plants, food etc) as recently as 5 July 2023. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2023/754549/EPRS_BRI(2023)754549_EN.pdf Just a quick web search gives me the impression that most of us are all still in the middle of figuring this out and thinking about how we should proceed.
37:50 Here you are quoting a stock analysis firm… https://seekingalpha.com/ I think it is important to keep in mind that in that world, all sorts of messages get spread that do not necessarily hold a lot of value. I would do my best to find at least one reputable source for the information first, if I found myself contemplating whether it might be a good idea to short – or buy – the stock. (Something similar goes for Bonitas Research at 39:33. Apparently, it’s a short-seller.)
I also find it a little odd that you seem to find it worrisome that Calyxt and Cibus decided to merge and concentrate on what they felt that they were better at. (If you are a hairdresser but then discover that you are not a great hairdresser and are much better at creating shampoos, it could be logical to focus on creating shampoos.) But… I am still listening and I still don’t quite know yet where this is going.
39:17 The phrase “Trait Machine” as used by Cibus is a red flag, in my view, but maybe this kind of language goes with the field of agriculture. At this point, I am taking a look at the transcript, scan a little bit ahead, and it appears that this may be an example of a bad company? (I’m not familiar with Cibus or Calyxt.) Such things happen. There are other examples. I didn’t follow the early developments with Elizabeth Holmes but when the fraud came to light, I was astonished that people had fallen for it, with the benefit of hindsight, admittedly. There also was the case of Nikola and its founder. These are just two examples. (But that is not quite what this was about…)
Okay, 39:33 is the point at which I have serious doubts as to whether I want to listen to the remainder. (I will, later.)
Hilbeck – of whom I had never heard before – had lost her credibility as an academic researcher by this point in the video, in my view, even though she used to be based at ETH Zürich (retired now). I can’t take her seriously any longer. I will listen to the remainder of these presentations, but only later. It is always good to see how seemingly reputable sources can lead to misinformation and even conspiracy theories. this can happen in all sorts of ways.
