Being an SB researcher and part of a group that funds/accelerates companies like the one that produces the "artificial" vanilla, I am most certainly biased. I just have to say that Synthetic Biology is here to stay and has the potential to be an almost immeasurable force for good.
That said with every new technology there are ethical, environmental and safety issues to consider. And contrary to ETC/FoE those discussions are happening and are taken pretty seriously. And while I'm sure ETC and Friends of Earth have the best intention, fear mongering tactics like calling things frankenilla,etc are not scientific or effective means of discourse and will just result in people that matter not taking serious any real issues you present.
Rather than helping someone stop a technology that they don't understand, it'd be a much greater thing if SudoRoom helped a group used a technology to do good.
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Synthetic biology vanillin poses several human health
Vanillin or any compound produced via synthetic biology is the same as the "natural" compound. That's the exciting thing about the technology. You no longer need hectares of fertile land to grow agro crops. You can produce the compound you want minus all the biomass waste. You also can cut the shipping expenses(and pollution) by growing it onsite.
environmental and economic concerns for consumers, food companies and other stakeholders.
More resource efficient food that uses less arable land,water, fertilizer, pesticides or fuel seems like a good thing for all parties including the environment.
Synthetic Biology vanillin could speed rainforest destruction and could harm sustainable farmers and poor communities across the world.
Natural vanilla farmers protect intact rainforests by growing the high valued vanilla orchids which depend on these tropical forests. If the demand for synbio vanilla reaches an industrial scale, it could lead to rainforest destruction in two ways.
This might be their only quasi-viable point. But it's not an issue with synthetic biology. It's an economic one, every time there's an advancement in technology. See the evil car manufacturers putting poor horse ranchers out of business.
First, synbio vanilla will masquerade as “natural” and could displace the demand for the natural vanilla market. Without the natural vanilla market adding economic value to the rainforest in these regions, these last standing rainforests will not be protected from competing agricultural markets such as soy, palm oil, and sugar.
If you have the technology to produce Vanillin in yeast why are you going to grow crops to get Soy or Palm oil or Sugar (or even lumber)? You're not. So yes, this might put vanilla orchid farmers out of work, but that always happens when introducing new technologies. And people adapt. Also see Costa Rica and Ecotourism as a better alternative to protecting the rain forest without dinging the local economies.
In addition, the demand for sugar needed to feed the yeast engineered for synthetic biology could result in clear cutting tropical forests in Latin America, Africa and South East Asia for more sugar cane production. These problems will be exacerbated as this and other synthetic biology applications using yeast scale up to meet increasing demand and replace current production of natural and artificial flavors and fragrances, including vanilla.
No, just no. It's almost like these people don't actually know what is going on in synthetic biology. You can produce sugar using bacteria, using only CO2 + Light to produce sugar [
www.techtransfer.harvard.edu/technologies/tech.php?case=3763]. Which would eliminate the need for sugar cane not just as a feed stock for other synthetic biology processes but also for meeting sugar demand. {as an added environmental bonus where do you find a high concentration of CO2, you guessed it fossil fuel burning power plants}