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Towards a vision and strategy for agricultural biotechnology
Modern biotechnology involves the use of complex scientific technologies and techniques, which are applied to living organisms or their products to develop new products or services. Modern biotechnology offers considerable potential for Australian agriculture, the economy and the Australian community.
Australian agricultural researchers are making extensive use of biotechnology tools and techniques and are developing new applications, which could eventually be applied in agriculture. Many biotechnology technologies, products and services already have applications in Australian agriculture, either directly or indirectly. For example, DNA technologies, often in combination with genetic markers (marker assisted breeding) are playing a significant role in plant growing and animal husbandry. Cell and tissue culture are being used in animal breeding (artificial insemination), plant breeding and in the development of animal vaccines.
Box 1 Modern biotechnology is much more than GM
Modern biotechnology uses a wide range of technologies and techniques including, but not limited to:
- Genomics
- DNA/RNA sequencing
- Cell tissue culture
- Protein profiling to identify genetic markers
- Genetic engineering (also known as recombinant DNA technology or genetic modification).
- Fermentation using bioreactors
- Gene therapy.
Many of these tools are commonly used in combination and often with the assistance of powerful computing facilities and databases (bioinformatics). Biotechnology is also increasingly being used with other technologies such as nanotechnology.
While modern biotechnology is much more than genetic modification (GM), it is clear from discussions with scientists consulted in the course of the development of this draft vision and strategy that GM technologies are one of a number of critical paths for biotechnology. It was argued that in the absence of frontier technologies, such as GM, benefits achieved may be incremental, whereas with GM benefits can be accelerated.
However, some applications remain at the cutting edge of science and research. Many are yet to be commercially introduced into the agriculture sector in Australia or elsewhere. In the case of the genetic modification (GM) of organisms, the take up in Australian agriculture has been restricted, in part, because of moratoria by some state and territory governments on the commercial release of GM crops.
It is the cutting edge/new horizon/next generation technologies and applications that are the focus of Australia’s vision and strategy for agribiotech.
A draft vision
The application of leading biotechnology applications to Australian agriculture has the potential to increase productivity, provide a wide range of new food and fibre products for domestic and overseas consumers, and improve the management of natural resources essential to primary production.
Agricultural biotechnology also has significant social benefits, such as improved health and safety on farms, improved food safety, and human wellbeing.
The challenge for this project is to encapsulate the potential benefits of increased use of biotechnology in Australian agriculture into one or two memorable sentences. A number of possible vision statements are presented below:
- Biotechnology: advancing agriculture, improving natural resources and enhancing Australia’s wellbeing.
- Providing benefits to all Australians through optimising the contribution of the next generations of biotechnologies to Australian agriculture and downstream markets.
- Contributing to solving the big problems: climate change, reducing agriculture’s evironmental footprint, fuel and energy scarcity, meeting the demand of consumers (improving health and wellbeing), improving animal welfare.
- Contributing to increasing Australia’s competitiveness and well being, and through this Australia’s welfare.
The strategy
It is essential to achieve an appropriate balance between:
- consumer confidence that the technology is being responsibly and ethically applied, and
- ensuring that the regulatory burden does not overly constrain investment.
To achieve this balance, the following strategic imperatives have been identified:
1. A national path to market for biotechnology products and services will be needed, where the intended use might be sensitive:
− The introduction of GM crops to Australia has demonstrated the need for much earlier development of the path to market for new botechnology innovations.
… Animal industries need to act now to develop a path to market for cloning, GM, and a wide range of other technologies being applied to animal production.
2. Building consumer knowledge of biotechnology science and its application (including its risks and potential benefits) and building consumer confidence in biotechnology regulation:
− To do this a national forum will be needed as soon as possible, to identify key consumer and public concerns, and to facilitate stronger and earlier connection between industry, scientists, all Australian Governments and the public.
3. Refocus the current regulation of GM from an input-based process to an outputs-based process, to ensure consistency across emerging biotechnologies and to reduce regulation burden and compliance costs:
− Australia should consider the adoption of an output-based regulation system, where all products are assessed for human health and safety issues on the same basis, irrespective of the processes used to produce them:
… The current approach to input-based “GM regulation” is unlikely to be sustainable. It needs to be reviewed to accommodate the wide range of next wave biotechnology innovations, other than GM, which could arise over the next decade.
… The current GM regulatory system needs to be streamlined and have compliance costs reduced.
… There is an urgent need to make GM regulation less burdensome, with a better alignment of risk and market failure considerations, which should be consistently applied.
4. Australia must be engaged closely in international biotechnology science and research (part of the bioeconomy), to maximise the inflow of new agricultural biotechnology techniques, products and services:
− Public investment in agricultural biotechnology needs to be sufficient to ensure that Australia has a seat at the table in global biotechnology science and innovation.
− Basic agricultural biotechnology capacity also needs to be at a sufficient level to ensure that innovations identified as prospective successes in other industries or countries are adapted for Australian conditions as rapidly as possible.
− Agricultural biotechnology is converging with other sectors and other technologies, particularly information and communication technology (ICT). This is because advances in agricultural science and biotechnology are increasingly knowledge and information intensive. They rely on ICT and other technologies such as high throughput DNA sequencing, biorobotics, microarrays.
… It has been argued that biotechnology, including agricultural biotechnology, is moving from large scale biology to systems biology. Biotechnology is becoming an information science.
− Consideration should be given to widening the scope of this strategic plan to develop a bioeconomy strategy (see Box 2).
− A handful of multinational companies dominate agricultural biotechnology. They need to be encouraged to invest in Australia by:
… Ensuring they have confidence in the Australian science and innovation system, in particular IP protection and regulation.
Box 2 Agribiotech is part of an emerging bioeconomy
ACIL Tasman considers that there is considerable merit in extending the coverage of an agribiotech vision and strategy down the value chain to cover food processing, forestry, fibre and biofuels. However, it is important to recognise that there are often going to be synergies between agribiotech and other sectors using biotechnology, which could lead to significant benefits for agriculture and the wider community.
In many instances it can be difficult to draw a line between agribiotechnology and other forms of biotechnology, such as industrial biotechnology. In many instances the distinction merely relates to where the final biotechnology product is used. For example, polymerase chain reaction technologies used as diagnostics to identify animal diseases, such as Newcastle disease and foot and mouth disease, are classified as agricultural biotechnology. However, the same techniques used to identify a human disease would be classified as health biotechnology. Another example is plastics made from corn (an agricultural product) being classified as an
industrial biotechnology product.
Current international thinking (for example, at the OECD) sees biotechnology permeating throughout the economy. Because biotechnology is increasingly converging with other technologies, care should be taken to ensure that biotechnology policy, including agribiotech policy, is not developed in silos. Increasingly the focus should be moving from sectoral policy to policy for the emerging bioeconomy.
There are other areas that are of interest to the development of biotechnology in Australian agriculture that are not unique. Those likely to be dealt with in other forums, such as the review of Australia's national innovation system currently being conducted by an expert panel chaired by Dr Terry Cutler (the Cutler Review), are:
- Reducing the costs of R&D in Australia, particularly transaction costs, such as securing, negotiating and monitoring R&D agreements.
- Capacity building in science and innovation human resources.
- Collaboration across the R&D portfolio.
- Reducing excessive duplication in research effort.
Actions, responsibilities and time lines
The following actions, responsibilities and time lines are required to implement the core strategies of this paper.
04 Jul 2011