Biotechnology environmental benefits

The risks of moving into biotechnology are much smaller in other chemical businesses than they are in the agrochemicals sector. Consumer acceptance is often high because of the environmental benefits, and the R D costs are lower because of the shorter replication cycles in microorganisms and fewer regulatory hurdles. 

Toward this end, computational tools are being rapidly developed to process this information and convert it into knowledge. The availability of biological information about microbes and the ability to effectively process that information to define the initial capabilities in both normal and perturbed states have tremendous potential in the chemical process industry. Industries that will greatly benefit include the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, health, food, defense, biochemical, and environmental. 

It is anticipated that micro-instrumentation will allow for effective evaluation and eventual use of continuous processes in areas where batch approaches have been traditional. The expected impact of this will be significant on energy savings and in environmental and productivity aspects of commercial processing. The areas where this will show early benefits are in pharmaceuticals, but it is envisioned that biotechnology will incorporate the advantages of continuous processing. This will have a broad impact on medicinal bio-products as well as biochemical and biofuel production. 

We are all in business for profit. The bottom line is that we must be able to sell our wonderful new products from biotechnology for a reasonable cost. If the public is to purchase these products there must be a benefit. The public good can include economics, environmental health or other areas. But it must be perceived by the consumer as a benefit. Let s look at a few examples of some current products from biotechnology, the advantages and the so called public good. 

To prevent such a public reaction to biotechnology it is necessary to ensure that the industry is subject to appropriate regulation and that the public is kept informed of both the benefits and possible dangers of biotechnology. In the European Community (EC) the Directives on contained use and environmental release of genetically-manipulated... 

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