Ice-minus Bacteria - Controversy

Controversy

At the time of Dr. Lindow's work on ice-minus P. syringae, genetic engineering was considered to be very controversial. Jeremy Rifkin and his Foundation on Economic Trends (FET) sued the NIH in federal court to delay the field trials, arguing that NIH had failed to conduct an Environmental Impact Assessment and had failed to explore the possible effects "Ice-minus" bacteria might have on ecosystems and even global weather patterns. Once approval was granted, both test fields were attacked by activist groups the night before the tests occurred: "The world's first trial site attracted the world's first field trasher". The BBC quoted Andy Caffrey from Earth First!: "When I first heard that a company in Berkley was planning to release these bacteria Frostban in my community, I literally felt a knife go into me. Here once again, for a buck, science, technology and corporations were going to invade my body with new bacteria that hadn't existed on the planet before. It had already been invaded by smog, by radiation, by toxic chemicals in my food, and I just wasn't going to take it anymore."

Rifkin's successful legal challenge forced the Reagan Administration to more quickly develop an overarching regulatory policy to guide federal decision-making about agricultural biotechnology. In 1986 the Office of Science and Technology Policy issued the Coordinated Framework for Regulation of Biotechnology, which continues to govern US regulatory decisions.

The controversy drove many biotech companies away from use of genetically engineering microorganisms in agriculture.