The Associated Press. It's something we can't shove down people's throats. The consumer is king, and they will rule no matter what. In North Dakota, which leads the nation in barley production, this year's crop was the smallest in more than a decade. Barley is used to make beer, but scab-infested barley can affect the taste and cause the beer to gush out of the bottle.
Genetic engineering involves manipulating the genes of a plant.
With the growing controversy over biotech food, some overseas brewers already are refusing to buy grain genetically designed to kill pests or withstand herbicides or disease. In the United States, the brewing industry is still pinning its hopes on a more conventional solution to scab. At the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service facility in Madison, Wis., molecular biologist Ronald Skadsen is trying to create a barley that has antifungal genes in the right place to ward off the scab fungus. Both say a biotech solution to scab could be as much as a decade away. We don't have a single gene we can breed in that will give resistance.