Faculty and staff members at ISU, the nation's oldest land-grant university, have been alerted and urged to notify campus security if they see strangers in buildings on campus or protesters gathered on campus, Fehr said. Our view is that if corporations, governments and universities have any relationship to biotechnology, they are targets. Minn. Genetically engineered plants at a University of California-Berkeley research location. Some of the harshest critics of the growing use of biotechnology by the seed industry are appalled by the call for violent protests. Biotechnology, which weds the study of living organisms with high-tech genetic engineering, is pushing the parameters of traditional plant breeding.
Scientists can further enhance or suppress certain characteristics of crops.
For example, they can make plants resist particular pests, tolerate application of certain herbicides that otherwise would kill the plants, and yield more nutritious food ingredients. Opponents contend that the genetic changes may have unintended results that could be harmful. For example, earlier this year a laboratory study by Cornell University concluded that corn plants genetically designed to resist European corn borers were also capable of killing monarch butterfly larvae. Although the results of the study have been challenged, biotech opponents cite them to support their view. Copyright 1999 by The Associated Press .