What a Man Sows, He Shall Reap

Bioengineered foods burst into the public consciousness with a Time magazine story several years ago. “This Rice Could Save a Million Kids,” blared the cover, featuring a photo of German scientist Ingo Potrykus next to his creation: Golden Rice, a transgenic variant enriched with vitamin A that promised to solve a widespread nutritional deficiency throughout the developing world.

But it’s proven to be incredibly difficult to get bioengineered foods and their nutritional benefits into the stomachs of people in developing countries. Safety and regulatory concerns have posed roadblocks, but so have the claims of IP holders. The Rockefeller Foundation, a funder of the development of Golden Rice, was alarmed that competing patent rights could prevent the flow of innovative agricultural technology to the hungry. In 2003 Rockefeller Foundation officials commissioned Alan Bennett, then head of the University of California’s Office of Technology Transfer, along with a dozen other scientists, to do an “audit” of the IP used in Golden Rice.