Abstract
In this chapter we aim to give an overview of the main societal and ethical issues that are currently voiced around industrial biotechnology. We will illustrate this with some recent cases, such as the development of synthetic artemisinin, synthetic vanillin and vegetable oil produced by engineered algae. We show that current societal and ethical issues in industrial biotechnology centre on the following five themes: sustainability, naturalness, innovation trajectories, risk management and economic justice. In each of these themes, clashing public opinions fuel the public debate on the acceptability of new industrial biotechnology. In some cases this has led to the failure of otherwise promising innovations. In the last part, we provide suggestions on how to deal with these ethical and societal aspects based on the approach of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI).
Highlights
Until now industrial biotechnology has not received the same kind of public scrutiny as plant biotechnology has, especially not in relation to genetic modification [1]
The societal and ethical issues which do emerge around industrial biotechnology are more broadly oriented to its role as enabling technology with its many claims on applications aimed at sustainability, such as biofuels and biochemicals
This case shows that where industrial biotechnology offers an alternative to agriculturally produced substances, questions arise about who benefits from the new production method and who is in disadvantage
Summary
Until now industrial biotechnology has not received the same kind of public scrutiny as plant biotechnology has, especially not in relation to genetic modification [1]. In this chapter we aim to give an overview of the main societal and ethical issues that are currently voiced around industrial biotechnology We will illustrate this with some recent cases, such as the development of synthetic artemisinin (see Schürrle, this volume), synthetic vanillin and vegetable oil produced by engineered algae. We claim that current societal and ethical issues in industrial biotechnology centre on the following five themes: sustainability, naturalness, innovation trajectories, risk management and economic justice. In each of these themes, clashing public opinions fuel the public debate on the acceptability of new industrial biotechnology. We provide suggestions on how to deal with these ethical and societal aspects based on the approach of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI)
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