A.
from a family farm possibility it's an opportunity to create a different
variety of product that's grown and raised in our state. Biotechnology is
allowing family farmers to save a considerable amount of money on
pesticides and chemicals, things they put on the ground, in the ground,
that are very expensive to raise a crop. If you can use gene therapy, if
you can use science to avoid the necessity of using chemicals and
pesticides then you save money and you increase yields. It's also
about opportunities for research and development.
We have a number
of great universities in this state, Iowa State being one of them, and
Iowa State is doing a lot of work in gene makeup of corn and beans.
How it can be changed how it can be altered to make a better crop a
stronger crop a more specialized kind of crop, which in turn will result in
higher value of those crops. So there are opportunities created for
research and development and the job opportunities associated with
that. It's also about a humanitarian aspect of being an Iowan.
Iowans
historically have always been involved in trying to solve some of the
worlds biggest problems. Herbert Hoover, one of our great Iowans, a
former president, was prior to becoming President, involved in solving
world hunger issues. A man by the name of Henry Wallace, who
became Vice-President of the United States and founded Pioneer Seed
Company, was involved in the early early research about plant makeup
in corn. Both of these men in the past, Norman Borlaug who's a Nobel
Peace Prize winner was a scientist from Iowa who created a stronger
wheat product that helps feed people. All of these Iowans have one
thing in common that's they've tackled the big problems and one of the
biggest problems that they've tackled or tried to tackle is world hunger.
And with more and more people being born in the world today, there
are more and more hungry people. So Iowa needs to be at the center
and focus of trying to solve these problems .
Q: One of the goals or reasons for being involved with biotechnology is
economic, this has the potential to create a huge new industry for
Iowa. What is the state doing to prepare for that? How is the state
preparing a pool of employees to staff this highly technical industry,
what changes need to be made in the state?
A: One thing we're doing is providing significant resources to Iowa
State
University, their plant science initiative. It's essentially 8 different
centers where researchers will come and work on various aspects of
biotech. There'll be a center for example on designer crops. These are
crops which as a result of science are designed for a specific use,
maybe it's a specific manufacturing process or maybe it's a specific
industrial product that could be created that you need a certain protein
level, a certain fat content or certain oil content in the bean or kernel of
corn. So we are heavily supporting the plant science initiative where
these really innovative ideas are occurring.
We're also creating and
have created a research and develoment fund, a commercialization
research and development fund, which helps small businesses who are
working with universities, they're developed in the universities and then
moved to the business parks that are associated with the universities
where there are small businesses that get started taking these ideas
from the drawing board and developing sort of a scaled model of what
a product could be like, then we're helping them go from the scaled
model part to being able to offer it to a lot of customers. So we're
providing research and development money that will help pay for the
training, the expertise, the knowledge and the equipment that will allow
people to be well trained in these areas.
We are focused on improving
our community college system , we have a program called the ASIS
program which is an accelerated career education program that we look
at skills/upgrading skills of workers today, certainly biotech companies
can be part of that. We have some wonderful companies in this state
that are working on these issues. Kemin Industries I recently visited,
tremendous exciting technology taking place there where they're
looking at Rosemary and being able to take something from Rosemary
and develop it into a nutraceutical, sort of a natural created
pharmaceutical to help with vitamins and health products.
So we're
helping businesses like that with resources and money to allow them
expand their equipment base or their employee base. We are working
hard to consolidate our economic development resources on three
critical areas one of which is the life sciences which includes
biotechnology so we're funneling more of our money more of our state
support into these programs. So it's a broad range set of initiatives
from supporting things like the World Food Prize all the way to the plant
science initiative to providing resources to do commercialized research
to worker training.
Transcript for Clip 2 -- Feed the World:
Iowans historically have always been involved in trying to solve some of
the world's biggest problems. Herbert Hoover, one of our great Iowans,
a former president, was...involved in solving world hunger issues. A
man by the name of Henry Wallace, who became a Vice-President of
the United States and founded Pioneer Seed Company, was involved in
the early, early research about plant makeup in corn. Both of these
men..., and Norman Borlaug, who is a Nobel Peace Prize winner and a
scientist from Iowa who created a stronger wheat product that helps
feed people--all of these Iowans have one thing in common, that
they've tackled...one of the biggest problems É[of] world hunger. And
with more and more people being born in the world today, there are
more and more hungry people. So Iowa needs to be at the center and
focus of trying to solve these problems. Transcript for Clip 3 -- Regulatory process & state's role:
There is a regulatory process in place that is currently involved in
making sure that these products are safe before they are provided for
human consumption. There is the United States Department of
Agriculture that has extensive regulatory responsibilities over farms that
are using biotechnology. There is the Environmental Protection Agency
that works closely with the industry in terms of those products that are
used to [replace] chemicals and pesticides. They have a role. The Food
and Drug Administration also has a series of protocols and testing that
biotech products have to go through in order to be able to pass muster
and be able to be provided to consumers. So there are in place at the
Federal level, regulatory structures. The state's role, I think, is basically
educating people about the fact that there are these regulatory
structures in place and that they've worked in the past for many, many
other products and they're working today for biotech products. More comments from Tom Vilsack...
Q: What are the possibilities biotech provides for the state of Iowa?
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Posted March 6, 2001