ABSTRACT
OECD 1982 In 1980 American scientists interfered with the cells of mice, extracted the substance
which this interference produced, injected it into dairy cows and, overnight, threatened to wreck the tender balance of the world’s too often over-supplied market for butter, milk powder and cheese. What those scientists were doing was for agriculture as epochmaking as in a much wider way the splitting of the atom was several decades earlier. The application of DNA technology to the manipulation of animal and plant life, the basis of what has become the modern science of ‘biotechnology’, offers to more than double postwar gains in productivity in cereal-growing, milk production and the production of pork, lamb and beef-and to do it much faster than was ever possible before.1
