Sometimes overlooked in big pharma’s race to find better ways to deliver drugs and vaccines are pharmaceutical crops. Need a dose of insuling? Reach for a bowl of rice. Time for the next booster shot? Peel a banana.

Researchers are eyeing maize, bananas, tomatoes, carrots and lettuce as possible oral-delivery mechanisms for such vaccines because these foods can be eaten raw, therefore avoiding the loss of proteins that typically occurs during cooking.

So far, 18 federal permits for field trials involving pharmaceutical or industrial proteins have been approved in California. But the state’s farming community and members of the public have fought pharmaceutical crop production, and a handful of local governments recently banned the cultivation of genetically modified crops, including pharmaceutical crops.

A thoughtful discussion about this controversy appears in the latest issue of California Agriculture, which is published by the University of Califronia. This is an insightful primer for those interested in the possibilities and the controversy.

You can read much more here…
California Agriculture Journal;
Union of Concerned Scientists.[tags]Agriculture, Pharmaceutical Crops[/tags]