Marcelo Rinesi

We are repeating some of the systematic errors behind the financial crisis
in how we exploit plants and animals. The end results won?t be any better.

One of the most basic techniques to reduce financial risk is to diversify.
Properly done, this allows safer and more extensive investment. But the
appearance of diversification without its reality ? as it was the case with
securitized subprime mortages ? leads to increased hidden risks, and
eventually a systemic crisis as the ?one in a million years? event turns out
to be have been much more likely than that.

The same is true about genetic diversity in industrially exploited species.
Our hunting and fishing by themselves have been proved to affect
physiological characteristics at a much faster rate than other evolutionary
drivers, and our frequent engaging in selective breeding (not to mention,
increasingly, direct genetic modification) has an even stronger impact.

The comparison between financial and genetic portfolios isn?t spurious. The
economic output of many industries depend on the physiological limits of the
organisms involved, and those are to a large degree influenced by their
genetics. Risk is also a similar concern. Just as seemingly diversified
portfolios have been wiped out by hidden exposure to a common risk, there
have been many cases of commercially important organisms, like the type of
bananas that used to be sold decades ago, that were quickly extinguished by
their shared vulnerability to some pathogen.

A study on commercially exploited chickens has shown that their genetic
diversity is far lower than that of wild breeds. There are entire sets of
genetic possibilities that are missing from their ?portfolios.?

This is a natural result of industry practices. First, very few breeds of
chicken have been selected for commercial use, favoring individuals with
extreme performance in laying eggs, growing meat, or some combination of
both traits. Then those individuals are reproduced as much as possible in a
pyramidal pattern, influencing an outsized segment of the resulting
population.

The pattern will look familiar to anybody who has been following the
mechanisms behind the financial crisis, and entails some of the same
dangers. Lack of genetic diversity makes existing breeds more vulnerable to
diseases, and, perhaps even more importantly in the long term, it stifles
biological innovation. There?s a reason why endogamy is a bad reproductive
strategy: genetic diversity is a form of long-term wealth.

It?s also one we are currently losing, with the number of distinct species
falling drastically every year, constantly reducing the available
alternatives for further improvements in crops and animals. We would say
that the loss of biodiversity is an economic problem as much as an
ecological one, except that the distinction is a fallacy.

Technologies to analyze, catalog, and deploy genetic resources are already
existing and constantly improving. Some of them are as old as vineyards and
horse breeding, while more recent ones involve sophisticated direct
manipulations of genetic materials. Falling costs are also, as usual,
resulting in qualitative change, as cheap and quick genetic analysis makes
possible the sort of wide, systematic research that would be impossible
otherwise.

The gap that remains is an strategic one. Biodiversity, both in the wild and
in industrial contexts, is an asset for countries and business, but it?s one
that it?s being at best managed in a unfocused way, with the risks and
missed opportunities that this implies. The ability to understand, steward,
and exploit this resource will be a very important one in a wide range of
fields, from agriculture to medical research to novel applications that will
undoubtedly be developed.
www.checkbiotech.org