Biotechnologies: definition and evolution

Biotechnologies are defined as ‘Processes that produce, preserve and/or transform biological materials of animal, vegetable, microbial or viral origin into products of industrial, commercial, economic, social and/or hygienic utility and value’. Biotechnologists and bioengineers are men and women qualified to design, develop, operate, maintain and control biotechnological processes.

The name ‘biotechnology’ first appeared in 1897 in Yorkshire, England, where a Bureau of Biotechnology provided consultant and analytical services to local fermentation industries. The early development of the principal biotechnology industries – food, drugs and textiles – display marked similarities, though their modes of development have differed over the centuries. All began using empirically derived artisanal labour-intensive technologies which, following different patterns, were gradually mechanised, human hands being replaced by mechanical devices and machines driven, successively, by animal power, water, wind, steam engines, fossil fuels and electricity.

For many centuries, technologies and industries that processed foods and drugs have been closely associated. Standards of quality and safety for foods and drugs are frequently administered by the same regulatory agency, the US Food and Drug Administration being a typical example.

Beginnings of biotechnologies

Sometime around 3,000 BCE the Chinese began acting on their belief in a close association of foods with medicines, both essential to good health, both at the time derived from plants and animal organs. The Chinese continue to believe that many ailments can be cured by appropriate diets; they were the first to add burnt sponge, an aquatic source of iodine, to people suffering from goitre. (The present fashionable addiction to ‘nutriceuticals’ is simply an extension of an ancient Chinese doctrine).