Flavr Savr tomato: The world's first genetically-engineered food
Witness History
BBC
4.4 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 27 December 2023
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 1994, biotech company Calgene brought the world's first genetically-modified food to supermarket shelves.
The Flavr Savr tomato kept fresh for 30 days and could be shipped long distances without going off.
Yet the world was wary of this new food, and it took 10 years and $100m of investment to get it to market.
In 2017, the firm's then-CEO Roger Salquist told Claire Bowes about his mission to revolutionise the world's food.
(Photo: Roger Salquist with a crop of Flavr Savrs. Credit: Richard Gilmore)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Does talking to strangers make you happier? |
| 0:04.4 | Could aging disgracefully help you live longer? |
| 0:07.8 | I'm Dr. Michael Mosley and in my Just One Long Thing podcast series I'll be chatting to doctors and scientists |
| 0:15.1 | we'll be covering topics like sleep exercise happiness and staying young with each |
| 0:20.6 | of our experts choosing a health hack they claim is the single most effective way you can improve your life. |
| 0:27.0 | Just one long thing. Listen first on BBC Sounds. You're listening to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:41.8 | In 1994 a tomato became the world's first genetically |
| 0:46.5 | engineered food to go on sale anywhere in the world. It was called the |
| 0:51.0 | flavor saver and it was developed by an American company to ripen more gradually and stay fresh for longer. |
| 0:58.0 | In 2017, Claire Bowe spoke to the man who came up with the idea. |
| 1:03.5 | Roger Salquist. |
| 1:05.0 | My favorite form of eating tomatoes is Capraise with the white cheese. |
| 1:11.3 | So yeah, we have tomatoes, but I'm not a fanatic on it. |
| 1:14.1 | Roger Salquist is not a big tomato fan, nor is he a scientist, but he does like risk. |
| 1:20.7 | Previously he'd worked in the nuclear industry and in solar power. So when his friend |
| 1:26.0 | Norm Goldfarb asked him to join Cal-Gene, a company applying the brand new technology of genetic |
| 1:32.1 | engineering to agriculture he jumped at the chance. |
| 1:36.0 | Norm said we got all this great science but we don't know how to make money out of it. |
| 1:40.0 | Nobody had ever genetically engineered a plant at the time. |
| 1:43.6 | He had no idea what the products would be or how to finance it. |
| 1:48.0 | It was purely an act of faith and I got caught up in it |
| 1:51.7 | partly because I love agriculture and it was a challenge. |
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