To GMO or not to GMO, that is the question

Whether t’is nobler in the mind to suffer,

Slings and arrows of the anti-GMO brigade,

Or to take arms against a sea of misinformation

And by opposing, embolden them. To discover – to modify,

No more, and by a modification to say we end

The pain and the thousand unnatural shocks

That cultured meat is heir to: t’is a commercialisation

Devoutly to be wish’d. To discover, to modify;

To modify, perchance to license – ay there’s the IP rub,

For in that genetic modification what licences may come,

When we have shuffled off this regulatory coil (in the EU),   

Must give us pause – for there’s the venture play

That makes geniuses of so long venture capitalists

For who (but family offices) would bear the whips and scorns of time,

Th’ strategic investors’ wrong, the VC’s contumely,

The pangs of dispriz’d love (from EFSA), the legal approval’s delay,

The insolence of GRAS, and the spurns,

That synthetic biology CEOs receive of the non-GMO crowd,

When she / he might their fortune make,

With a GM molecule? Who would bear the boredom,

Of grunt and sweat of a standard product,

But rather risk the dread of (regulatory) death,

In search of the undiscovere’d country, from whose bosom,

No entrepreneur returns (unchanged), puzzles the will,

And makes management teams rather bear these standard tropes of biology,

Than fly to destinations unknown?

Thus risk mitigation (and EFSA) doth make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of genetic modification,

Is sicklied o’er with the desire for 10% IRR,

And enterprises of great zest and moment,

With this regard they lose all momentum,

And stay lost in the academic wilderness till the end of time.