The Canberra Times' Rosslyn Beeby Writes an Apologia for CSIRO. (April 11, 2004)

    Research, Conservation and Science Reporter for The Canberra Times Rosslyn Beety opens her full page article "CSIRO flagship team delivers" with the paragraph:

A year after CSIRO's $20 million Food Futures flagship was launched in Canberra one of its scientific team has achieved a world-first breakthrough using gene technology to breed plants that produce omega-3 oils.

As CSIRO's April 5 media release states, "DHA and other long-chain omega-3 fatty acids are made by lower plant forms, including marine plants like microalgae... Dr Allan Green, research team leader of Food Futures Advanced Genetics, and the CSIRO team placed DHA producing genes into a land plant. The resultant plant successfully produced DHA in its own seeds." And the media release is careful to point out "Although it will be some years before commercialisation, crop plants capable of producing useful levels of DHA in their own seeds would have many benefits." It then gives an extensive list of credits, "This omega-3 project is part of the Food Futures Flagship and involves the CSIRO divisions of Plant Industry, Marine Research, Health Sciences & Nutrition, Entomology, Livestock Industries, and Food Science Australia (a joint venture of CSIRO and the Victorian Government)." Which of these members had anything to do with the project isn't specified and perhaps misleading. CSIRO's Division of Plant Industry of itself would have been expected to have had sufficient expertise to successfully undertake the attempt.

Beeby goes on to suggest that it is the existence of the Food Futures Flagship that was vital in realising the achievement, though it is not clear on what evidence. She also quotes CSIRO Entomology Chief Joanne Daly, "From my perspective, the flagships are travelling really well and have opened the way for my division to really get cracking on some things we've wanted to do for ages - like capturing the historical data in the National Insect Collection." Certainly worthwhile but not a major research effort. Dr Daly goes on to decry the previous paucity of successful  interdivisional programs and continues, "I think the flagships have freed us up to be able to pull expertise together right across the organisation  - and quite frankly, it's something we should have done years ago."

But examples demonstrating Dr Daly's contention haven't been forthcoming, and while CSIRO's accomplishment in getting an unnamed land plant species to synthesis DHA is worthwhile it ought also to be put into perspective. On May 16, 2004 researchers at UK's Bristol University reported having introduced three genes involved in converting polyunsaturated fatty acids into long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LC-PUFAS) in Arabidopsis thaliana and that "significant amounts of n-3 LC-PUFAs were produced by the "hybrid".

Beeby also quotes a number of CSIRO administrators who deny that research "for the public good" is being sacrificed to chasing the commercial dollar, but Beeby quotes CSIRO's deputy chief executive Ron Sandland in citing as evidence of the flagships' success that they have produced ten provisional patents.  He then concedes that CSIRO "went through a very black period ...[with] governments during the 1990s; they didn't know... what we were on about... We had to recapture the imagination of the Government and a whole bunch of external stakeholders -- and I think the big goals of the flagships did this."

Dr Daly then makes the unsubstantiated statement, "...in the 1970s CSIRO was always out there in the forefront of science, defining the big issues for the nation. But in the 1990s we just weren't there Now we're back in front and getting serious runs on the board".  There's one on your duck house, Malcolm McIntosh.

While the contentions put forward by Ms Beeby are questionable it may show that the CSIRO administration, its board and its minister are disturbed by the recent flak the organisation has received and it just may be possible that there is, however unsure a turning toward worthwhile support for research "for the public good".