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Green soap-maker Ecover is the first company to openly admit that that it’s using ingredients derived from ‘synthetically modified organisms’ – the next wave of GMOs – writes Jim Thomas. So why are they risking their ‘natural’ brand for this experimental biotechnology?

Disappointment, surprise, disbelief.

I think I felt a bit of all of these when I discovered that ‘natural’ soap-maker Ecover had become the first company in the world to reveal its use of synthetic biology in the manufacture of consumer products.

The Belgian multinational revealed in April that it has decided to use an algal oil. What it didn’t explain was that the algae oil was produced by biotech company Solazyme using an experimental set of techniques called synthetic biology.

Like many green-minded folks of my generation, I had been using Ecover products as a trusted ‘natural’ brand for over 20 years. Using synthetic organisms to make oil just didn’t jibe with their ‘eco’ image.

Was this a lapse in judgement that Ecover would rapidly rectify once they realised their mistake? I decided to call up Dirk Develter, Ecover’s head of research, to point out the error.

What I learned surprised me even more

Yes, Mr Develter confirmed, Ecover will be using a synthetic biology oil. And no, it wasn’t a mistake.

It was, he mentioned, a controversial decision inside the company. No, Ecover didn’t mention in their promotional materials that the algal oil was from a Genetically Modified Organism (GMO).

No, they weren’t exactly planning to tell consumers that part of the story. Yes, they could have used coconut oil instead. He sounded a bit like he had just been found out. Which in a way he had.               

This is how Ecover stepped into the spotlight of the rapidly emerging controversy over synthetic biology. While some consumer products are already suspected to contain ingredients made by life forms containing human-authored DNA, no company had come right out and admitted it.

At the end of May, when Ecover fessed up to the

New York Times that it was using oils derived from synthetic algae in some of its detergents, the ‘green’ brand from Belgium became the unlikely poster child for experimental genetic tinkering.