"I'm not interested in farmers suing farmers...," Huffman said. "The kind of damage that can occur when cross-contamination does happen can be of a scale where you're not going to be able to make farmers whole unless they can hold the manufacturer responsible."
And the lawyers can make a ton of money bleeding the manufacturers white.
Sad but true, but the manufacturer comes out with a product with serious externalities, somebody has to pay for the cost of the risk. If you socialize it using government to indemnify the manufacturer by selective regulations, the FARMER pays for their risk taking. Do you want farmers screwed by corporate ag?
The risks associated with getting sued would focus biotech upon lower risk opportunities, golden rice being a fine example. That learning experience and the profit derived could then be applied to managing higher risk products with more knowledge. That's how things work in a free market, not one with socialized risk.