If he'd being funded - which seems to be the case - what't the problem with it being private? I can understand calls for public funding where the need is there but the private funds to serve it for one reason or another are not - but here the funds are supplied already, I see no problem.
I'm guessing the OP means: given the high stakes (environmental, financial, moral, and so on), why aren't governments more involved in this research? (They're already regulating and subsidising farming in pretty much every country of the world.)
I had an economics professor who noted that one of the main reasons rich countries don't suffer from famines is because they have a lot of livestock. When there's a food shortage, livestock can be slaughtered early to provide extra meat and free up food crops for human consumption that would normally be used to feed the livestock.
Maybe this technology has too much potential to dangerously destabilize the world food situation for it to be fundable by a government.
