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Consequently, the administration decided the new technology did not warrant extra regulation.
Advanced Genetic Sciences (AGS) was one of the first companies to specialise in agricultural biotechnology. Its first product was Frostban and was designed to protect fruit from frost.
First GM crop
 These products [Genetically modified bacteria] are alive, so they are inherently more unpredictable when you place them in the environment  |
Anti-GM activist Jeremy Rifkin |
"In this way, if there was a light frost, the number of bacteria there would not be sufficient for ice to form at relatively warm sub-zero temperatures."
A field in Brentwood, California, was chosen as the site for testing. For the first time a genetically engineered organism was about to be released into the environment, causing alarm among many campaigners.
Writer and anti-GM activist Jeremy Rifkin: "What differentiates genetically engineered products from petrochemical products is these products are alive. So they are inherently more unpredictable when you place them in the environment.
"These products reproduce. Chemical products don't do that. These products mutate. Chemical products don't do that."
First GM crop trashers
Andy Caffrey from Earth First recalls: "When I first heard that a company in Berkley was planning to release these bacteria Frostban in my community, I literally felt a knife go into me.
"Here once again, for a buck, science, technology and corporations were going to invade my body with new bacteria that hadn't existed on the planet before. It had already been invaded by smog, by radiation, by toxic chemicals in my food, and I just wasn't going to take it anymore."
On the night before, the field was attacked. The world's first trial site attracted the world's first field trasher.
Andy Caffrey: "Everybody was crawling on their bellies between each row and just grabbing at the plants and two rows at a time, just crawling up until they got to the end and then turning around. And the whole thing was done in about 15-20 minutes."
Despite all their efforts, the protesters failed to destroy the crop, which was re-planted by the farmer.
Still, the scientists were worried that somebody might go to extreme lengths to stop the test.
Dr Julie Lindemann: "There was talk before we went out to do the study of the chance that one of us might be injured by trying to put the test on. Would someone possibly come after us with a gun? We had to at least consider that scenario."
Despite all the protests Dr Lindemann says the experiment was a success, and refutes campaigners' claims they could have been harmful.
She told the programme: "We were able to show that you could put a study out with a genetically engineered bacterium and that it could be done safely."
Though Frostban was never used commercially in farming, the test itself was a milestone.
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