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Panel discussion

Growing tomorrow’s dinner – should GM be on the table?

Ensuring everyone has enough to eat is one of this century’s global challenges. The global population is growing, consumption patterns are changing and the impacts of climate change and growing scarcity of water and land are putting pressure on our ability to grow enough food.

Add to Calendar 06/06/16 06:30 PM 06/06/16 08:00 PM United Kingdom (GMT) Growing tomorrow’s dinner – should GM be on the table? <p>We explored whether GM should be one of the options on the table, and what principles should be in place so that the public can have confidence in how they are used.</p> The Royal Society of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH2 2PQ
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We explored whether GM should be one of the options on the table, and what principles should be in place so that the public can have confidence in how they are used.

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Overview

Ensuring everyone has enough to eat is one of this century’s global challenges. The global population is growing, consumption patterns are changing and the impacts of climate change and growing scarcity of water and land are putting pressure on our ability to grow enough food.

There are promising techniques and technologies that can address this. By selectively breeding, we can develop crops that can grow in difficult, changing conditions. GM technologies can also be used to achieve similar results faster and to address some problems that cannot be solved through conventional selective breeding. However almost a third of people feel that the risks of GM crops outweigh the benefits and most do not feel informed about them. Do we need to take another look at technologies such as GM to see if they can offer solutions to this global challenge?

In this panel discussion we explored whether GM should be one of the options on the table, and what principles should be in place so that the public can have confidence in how they are used.

This was a joint event with the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Speakers included:

  • Professor Neva Haites OBE FRSE FMedSc, Vice President for Life Sciences, The Royal Society of Edinburgh 
  • Nick von Westenholz, Chief Executive, Crop Protection Association
  • Stephen Tindale, Climate and Energy Policy Consultant and former Director of Greenpeace UK 
  • Professor Jim Dunwell, Professor of Plant Biotechnology, School of Agriculture, Policy and Development, University of Reading

For all enquiries, please contact events@royalsociety.org.


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