hello everybody i'm steve banwart i'm the director of the global food and environment institute at the university of leeds you can gather from my accent i'm from the usa i have an undergraduate degree and a master's degree in environmental engineering from the university of iowa i did a phd in natural environmental sciences at the swiss federal institute of technology i work on soil and water resources particularly related to agriculture and my core science is chemistry it's a great pleasure to welcome you to the fifth virtual seminar of the global food and environment institute the title of today's talk is people's acceptance of food biotechnology in the uk and switzerland gene editing versus gene modification which will be presented by dr gilbano captain the global food and environment institute is an interdisciplinary research community which brings together members from across academia industry and public policy to work on the integrated challenges of food security and environmental change for further information please visit the global food and environment website our seminar is a part of a series of seminars so please check the chat function with the link to our series advertised on the eventbrite website and can look at our twitter feed for more information before i introduce today's speaker i would like to remind you of the seminar etiquette please ensure that your cameras and microphones are switched off for the duration of the seminar the presentation will take about 20 minutes during which please use the chat function addressed to everyone with your questions at the end of the presentation there will be a 10 minute q a session during which i will collate questions from the chat function and i'd like to remind you that the seminar is being recorded and a recording will be made available on the institute's youtube channel so now i would like to introduce dr gulbano captain uh captain uh dr captain is an associate professor in behavioral decision making at the center for decision research at leeds university business school gulbano's research focuses on judgment and decision making in the areas of innovative food technologies food safety food waste and healthy eating she is particularly interested in research projects that require interdisciplinary collaboration between social and natural sciences she has been involved in a number of uk and internationally funded projects including those supported by esrc bb-src the german research foundation and the eu framework 7 program welcome gobano and i'll pass the floor to you thank you very much steve thank you hello everyone it's a pleasure uh to give a talk in this seminar series uh my talk today will be on an experimental study that i conducted we talked to colleagues from switzerland dr angela berg from eta hazuri and dr sabrina kessler from university of zurich uh i think angela is in the audience today hi angela and she's a great colleague to work with really and the motivation uh for this research was our interest in people's perceptions and acceptance of knowledge technologies there were quite a lot of research on genetic modification and those studies mostly did not show real public support for genetic modification however there is much less research on gene editing because it's a new technology newer technology than genetic modification and it's more advanced and our uh there weren't much papers but there were indications that people may perceive gene editing differently than genetic modification therefore uh we decided uh to conduct a study uh to understand and compare the acceptance of the two applications um but before i start talking about our study i would like to give some background information and briefly explain the differences between genetic modification and gene editing so as we are all on the same page this is the figure i found quite clear to understand uh in the past so i would like to share this one with you today sorry if this is a very simple figure for some of you and you if you are already aware of this but as i said i want uh everyone to be on the same page when i present our study uh that's why i wanted to talk a bit about uh this figure uh but i now noticed that i didn't put the source so i will edit to the slides later so if you when you see the presentation later you will have the source as well the first picture is about a genetic modification so to create genetically modified crops here there's a plant example scientists remove uh the preferred gene from one organism it could be anything it shouldn't be a crop it could it could be an animal yeast whatever they remove this gene from one organism which is shown in red here and randomly introduce it to another organism here the plants avano genetically modified uh type of crop is bt corn for example as an example where a bacterial gene that produces insecticidal toxins was introduced into the part of the plant so they remove a bacterial gene that is producing some toxins for the insects to the plant so as as soon as the insect eats the plant it is intoxicated the insect is toxicated so the plant is preserved in the case of gene editing uh business small control tv to a living organism's existing dna rather than the introduction introduction of a new foreign gene and in g in gene editing it is nearly impossible to detect weather an organism's dna has been edited or not because the changes are indistinguishable from naturally occurring mutations so if you do gene editing then it is nearly impossible to detect and it is one of the concerns some but this is one of the concerns in editing the advantage of gene editing over traditional reading methods is that the changes it makes are more targeted and efficient it's quite rapid so we expect similar changes or we can have similar changes with traditional breeding methods but we need to wait more and these are more random however with gene editing they are more targeted and efficient now i would like to give a background about genetic modification and gene editing related research and policy is an introduction to our study after talking about our understanding of genetic modification and gene editing producing safe and high quality foods while simultaneously handing consumer aversion towards small technologies are among the challenges the food industry faces today so they need to produce safe and high quality food but at the time at the same time there is consumer aversion about mobile technology so it's a challenge for the food industry food biotechnology applications particularly gene technologies are under a significant amount of secret finance skepticism on other hand there are limited existing data suggesting that editing of genes to be under less public security genetic modification so the results in terms of gene editing seems more promising or encouraging compared to genetic modification the existing eu legislation requires that all gene edited organisms are classified as gmos irrespective of whether they could be produced by traditional breeding methods as i explained in the previous slide and this was confirmed by a court of justice of the european union in 2018 so it was confirmed there was a big debate about it in 2018 but it was confirmed so gene editing organisms are classified as gmos as a result the uk was also before brexit the uk was following the eu legislation about gmos until the end of the transition period uh although switzerland is not an eu country um they are following the eu legislation as well however the uk and switzerland are faced with the decision whether to change the regulation regarding gene editing applications for these decisions it is vital uh it's vital uh to take the public's views of food pipe food well technology associated risks and benefits so if as a government you need you would like to change the policy they would like to change the regulation of course they need to consult to the public as a result therefore recently conducted a public consultation about recreation of uh genetic technologies with a particular focus on gene editing as it means to tackle uh tackle agricultural challenges in the uk it was closed a week ago on the 17th of march and therefore will provide a response in three months so according to the consultation document the link is on the slide if you may want to see according to the consultation document of tefra gene editing is a technology that would benefit the uk in terms of providing abundant and healthy foods which reduce environmental impact this is the main point they make in the consultation document and in addition the view is that organisms produced by gene editing should not be regulated as gmo genetic modified organisms if they could have been produced by traditional breeding methods as a result of the consultation defra may seek to amount existing definition of a gmo as it applies to england's only this would mean that germ legislation would no longer apply to organisms produced by gene edited gene editing and other genetic technologies but this will be done if this could have been produced by traditional breeding techniques so uh gene editing will not be regulated as germans if they could have been produced by traditional breeding methods so it doesn't apply to inserting foreign genes etc my talk is focused a bit on uk of course because i'm presenting the study here now in leeds so and there's a debate now it's a hot topic in the uk so the focus of the topic is mostly the uk so this study was conducted about a year before the public consultation started however even at that time there were some coverage in the media indicating that uk government would approach to gene editing differently than the eu and we conducted a study in the uk and switzerland to investigate people's acceptance of food biotechnology with a particular focus on genetic modification versus gene editing and i was preparing to slice yesterday i chose these pictures um very nice pictures from the uk and switzerland i think we all miss holidays and traveling 3d so sorry about that if you see them a bit irrelevant but they made me cheer up a bit last night um in our study we recruited participants through a market research company uh they applied quota sampling based on gender age and education uh we had 490 participants from the uk and 505 from switzerland and the samples were comparable in terms of age gender and education uh we designed an online 15-minute survey consisting of three parts these were people's associate associations and affect towards food biotechnology an experimental part on people's acceptance of genetic modification versus gene editing applications and individual variables such as trust and risk aversion in the first part participants were asked to provide uh maximum ontario associations when i say association uh i'm from turkey originally i think it's not so easy for me to pronounce association when i say association i mean words images thoughts that came to mind uh so we asked them to provide maximum three of them uh that came to their minds when they heard the term football technology and then they were asked how they feel about those associations next they were provided a very short text explaining photo biotechnology i have it in the next slide and i am not going to read it and i am not going to ask you to read it uh i i just would like to emphasize that so we ask them uh their words images or thoughts that came to their minds first uh it was an open-ended question danny asked about their feelings about us and then we provided this text and um but i would like to emphasize this here the focus is on more environment environments uh environmental benefits of food biotechnology and gm and ge were given as examples of biotechnology and these are all in line with the text we provided in the experimental section and following this text partisan story again asked about their feelings about full tech biotechnology first they uh provided their feelings about their associations then they did the same after reading our text which is very much in line with the text we provided in the experimental part the experimental part measured how technology scientific uncertainty and media format affected participant acceptance of genetic modification and gene editing it may be better explain uh this part on the actual texts provided here um so for the experimental part participants from each country were randomly split into four groups they were first presented uh a text on genetically modified tomato with extended shelf life it was the benefit followed by a text on gene edited tomato with extended shelf life for example there were four groups a group one got a text on their screen is in the picture on your left um it was like an online newspaper they read an online they were asked to they were asked to imagine an online newspaper so they read it as an online newspaper and there is information about genetically modified tomato on it and the uh uncertainty here was uh higher uncertainty i think high certainty uh yeah scientific scientist concludes with high certainty so this text or the conclusions were given with high certainty it is what we communicate to them group four for example got a text on their screen is in the picture on your right online food blog written by sarah brown uh and it takes explaining first genetic modification then gene editing with a phrase about scientific uncertainty like scientists conclude uh with high uncertainty this time so four groups in each group uh in the first group there was high certainty online newspaper format in the second group lost certainty online newspaper format in the third group there is high certainty all nine foot block and in the fourth group there is high certainty high uncertainty and online football uh i hope it's clear uh it's not easy to explain it in one slide okay and then we uh measured acceptance with three items after presenting each text i mean the gm text the text on gm and uh ge text gene editing text uh i think i need to just skip this slide so these are the questions we asked about acceptance because otherwise i can't finish on time i would like to talk about the results regarding participants associations and effect about food biotechnology uh 15 categories were identified through content analysis the most prevalent of these were uh science and research specific food eating and nutrition as we remember they provided associations and they provided many associations of course and the content analysis was conducted so uh the most uh prevalent uh ones were science science research a specific food eating and nutrition genes and genetic modification the affected ratings of these most prevalent associations were positive for science and research and for specific food eating and nutrition however genes and genetic modification was associated with negative effect the overall effect reported for the mentioned associations was near the midpoint of the scale as you see um and this that this did not differ significantly between the two countries however after reading the introductory text uk participants reported more positive effect than service participants so the text affected how they feel about gene editing regarding uh people's acceptance of genetically modified versus gene edited tomato uh the experimental effects uh on people's perceptions were assessed with a mixed model anova with three independent variables technology uncertainty and media the dependent variable was active sense regarding acceptance technology exhibited the largest effect size participants from both countries exhibited slightly higher levels of acceptance for the gene edited food than for genetically modified food and the findings of the experiments suggest that people's acceptance of genetically modified versus genetic food is rather stable and cannot be easily changed by information provision after reading the text to investigate participants acceptance of genetically modified versus gene edited food further we conducted two linear regression analysis almost the same variables very important for the acceptance of two two technologies except for gender country and trust and i will explain this in the next slide this is just to let you know about the results overall uh i think it will be better with this slide the significant uh the significant variables for the acceptance of the two technologies were desirability affect about food biotechnology risk aversion and level of uncertainty that means the more desirable is longer shelf life of a tomato the higher is the acceptance the acceptance of both genetically modified anginated tomatoes was higher if participants initially expressed more positive effects towards biotechnology acceptance of genetically modified and gene edited food was lower if participants expressed high risk aversion and if participants were in the high uncertainty condition if scientists were uncertain about the results gender country and trust in institutions were only relevant uh for the acceptance of genetically modified food for these variables acceptance of uh genetically modified food was higher if participants were male from the uk and had higher trust in institutions i will skip this one as well so i just thought that you may find the statistical descriptive statistics about trust interesting so i would like to just cover uh the discussion and implications as yeah i don't have time left i think so overall this study shed some light on sinister and uk residents perceptions of uh food biotechnology and their acceptance of genetic modification and gene editing applications according to our results uk residents are more supportive of uh food biotechnology than people in switzerland and this is in line with previous findings for example showing that participants from the uk exhibited much higher support for gmos dances participants a large number of participants in our study couldn't provide a single association when we asked them they provided many different associations suggesting a multi-dimensional conceptualization of food biotechnology so it's possible that large interpersonal differences exist in people's understanding of biotechnology including poor genetic modification and gene editing and this suggests further research about people and people's understandings of biotechnology based on how multidimensional it is and our our results revealed that having tomatoes with longer shaft life is the most important predictor of uk assist participants acceptance of gene-edited tomatoes this suggests that the importance of perceiving personal benefits on the acceptance of gene edited foods again prior research suggested that offering clear and tangible benefits positively impacts consumer acceptance of food innovations and technology so communicating benefits is really important and i'd like to thank you for listening hope i could give you a bit of flavor of public perceived genetics editing particularly in the uk i wish we had more time uh to talk after conducting this study we decided to conduct a more comprehensive study on gene editing only and we conducted interviews with experts about their views on gene editing applications in the food domain and we will be conducting interviews with consumers soon so i should have more helpful results to share in three months time maybe so i will be happy to answer uh your questions and or hear your comments if you have any many thanks thank you gobano that was fantastic we have questions and please could participants uh please upload any further questions to the chat line and we'll uh we'll keep going if if colleagues need to leave that's uh because of their schedule that's fine too i'll try to have a go for about 10 minutes or or so maximum for question and answer if we if the discussion keeps going um i had one first question was one from me when you were discussing this perhaps the potential this defra work of redefining for regulatory purposes what is a gene edited organism have any countries are you aware of any countries that have already done such a redefinition and if so where and what what implications are are possibly being observed yeah as you can imagine in the u.s so they have a different definition japan australia argentina these are the ones i remember but as developed countries the united states japan and australia already have a different definitions of or this sort of definition of gene editing and they don't apply uh the same regulation to gene edited foods as they apply to gmo okay and you know in those countries is that information in any case um made available to the consumer at the point of purchase or is that just for more food production purposes and and um i think i don't know exactly i should say but uh without informing the public particularly in a developed country without informing the public no regulation should be made so i assume they communicated this okay there's another question which is assuming gene editing is defined in the form of traditional breeding methods how different is gene editing organisms than from biofortification which is defined as breeding using conventional methods do you have a view on that okay so i i'm a social scientist of course i i don't know the technical issues much i can't just explain my view but i'm sorry if uh it's not as expected but uh in traditional reading methods what i understand i i had an interview with experts so i i learned from them mainly with biologists and molecular biologists it's how they explain to me it's how i understood in traditional reading techniques uh i think whatever you do is slower and more random however uh with gene editing it is much quicker and targeted because you use crisper uh mostly and so it's quite an advanced technique so you know that to put the gene or value will edit the sequence and so it's not random and the process happens very quickly compared to traditional uh methods but i am not so sure whether my answer is satisfying because i don't know much about fortification okay good um there was a follow-up question to that is how sure are you from the survey results the participants fully understood the difference between gene editing and genetic modification well that is why we are conducting a new study now as i said it was just to have a flavor uh we started with the experimental study and then uh decided to have a more comprehensive study starting with interviews with experts and consumers so of course there are limitations uh in the study but there are indications and the findings are in line with the literature findings although there aren't many literature findings so in that sense it is it encourages us um if any participants have further questions please upload them i i have one question final we're through the questions that were on the chat line uh golbano i would just be very interested to get your personal just sort of some speculation about how this is potentially positioning the uk should this type of change and definition be approved be accepted in the uk what is how does this potentially change our you know trade position on what we might purchase from the usa australia or what we might export elsewhere is there a sense you have a sense of how this can influence um you know food supply business in the uk and and retail well from what i read so far and from what i know so far uh and based on the study we studies we conducted uh uk government is willing to is inclined to change the regulation uh and defining gene editing different than gmo and the reasoning is when you read the public consultation report of the defra is because of environmental benefits and sub having a better food supply because when you applied apply gene editing then you'll have crops that you can grow in any season for example the ones i can't think of now you can do many things so it matches uh the scenario we have for the future where we don't have food for everyone uh there isn't much availability abundance of food so with regards to that it will contribute gene editing applications contribute to this and that's why defra started a public consultation uh so they think that it would be beneficial for the country and for the citizens however before deciding it of course there needs to be a public consultation and we don't know what's gonna happen in three months in three month time on the other hand uh from uh previous research there are findings that uh for example there's a group of people who think that it could be genetic modification and origin editing it doesn't matter but it is sort of playing gods or inserting new things to plants or animals so this can't be accepted and resource shows that it is nearly impossible to change those attitudes however there are other research showing that because of financial reasons uh which i don't expect because i think it shouldn't be the reason to accept gene editing uh if you don't have uh if the reason is just getting cheap food it shouldn't be tourism it should be more than that however other research is showing that people are more uh tolerant now about novel food technologies and there's an advancement uh and my conclusion is uh technology is advancing and um we know what's gonna happen in the future we don't have a very rosy scenario for the future so as there will be some technological advancement and this this could be followed but i think here the main question is whether some companies will be advantaged from that or not and it is one of made the main question of the ngos rather than risks and benefits because it seems that gene editing doesn't have much risks from what i know however the main question is uh who will produce those which companies will would it be a set of the big companies then what what are the farms going to do i think these are the questions that need to be asked and these questions are being asked by the ngos now okay great we'll stop our seminar there thank you very much for that and thank you for giving that uh more extensive answer at the end about some of the outlook for this i hope it would be great to have you back for a seminar in a year or so to show us uh what what else you have learned on this as it goes forward this is a fascinating area and of course it's extremely relevant um right now so thank you very much galbano and thank you everyone for participating today and attending and uh direct colleagues to the youtube channel later on for uh colleagues that were unable to join today thank you very much goodbye thank you very much bye
2021-03-28