The findings of a new public dialogue published by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and UK Research and Innovation-Sciencewise, explores the views on the use of genome editing in farmed animals.
The findings of the public dialogue offer an important contribution to the debate around precision breeding, broadening it out to questions of the aims, purpose and societal consequences of innovations that it will permit.
Overall, participants felt that the public could provide a valuable input into the policy process and that there should be an opportunity for wider public debate to help direct research and innovation in this area.
Participants also expressed a need for more clarity on the Government's overarching plan for the future of food and farming in order to understand how genome editing would fit into it. They want to better understand the purposes for which precision breeding might be used, its impacts and wider consequences, as well as what the alternatives are, in order to assess its potential value more accurately.
In particular, participants were concerned that applications of genome editing should be aimed at supporting animal welfare and directed towards outcomes that promote the public interest, rather than merely the interests of commercial producers. Regulation was felt to be an important part of this.
More information can be found in the full report and the press release.
