Accelerating the Domestication of New Crops: Feasibility and Approaches.

The domestication of new crops would promote agricultural diversity and could provide a solution to many of the problems associated with intensive agriculture. We suggest here that genome editing can be used as a new tool by breeders to accelerate the domestication of semi-domesticated or even wild plants, building a more varied foundation for the sustainable provision of food and fodder in the future. We examine the feasibility of such plants from biological, social, ethical, economic, and legal perspectives.

Feasibility of new breeding techniques for organic farming.

Organic farming is based on the concept of working 'with nature' instead of against it; however, compared with conventional farming, organic farming reportedly has lower productivity. Ideally, the goal should be to narrow this yield gap. In this review, we specifically discuss the feasibility of new breeding techniques (NBTs) for rewilding, a process involving the reintroduction of properties from the wild relatives of crops, as a method to close the productivity gap. The most efficient methods of rewilding are based on modern biotechnology techniques, which have yet to be embraced by the organic farming movement. Thus, the question arises of whether the adoption of such methods is feasible, not only from a technological perspective, but also from conceptual, socioeconomic, ethical, and regulatory perspectives.

Are we ready for back-to-nature crop breeding?

Sustainable agriculture in response to increasing demands for food depends on development of high-yielding crops with high nutritional value that require minimal intervention during growth. To date, the focus has been on changing plants by introducing genes that impart new properties, which the plants and their ancestors never possessed. By contrast, we suggest another potentially beneficial and perhaps less controversial strategy that modern plant biotechnology may adopt. This approach, which broadens earlier approaches to reverse breeding, aims to furnish crops with lost properties that their ancestors once possessed in order to tolerate adverse environmental conditions. What molecular techniques are available for implementing such rewilding? Are the strategies legally, socially, economically, and ethically feasible? These are the questions addressed in this review.

Facilitating ethical reflection among scientists using the ethical matrix.

Several studies have indicated that scientists are likely to have an outlook on both facts and values that are different to that of lay people in important ways. This is one significant reason it is currently believed that in order for scientists to exercise a reliable ethical reflection about their research it is necessary for them to engage in dialogue with other stakeholders. This paper reports on an exercise to encourage a group of scientists to reflect on ethical issues without the presence of external stakeholders. It reports on the use of a reflection process with scientists working in the area of animal disease genomics (mainly drawn from the EADGENE EC Network of Excellence). This reflection process was facilitated by using an ethical engagement framework, a modified version of the Ethical Matrix. As judged by two criteria, a qualitative assessment of the outcomes and the participants' own assessment of the process, this independent reflective exercise was deemed to be successful. The discussions demonstrated a high level of complexity and depth, with participants demonstrating a clear perception of uncertainties and the context in which their research operates. Reflection on stakeholder views and values appeared to be embedded within the discussions. The finding from this exercise seems to indicate that even without the involvement of the wider stakeholder community, valuable reflection and worthwhile discourse can be generated from ethical reflection processes involving only scienitific project partners. Hence, the previous assumption that direct stakeholder engagement is necessary for ethical reflection does not appear to hold true in all cases; however, other reasons for involving a broad group of stakeholders relating to governance and social accountability of science remain.

Making the EU "risk window" transparent: the normative foundations of the environmental risk assessment of GMOs.

In Europe, there seems to be widespread, morally based scepticism about the use of GMOs in food production. In response to this scepticism, the revised EU directive 2001/18/EC on the deliberate release into the environment of genetically modified organisms stresses the importance of respecting ethical principles recognized in the Member States. However, the directive fails to reflect the critical role of value judgements in scientific risk assessment and any subsequent approval procedure. In this paper we argue that it is important to make all ethically relevant assumptions involved in the approval procedure transparent and thus available for public scrutiny. Mapping the value judgements that are made in an environmental risk assessment and approval procedure, we describe the political liberal nature of the EU legislation. We then look more closely at the prescriptions for environmental risk assessment and approval of GMOs outlined in the directive. An environmental risk assessment views the world through a "risk window" that only makes visible that which has been predefined as a relevant risk. The importance of the value judgements that define the risk window consists in limiting the information the risk assessment can provide. In the penultimate section of the paper, the significance of the risk window is demonstrated through a case study of the approval of glyphosate resistant fodder beets (Beta vulgaris L. ssp. vulgaris) in Denmark.