Team:Dundee/Human Practices

Human Practices

Overview

Introduction

Synthetic biology has to extend further than the laboratory bench; if it doesn’t, and there is no public engagement and education, if there is no integration of the publics needs into our projects, would there be any desire for the final results, whether great or small?

By engaging the public in what we are doing and by educating others on what we can achieve, we create a demand for results. iGEM promotes the engagement and education of the wider public every year, and every year this engagement impacts projects to the point where teams can change their entire direction; without this input, would we just end up with a solution to a problem that never really existed, or would our time have been better spent on a different, but more relevant, project?

Human Practices in BactiFeed

For our project this year, we have to consider a wide range of ethical, scientific and legal questions relating to our final product. We are working with GMOs, a hot ethical topic of debate, and we want to feed animals these GMOs, requiring the approval and trust of governments, farming bodies and farmers, whilst reducing the quantity of antibiotics given to the animals, promoting concern over outbreaks and reduced rates of production of meat. Finally, we are encouraging humans to consume the meat from these animals, questioning whether we are passing GM meat into the human body and altering the natural state. For all of this bother, we are looking to reduce the rate of development of antimicrobial resistance and help prevent the next ultimate pandemic – but will anyone see that in the ethical and legislative minefield that is Genetically Modified Organisms?

Initially, our project started as a treatment for food poisoning – we would use bacteriocin-producing bacteria in a pro-biotic drink, where the bacteriocins would target common causes of food poisoning. We thought our project would have a great impact for those who are suffering from food poisoning as antibiotics are very rarely prescribed, and there are no other medical alternatives other than ‘waiting it out’. Using our method, we could treat the bacterial infection and have the patient starting to recover within 8-12 hours.

After consultations with doctors at NHS Tayside, the local branch of the National Health Service, and a final meeting at Food Standards Scotland, the feedback we received all pointed to one issue – we were going in the wrong direction. There were too many issues that we couldn’t fix – we couldn’t cover every single possible cause of food poisoning as this would be an almost impossible task, we couldn’t account for treating Norovirus as it isn’t caused by bacteria, and is responsible most cases of vomiting and diarrhoea, and we couldn’t be responsible for patients delaying seeking medical treatment while they first tried our remedy.

At Food Standards Scotland, all of this feedback came to a head when they suggested leaving the idea of treating the infections in humans, and aim our method at the source of the infections - livestock. Rather than creating a drink to cure all illnesses, start methodically removing the infections from the meat one at a time. We understood the need for this, and we believed our method could do this, so we redirected our project to removing pathogenic bacteria in chickens. We received further feedback form the Veterinary Medicines Directorate, a division of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Katherine Grace, a Veterinary Research Office for Antimicrobial Resistance, said our project was exciting and that it was definitely a step in the right direction. She suggested that aiming our method at a specific disease would improve the presentation of the method as we could identify a bacterial infection that our method could target. She suggested Post-Weaning Diarrhoea, found in pigs, would be a good place to start as E. coli , which we are targeting, is the bacterial pathogen responsible. Without the feedback from these industry professionals, without consulting for and integrating their advice, we would still be trying to create a pro-biotic remedy.

Further, we need to know if the general public would accept genetically modified meat. Our first question to answer is regarding legislation on GMOs - we investigated the directives and regulations from the European Union and Scottish Government to determine labelling, traceability and purpose release requirements and processes. Secondly, we needed to consider whether GM meat would conjure an image of meat growing in petri dishes to the general public, and educate accordingly if that was the case.

Legislation we’ve considered on GMOs in the European Union

EU Regulation (EC) 1829/03 on genetically modified food and feed states:

• Identify - Safety concerns over GMOs.
• Investigated – FSS, VMD, consultations with medical professionals.
• Addressed – Educate on benefits and potential solutions to concerns, discuss cell lysis to prevent exposure to external environment.

Legislation we’ve considered on GMOs in Scotland

The Scottish government banned the cultivation of GM crops, stating “The cultivation of GM crops could damage Scotland’s rich environment and would threaten our reputation for producing high quality and natural foods.”

A study by Food Standards Scotland found that 51% of Scottish respondents surveyed were concerned over GMOs in their food. The equivalent body in England, the Food Standards Agency, found that 22% of English respondents were concerned by GMOs in their food. This large difference could be due to the stigma that has been built around GMOs in Scotland due to the Governments outright ban.

The Genetically Modified Organisms (Deliberate Release) (Scotland) Regulations 2002 states:

• An environmental risk assessment shall be produced, identifying and evaluating the potential damage to the environment, whether direct or indirect, immediate or delayed, which may arise from its release or marketing of the genetically modified organisms.
• Where the genetically modified organisms contain antibiotic resistance markers, the environmental risk assessment shall include an examination of the particular risks of damage to the environment, which may be posed by the deliberate release, or marketing of those genetically modified organisms.

The Scottish Government has not hidden its distrust of GMOs and has influenced public opinion towards a negative perception. Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon later admitted the crop ban was not based on scientific evidence, as the role of Chief Scientific Adviser to the Scottish Government was vacant when the decision was made. As the ban was not based on scientific evidence, what was it based on? What evidence was considered that suggested GM crops would have a negative effect on the environment? The most commonly considered objection to GMOs is an ethical objection – but can scientific evidence convince the ethical objectors?

Knowledge and Ethics: Does one counter the other?

For GMOs to be ethically opposed, GMOs have to be completely ethically opposed – and there are not. To oppose GMOs is to oppose vaccines, yet we continue to create new vaccines for diseases across the world with very little opposition. It seems strange, here in Scotland there is great concern over GM crops yet there is little concern over vaccines, yet in the USA they have openly accepted GM crops yet are much more hesitant over vaccines. Is it a poor knowledge of GMOs that cause these public perceptions based on stigma and rumours?

We created an online survey to investigate the public knowledge of GMOs and whether there are any incorrect perceptions that influence public opinion:

• 33% of respondents did not know that vaccines were GMOs, with all of those respondents saying this new knowledge either improved or did not change their perception of GMOs.

This indicates that an improved knowledge of the benefits of GMOs can improve public perception. The lack of education on GMOs has been discussed nationally and has started to be phased into high school curriculums.

• 50% of respondents were unaware of the Scottish Governments ban on GM crops. When informed of the ban and asked if they agree with it, only 16.7% of all respondents said they agree.

From this result, we see that the knowledge of the outright ban did not reach everyone despite the Scottish Governments stance that it would protect the Scottish food industry and touted this as a success. With only 16.7% of respondents agreeing with this ban, it further emphasises the mistake the government made – whilst the role of Chief Scientific Officer was vacant.

• 54% of respondents think products on the UK market containing GMOs should be easily identified with a label – a further 33% did not mind.

We agree that all products containing GMOs should be labelled as such, to promote the choices available to the British consumer.

• 70% of respondents indicated having a GM label on a product would not change their opinion of the product.

This further enforces the opinion that when educated, public perceptions towards GMOs improves.

• 91% of respondents think the Scottish Governments ban influences the wider public to oppose them and has created a stigma towards GMOs.

We agree that the ban encourages the opposition to GMOs across Scotland, without scientific evidence coming into account – this fear is based off stigma.

• Whilst 12% of respondents had an ethical objection to GMOs, all respondents agreed that there should not be an outright ban – consumers should be allowed to choose for themselves.

This result speak for itself – all consumers should have the right to choose whether they buy GM products or not.

• 91% of respondents agree antimicrobial resistance is a growing concern, with a further 83% agreeing it will cause a lot of deaths. Only 25% of all respondents knew that between 14 million and 444 million people will have died by 2050 because of AMR. 100% of respondents agreed a solution had to be found now.

Our project has been based heavily on antibiotic resistance, and finding new methods of treating bacterial infections. When informed of the dangers of ignoring AMR, the general public were all in favour of finding a solution.

Food Security

The 1996 World Food Summit stated that food security “exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.”

We would argue that the overuse of antibiotics in agriculture renders the food unsafe and does not promote a healthy life, therefore food security will not be achieved until global antibiotic use is reduced back to safe levels.

To achieve this we need a new method for treating the common infections found in livestock – which is where our bacteriocin-producing proteins are useful. To reduce the use of antibiotics in agriculture is to redeem the safety of food production and therefore come one step further to global food security.