Public attittudes to cisgenic crops - PhD defence

Cand.scient.pol. Henrik Ole Mielby

defended his PhD thesis Public attittudes to cisgenic crops 15 August 2011:

Summary

To address the public perception that gene technology is risky and unnatural new lines of genetically modified crops are being developed. These crops, which are modified only with native or closely related genes, are called cisgenic crops. Their supporters hope that the fact that cisgenic crops do not include genes from other species will make them more acceptable to the public than transgenic crops, which are modified with genes from sexually incompatible organisms. This looks like a reasonable hope. But is there any real evidence that ordinary people, without biotechnological expertise, will have a more positive attitude to cisgenic crops than they do to transgenic crops? That is the main question addressed by the Ph.D. candidate.

Based on data collected both from focus group interviews and from a survey, the candidate concludes that cisgenic crops are acceptable to a greater number of people than transgenic crops, although they are only seen as more natural within some lines of argument. His results show that lay evaluation of cisgenic crops generally focuses upon the same factors as lay evaluation of transgenic crops. This implies that the cisgenesis concept does not meet all of the concerns people have about genetically modified crops being unnatural and risky.

Principal Supervisor

Associate Professor Jesper Lassen, Institute of Food and Resource Economics, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Copenhagen

Co-supervisor

Professor Peter Sandøe, Institute of Food and Resource Economics, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Copenhagen

Assessment Committee

Associate Professor Karsten Klint Jensen, Institute of Food and Resource Economics, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Copenhagen (chairman)

Centre Director, PhD Niels Mejlgaard, Danish Centre for Studies in Research and Research Policy, Aarhus University, Denmark

Professor Bjørn Kåre Myskja, Department of Philosophy, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway