PA (PA News) / Wed, May 24, 2000 / By David Barrett, PA News
A bid to make sure Britain's food industry keeps up to date with scientific advances and avoids more crises, such as BSE and GM crops, was launched today.
The Government-led consultation group, the Foresight Panel on the Food Chain & Crops For Industry (FCCI), will gather comments from all sections of the Farming and Food industries, as well as the public.
Chairman, Deidre Hutton, said: "In starting this national debate we are setting out discussions, ideas and suggestions on developments which will affect the way food is grown, produced, marketed and consumed in the UK over the next 20 years."
Minister of State at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries & Food, Baroness Hayman, added: "Over the next 10-20 years the UK food chain will face complex opportunities and challenges.
"Many issues will be sensitive and there will not always be easy answers.
"We want anyone who wants to contribute to the debate to be able to do so and that's why I'm delighted to be launching Foresight today."
Consultation papers were published today and the group is inviting reactions through opinion polls, questionnaires, focus groups and the Internet.
Robin McKie, science editor of the Observer newspaper and chairman of the group's debate taskforce, said: "Our whole raison d'etre is the GM debate, which I think caught most people by surprise.
"If nothing else we've learned the intensity of public feeling about the food they eat."
Mr McKie's group will test people's reaction to a range of fictional food processes "to see how the public may react to other products of similar emotional depth as GM".
The programme will also stress the importance of the food industry keeping up to date with scientific advances and harnessing modern communication skills like IT.
"More than 75% of the world's scientific knowledge has been accumulated in the last 50 years," said Robert Pickard, Director General of the British Nutrition Foundation and FCCI Task Force Chairman.
"The speed of change is truly dramatic.
"If they don't harness modern communications, they will be left behind much more quickly than they would have been 50 years ago."
Copyright 2000 PA News.
(posted without permission)
