Engagement needed to lift GM sentiment

The University of Florida professor was a guest speaker at the Growing SA conference in Hahndorf on Tuesday, where he and Bayer medical science outreach lead Eliza Dunn gave an international perspective on biotechnology and agricultural chemical use.

They also spoke at the University of Adelaide's Waite campus on Monday, where Prof Folta said farmers and scientists had been "horribly absent" from the GM debate.

"There is a lack of trust and people on the internet continue to erode that further - we need to build that trust back up," he said.

"Not through talking facts and figures, the general public don't care about that - the suburban family only cares about eating safe food.

"We have this new technology that we don't use or promote publicly, instead social media and the internet is dominated by those who are against the technology."

Prof Folta said 70 per cent of people were using social media for their news.

"Farmers and scientists need to better exploit the networks - Facebook, Twitter, blogs, YouTube.

"We need to step out of the tribes we are comfortable in to appeal to a wider audience.

"We need to take advantage of the power we have as an agricultural community and share the beautiful things that we do and why we do it.

"The future of farming is dependent upon us making good decisions on how we engage the public."

Prof Folta highlighted many threats facing agriculture - land and water scarcity, variable climates, climate change and labour shortages.

"Yes, we have new engineering technologies, such as drones, robots, machinery, but there is also improvements in genetic engineering, which can address issues in a matter of months, not decades," he said.

"We are on the cusp of new technology, with gene editing, that will radically transform medicine and agriculture and we need to be leading that discussion."

Prof Folta said medical advances included gene editing stem cells to eradicate sickle cell disease and even eliminate HIV - good news information that would also help towards changing public sentiment.

"Medical breakthroughs will change perceptions of gene editing," he said.

"It will touch our neighbours, friends and families, especially as scientists start to move into immunotherapies, reversing aggressive cancers, stopping polio virus, herpes virus. People will start shaking hands with technology again and crops will be an extension of that.

"We don't want moratoriums handcuffing scientists from creating technology, discouraging funding and stopping farmer access to the best technologies."

Dr Dunn, who is also a physician with an adjunct faculty appointment through Emergency Medicine at Washington University in St Louis, highlighted the misinformation spread about glyphosate and the extensive research undertaken to prove it was safe.

"The data is available on our website," she said.

"Plus six other registrants did their own independent studies and all came up with the same findings - that glyphosate is not acutely toxic to humans or animals.

"Even when a small agency within the World Health Organisation (the International Agency for Research on Cancer) called it a 'probable carcinogen' in 2015 - Canada, the European Union, America's EPA, Japan, New Zealand, Australia and even other branches within the WHO, all looked at the data that was available, and could not find that it was a carcinogen."

Dr Dunn felt more focus needed to be put on health ministers and the government to minimise the distrust stemming from misinformation.

"People also need to communicate more with health people because public perceptions are being driven by health organisations," she said. "We need to be pushing the science and the data more."

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AUSTRALIA could be the centre for biotechnology innovation and set an example for the rest of the world, according to Bayer medical science outreach lead Eliza Dunn.

"Right now there is a tug-of-war between the United States and Europe on biotechnology, if Australia can steer clear of that and demonstrate what it can do with this, it could be really influential," she said.

Dr Dunn, who was a guest speaker at the Growing SA conference this week, felt biotechnology bans threatened food security and was concerned for Europe.

"As a former physician, I have seen the systematic dismantling of public health advances made in the 20th century that have bought us a 30-year increase in life expectancy - food security, water sanitation, vaccination," she said.

"Because of people choosing not to vaccinate, 60,000 people in Europe this past year came down with measles; kids are dying in Madagascar from measles - it's a public health catastrophe.

"Imagine what would happen if we had the same misinformation spread about food supply?

"Organic farming doesn't reliably feed people.

"We have only had food security in the past 50 years because of advances in agriculture, like glyphosate, insecticides, GM technology.

"We have to have advances in agriculture to be able to address the needs of a growing population."

Fellow guest speaker Kevin Folta, University of Florida, agreed there was a leadership void in biotechnology.

"Australia is poised to do it in a really big way," he said.

"Europe is going into the dark ages. Their scientists can't believe they are giving up an innovation edge.

"They are willing to import GM products, but they are handcuffing their researchers, that will be a major setback for them."