Mar 17, 2008

Debate

Send

Challenges for biosafety research

World Café – discussing issues of the future

How does biosafety research influence the current debate? And what challenges will it face in future? These questions were the focus of “World Café” – a creative workshop to which around 130 participants were invited during this year’s biosafety conference. Trained moderators encouraged representatives from the fields of research, politics, industry and associations to exchange their sometimes opposing views on plant genetic engineering and to engage with their opponents in a relaxed atmosphere. The aim was to bring together the participants’ wide and varied views and suggestions and to use them to plan the direction of future biosafety research.

A babble of voices, murmuring, quiet laughter – there is a café atmosphere in the meeting room of the Katholische Akademie in Berlin. The participants are talking, listening to one another with interest, gesticulating and nodding. At first glance, it looks like an informal chat. Only the flipcharts and the presence of a moderator who asks the participants to swap tables every twenty minutes betray the fact that the process, although creative, is anything but undirected.

“Writing on the tablecloth is expressly desired”. The participants write down their thoughts and ideas on the paper tablecloths. There are two questions up for discussion: How does biosafety research influence the current debate? And: What challenges will biosafety research face in future?

After less than an hour, the tables are covered in colourful graffiti: “Nature cannot be controlled”, “Building trust, opening ears”, “Simplifying language”, “Greater transparency” can all be read in various colours and handwritings. “Not at all” is the most frequent answer to the question of how biosafety research influences public debate. Building on this, many of the participants state that they would like to see more, improved communication to ensure that biosafety research is given a hearing in public.

In order to collate the wide range of views and ideas, the moderator asks the ‘hosts’ – of whom one has been previously allocated to each table – to record the most important aspects concerning the future of biosafety research on cards and to pin them to a display board. What is interesting is that here and in the next room, where another World Café is being held, the participants come up with similar results and points of view.

In a plenary session the suggestions that the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) intends to use when planning the next funding period are presented and summarised into three central challenges facing biosafety research:

  • Communication, transparency, target group
  • Broadening the scope to include the agricultural context
  • International focus (knowledge, regulations and data)

The participants generally agree with these three aspects, although there are different opinions concerning the order of priority.

In a plenary session, the participants are asked to stand by one of the three topics indicated by signposts in the corners of the room. Asked why they had chosen their particular corner, the ‘international focus’ group stressed saving budget resources through better coordination and drawing up guidelines that enable data to be compared. The largest group (‘communication’) pointed out that biosafety research, which receives a lot of funding, should reach the interested public but that its influence on public debate is still too small. Broadening the scope to include the agricultural context is desirable particularly in view of the fact that in future increasing numbers of genetically modified crops will be growing on the fields and that biosafety research cannot be separated from practical applications.