 Welcome to this session titled what if scientists are the new chefs of this session is going to be quite interactive we're going to be engaging all of you and in this conversation the idea here is that from synthetic meat to gene altering pesticides scientists are exploring new solutions to feed the world what if most of our food is designed by man and not by nature and and so what we have today is I think that the the the reason we're we're thinking about this is because when when we contemplate where we're going on the planet the projections are that by mid-century there will be about nine billion of us and there are also estimates that we're going to need to double world food production to meet the meet the demands of this larger population and one wonders why do you need to double food production if you're not doubling the population beyond the seven plus billion we already have and the reason for that is that there is an increasing desire to eat higher on the food chain higher quality protein more meat and dairy and all of those those high quality proteins require food water I mean they require land water resources energy and expansion of the agricultural food footprint and so the the reason for this discussion today is is there a possibility that by perhaps unlinking from that expanding footprint of agriculture we may be able to actually meet these demands for food by doing things like perhaps laboratory enhancement or growing some of the protein that we need in artificial environments and so who a couple of examples of that for example are like synthetic lab grown meat or milk or even 3d printed meat and who we have here today as part of this as our panel to discuss this we have Mark Post who's a professor and chair of physiology at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands who's going who has pioneered work in an in vitro meat and a couple of years ago you may have heard about lab grown hamburger right and we can hear from Mark on that issue we have Laura Nystrom who's an assistant professor of food biochem chemistry at ETA in Zurich Switzerland who focuses on fortifying foods improving the nutrient quality of foods making foods more sustainable we have Christopher Nelson who's chief executive officer of Kemen Industries which is which is a firm that is devoted to providing food and feed additives for the livestock animal trade and Richard Jefferson who is chief executive officer of Cambia in Australia and professor of biological innovation at Queensland University of Technology and he is his focus is on democratizing innovations and one side note as we know that genetically modified organisms are all part of our ongoing discussion about acceptance of different kinds of foods Richard did the first ever genetically modified crop in 1987 did you say beating Monsanto by one day of a GMO potato so what we're going to do first to try to get a sense of the temper of the room is to ask the audience a question about your feelings about synthetic and bioengineered food and so I'll run through the these choices you can see them on the screen one I'm worried about the implicate what I'm going to do is read them all off and then I'll come back and I'll let each of you vote on which one okay so that we can get a sense of which of these issues okay the first I'm worried about the implications on the environment second I think it's a great opportunity to use resources more efficiently I'm concerned it may be bad for my health since scientists agree that it's safe then I then so do I it's okay as long as food packaging is clearly labeled and the last I'm so confused I don't know what to think can I vote okay so the first one I'm worried about the implications on the environment raise your hands have any votes in the room for all right okay got it okay the second I think it's a great opportunity to use resources more efficiently okay third one I'm concerned it may be bad for my health since scientists agree that it's safe then so do I okay okay and the next one it's okay as long as food packaging is clearly label and the last one I'm so confused I don't know what to think thank you thank you appreciate it okay well thank you thank you all and it appears as though we have the leading response was I think it's a great opportunity to use resources more efficiently with 17 votes and right behind it I'm concerned it may be bad for my health and the others were lagging in a second or third tier so now what I'm going to do is I'm going to we're going to go around the room and each of our panelists are going to lay out some of their views on these issues talk about their work and try to focus on you know what they each of them see is the most exciting or urgent issue to address on the topic and also you know what might we what might we see in this area in the next decade or so so why don't I start with professor post yeah thank you well I think you already mentioned it that we are all into high quality proteins we not necessary maybe not necessarily because of the idea of it or the or the health aspect of it but more because we it's all ingrained in our culture we do realize now increasingly that production of high quality proteins actually puts a lot of pressure on our environment on our resources and at the same time we want to keep our consumption pattern as sort of traditional as possible so that's why exactly those reasons were the ones that we we developed our technology on the reason why we did it is to create beef because I think beef is one of the the villains here if you like not really a villain in the traditional sense but really one of the culprits where we put a lot of resources into feeding cows that eventually produce provide us with high quality proteins but it's a very inefficient production system and there are many more animals out there that are much more efficient there are many more biological systems that are much more efficient yet we still like that product we want that product so there is now a way coming from the medical field to produce the same tissue with just using the cells from these cows and not using the entire animal that potentially can be very resource efficient yet it will edit it produces exactly the same tissue yet it's grown in a completely different way it doesn't have the same sort of cultural aspects that beef has in a traditional way so there is a big issue in safety as has been expressed but there is also a sort of cultural issue in that we need to think about whether we want to go that route that cultural route into a very different production system of food in general and beef in particular to in order to reach those goals of feeding the entire world population without the environmental footprint so why don't you talk a bit about the work you're doing specifically on the creation of of lab grown meat yeah so we it's a very simple methodology you can do this at home if you like where you take stem cells well that you cannot do at home but you can order them three that take stem cells from a cow let them proliferate which they are naturally inclined to do and then when you have sufficient numbers what there are other natural inclination is to make meat from it because that's what they do in the body and if you create the right conditions that's also what they do outside of the body and that way you basically produce beef you have to put resources in it you have to create the environment you have to feed them but the the the opportunity here is that that conversion of feed into animal proteins will be at some point much more efficient than in a cow what do you feed these cells we feed the cells basically sugars amino acids and vitamins and minerals coming from vegetable sources so it recreates essentially the kind of diet that you would give to a beef animal or yes but without without needing to grow the entire animal and with without the exhaust and just in a very controlled manner okay so dr. Nistram why don't you talk about your work yeah our work has as you also mentioned we're working quite a lot with health promoting compounds compounds that we can find from foods from plants from the nature modifying those for optimization of the food of the health benefits for humans but then at the same time trying to find compounds that are beneficial for the food so or for for the product so for example extending shelf life so products and and finding ways to improve product quality overall also from a sensory and technological point of view we are or the science that we're doing involves identification of new compounds from plant basically plant but most mostly plant-based materials and identifying those finding in which types of food or plant tissues we can find these compounds how we could extract them for use in in food applications however for many compounds the problem is that they're not present in the natural sources in content contents which are high enough or which would be economically feasible as raw materials for extraction and therefore we're trying to find ways to to take essentially the building blocks of these compounds and use different enzymatic technologies to combine them and then produce these same compounds that you find in the natural product we're trying to produce and or producing those then in the lab where they can then be scaled up to a level which is then economically profitable we also are very much interested in in analyzing within any class or group of compounds which are reasonably similar to identify which are the individual properties of the different molecular species so if if you take let's say 10 phenolic acids which one of those is the one that is the most active and then try to apply that and study that further and really identify the individual differences of or the differences between individual components in many of our studies we've been sort of testing on wouldn't it be nice to combine this and this molecule and came up with what we at first thought that we're completely new compounds and what we were able to generate however since our analytical methods are now getting much much more accurate and sensitive we have been able to find also these compounds that we thought that we generated also in the nature so proving that we there is a lot of diversity in the nature what we haven't explored and where we can then work on a bit for why you give us some examples specific examples of where this work would then be applied to foods that we would come across with in our daily life well for example one of the group of compounds that we're working on is our sterile phenolate so they're plant sterile compounds which is a equivalent of plants to cholesterol but it has health promoting effects and those combined with phenolic acids you can find in cereal grains mostly and they are both compounds which help to reduce cholesterol levels in the diet but they also bring extra stability to food because they're antioxidants and they're for example highly abundant in rice bran and therefore rice bran oil which has good qualities in high high temperature deep frying applications and so for example these kinds of compounds we would or we are now able to produce in in high quantities that could be then applied in in the food industry or just added directly to the food to prevent oxidation to extend the shelf life and such whereas compared to for example extracting the same compounds from rice bran could be somewhat difficult as depending on the raw material what you get because for example high abundance of arsenic pollution in rice bran therefore one can produce these compounds in the lab and therefore inhibit or prevent for example heavy metals concentrating into the product so for example like your work might involve trying to improve the shelf life of bread so that we're reducing the amount of waste that comes out exactly right exactly any other examples like that where you would be improving you know improving shelf life for improving longevity of foods to essentially food waste is a big problem this is well the research that we we have done in my lab essentially focuses on on cereal grains and grain products so therefore the bread is is one of the study examples that we work mostly with and there we use soluble dietary fibers as as compounds that can then prevent the bread from getting stale so it's a different type of shelf life restriction like oxidation is one where you get rancid taste and off flavors but the bread turning stale or hard is another type where you then kind of get a physical change which then makes the product more or less appealing so this work also provides the potential for saying improving the nutrient quality in food so you have the potential of helping improve the the nutrition of people's diets definitely yeah I mean these same soluble fibers that we add to the to the bread from the bread perspective or from from the production perspective it makes the dough handling much easier from the bread perspective it gives it a lot longer shelf life because it get it doesn't lose the moisture or it moisture evaporation is much slower and starch does not get recorded at fast so the bread stays softer for a longer time and thirdly for the consumer you have all these health benefits of the dietary fiber so you it's it increases the tidy it improves bowel functions etc etc so there's tons of functions that the same one single compound can produce can can deliver okay Chris why don't you talk about your role in your company's role in this this question our company is is really focused on a whole variety of areas but maybe I'd talk about first making animal protein more efficiently and I think at the at the core of this entire question is how can we get more nutrition generated more efficiently one of the examples of a product that we have manufacturer is is that we are the largest farmers of oregano in the world we actually extract large amounts of oregano there are two particular chemicals there that we are really interested in called carbacol and thymol we take those chemicals in a particular ratio we can feed those back to pigs and poultry and eliminate the need for antibiotics in their feed by feeding these natural compounds back to them the key there is trying to make the animals produce the protein that we need more efficiently and I think this comes back to the core question of what we're facing in 2050 you're exactly right we're going to have more people but the raise the nutritional level of the world my feeling is is that perhaps one of the most key things today missing is the adequate amount of protein when we take a look at the number of stunted children in the world and then go do an analysis of what is missing out of their diets oftentimes we find that the caloric needs in other words absolute calories are there what we're usually missing is micronutrients and especially protein and when we start and talk about perhaps a sufficient amount of milk or maybe a one egg a day per child this is more than sufficient that would be able to end childhood stunning so our our role in our company is to try to make this meat make meat production more efficient dropping the cost so that more people can afford to be able to have that protein certainly agree with Mark beef is that sort of at the far end it's a it's a luxury compound at least in our in our terms but when we certainly talk maybe about milk and eggs or aqua protein from aqua certainly these are highly efficient highly efficient so you're trying to in one sense trying to sort of reduce the yield gap or improve the conversion ratios exactly you bring up the magic term feed to gain ratios how much feed does it take to get a pound of gain or a kilo of gain with poultry and aqua these are the most efficient animals we have in the world for being able to do that beef of course is at the very furthest extreme in being able to do that the question is is how can we make this more efficient especially in areas of the world where perhaps the grains that we have or the feed stuffs that we have are not the most ideal and aren't like what we see in where I come from Iowa home of corn and soybeans what sort of what sort of substrates we have there to be able to feed animals so you're but you are in the business of providing additives to the livestock absolutely industry to improve what rate of gain to to optimize I would say to optimize own optimize efficiency and what the real purpose there has been or the tendency I should say of all of our customers is not to use drugs to do this but to understand compounds such as enzymes plant extracts that may be able to have that this effect without necessarily going into a drug or steroid use okay so Richard yes let's hear what you have to say okay first I want to I feel like it's a 12-step program sorry you know I used to be a genetic engineer and then you're supposed to applaud and then I go to the next step and say but I got over it early in my career as a molecular biologist I was very very fascinated by using the best modern genetic tools to optimize the performance of agricultural systems and I was engaged in the early work in transgenesis and GMOs in retrospect it didn't take me long to realize that we were really missing an enormous opportunity we were thinking of plants or animals as standalone entities and machines really and unfortunately we were engineering them with the same premise that engineers use on machines but there are enormously complex systems that support those machines and those are not separable really from the plant or the animal and we are missing an opportunity in science to consider the complexity of the entire production system and whether we can optimize the quality of what we get out the quality of the production system and the quality of its embedding in a social and environmental system and I think that that's an opportunity ahead of us but the first point is that we have to disabuse people of the idea that agriculture is natural it's not at all there's nothing natural about agriculture all of us are eating the products of generations sometimes hundreds or thousands of years of human artifice it's all about human creativity manifest through improving the system and sometimes the machine within the system the plant or animal that we eat so as soon as we polarize it and say well it's synthetic now and it wasn't before we've made this this terrible misunderstanding that agriculture is this bucolic thing where if you leave it alone it'll just be right and there's no farmer that will ever tell you you can turn your back on a farm without it being ruined organic or conventional it requires human intervention all the time so there's nothing natural about it okay that's the first bit of dis ingenuity in the title of this thing the second is the idea that we really have to produce twice as much food or whatever the number is in years no we don't we actually Laura gave a great talk the other day that really brought home that most of the surplus that we currently have in food production is lost to waste and you alluded to as well squandering both at farm gate and its storage and transport in production and in consumer level is stunning I mean the amount of food that is wasted would if it were not wasted would probably handle the increase in population just fine so the idea that there's an inexorable increase in production is not necessarily right we definitely have to have an increase in the availability of nutrition your point is incredibly important there availability of quality nutrition but without sacrificing the system in which it's created we must never I think think of a cow or a pig or a wheat plant as a thing that exists in isolation of the complex ecosystem in the last couple of years we've discovered that what we used to think of was a thing let's say us or a cow is 99% microbes so we used to think that there was an individual and now we realize it's an almost seamless web of living organisms that give it its properties well that's a huge opportunity for genetic optimization not by GMOs but by adjusting the concentrations of microbes to build a system that's more resilient and produces higher quality nutrition so I guess in some of you what I'd say is first of all we have an industrial agriculture system right now there's no doubt about it so any efforts we can make such as the one that Chris talking about that can improve that are incredibly important what we can also do however is pull the lens back and say can we stimulate new types of small medium enterprise that are science driven that can allow completely new approaches to agricultural enhancements and new enterprises new profit centers to be developed that are sustainable and socially integrated so that's what I think we should do you have some examples that you might think about yeah I do actually if you envision the classic multinationals that dominate global agriculture you'll have to ask why do they do that well 20 years ago they didn't and so we have this this chain of of in a sense supply chain consolidation of foundation seed distribution enhancements and now increasingly management advice it doesn't have to be that way but there are certain tools that have made it that way so when I was working at Rockefeller Foundation here in Asia on their rice programs it became clear that the public sector is almost completely ignorant of how hard it is to make stuff and so the public sector thinks you do cool science published in the top journal and that's where you quit and yet 98% of the work to make stuff is not the stuff that we as scientists publish it's aggregating all the other skills so I guess I'd say it's it's the the title of this thing it's what if scientists become chefs you always imagine a chef is being the wizard with a cool hat doing the neat stuff but in fact a chef can't exist without a restaurant without really good sourcing of ingredients without sous chefs without without prep cooks without waiters waiters without the infrastructure and that's true for us as well scientists might like to think of ourselves as chefs but we are chefs who are totally ignorant of the restaurant business and what we have to do is better integrate the science into the awareness of what business requires to turn science into value for people and we don't do that so there's the the point of intervention is change the public sector if you don't like Monsanto don't bitch about it make better alternatives okay in a word so we've already been I mean in one sense though the food supply that we have it's like that corn plant that stands in Iowa is totally dependent upon us to exist yeah that livestock that we think of as quote natural is completely reliant unless you eat roadkill and berries you're not you're not natural yeah so I mean so in what in one respect on one end of the spectrum we have we have the idea that we're going to somehow grow food high-quality protein in a lab yet on the other hand we're already playing an artificial role in in creating and sustaining the food system that we already have so it's for a thousand years growing protein in the lab it's just one more way to make protein it's another it's another mechanism and is it any better or worse than growing animals to me it's about the efficiency of protein that's going to nourish us and if we can nourish ourselves more efficiently that's a better thing and it's also going to do things like if we're trying to do things like save rainforest and stop cutting rainforest we need to do more with the landscapes we've already devoted to farming and that's where the more efficiently efficiency comes down because when we start and take a look at beef if the entire world was only beef consuming there would be an easy it this is that would be a completely easy fix but we start in comparison to maybe aqua and and also in the poultry production and it gets a little more complex because it's going to be it's going to be difficult for to be able to say make fish protein and maybe Mark can comment on that make fish protein as efficiently as fish can convert convert feed into feed into meat that's going to be a tough one yeah I guess a question I have for you Mark is that you know the idea of producing beef in the lab is one thing and what you can look at the different we call them in agriculture feed conversion ratios pounds of grain to produce a pound of meat and it's like with cattle it might be eight with pigs it might be something like that with fish going down with fish it can be maybe even slightly more than one point nine right and so you're almost like in a negative it's like you're getting more fish in out than you're putting in so moisture is the is the main is the main impediment to having a more say fish protein diet the the cultural imperative teat beef or the long-term traditional idea we're gonna I don't know be a cowboy what right obviously there is a huge cultural aspect here and so we are working on the assumption that and the FAO as well that eating beef is not going to diminish in the next 30 years it's actually going to increase because as you said it's a luxury item and when people become richer they will start to eat beef and on the other hand you know we also want diversity we also want to have choices well we become more sophisticated we want more choices in our food so they in the end it's it's up to the consumer and I'm working on the assumption that we are not going to affect that consumer behavior on a massive scale very quickly and then you know I think it's wise to have a strategy to come up with a protein production system that produces the same tissue that everybody wants or that some people want but without the negative consequences is it going to be a situation though with growing lab protein I mean it's like in the energy field the question is all is always well how can you produce say renewables at the same price that you're producing energy from fossil fuels and the in the question here in the food situation would be then are you going to be able to be economically competitive or does it depend upon what you look at as costs for production if eventually this is going to be economically competitive because you have to put less resources into it so it has to be economically competitive at some point the the other thing that we are I guess also from a cultural perspective because it's one thing to look at food quality or protein quality it's it's also you know biodiversity we are yeah fish are very efficient animals but we humans are very efficient fishers and we have drained a lot of oceans from the fish so we have to be careful and yes we can culture them we can cultivate them in in ponds we have to be careful that we also maintain a level of biodiversity which I quite strongly believe in although it's very difficult to measure and so for other species there might be other reasons to start to think about alternative ways of producing the same tissue Dennis you made a really terrific point using the comment of biodiversity but there's a there's an add-on to that there's there's actually intellectual diversity that we need to contemplate an economic diversity I would I'd like to see is Mark's thing give it its best shot and if it works as you say if it if the economics are there and the demand is there that's fine but we really need is hundreds or thousands of best shots of different ideas and let people sample what works well in their culture and their situation with their environment and I think we shouldn't assume that we just have to make more of the same and I I'm much more sanguine about changing norms I think then then the assumption of not being able to if you look at food waste you can couple economic incentives to changing norms and behavior very easily once it is illuminated how much money a household in any part of the world can save by some simple practice changes it will come home to roost and I think people will change behavior so norms don't have to change just because you write it up in the New York Times or something it can act or National Geographic they can actually sorry whoops but you can change them enormously when they're coupled to self-interest and so one of the things that social enterprise is very very good at doing is identifying how you galvanize enlightened to self-interest in diverse communities so one thing we've assumed as scientists that the people that look like us and work in fairly nice infrastructures and come to meetings like this are going to be a source of the solution and we should think of ourselves I suspect as enablers as you do of the livestock industries if you're an enabler your effect is so much more profound than you can have if you try to come up with a solution yourself so I'm absolutely barricing for more social enterprises with creative science-based solutions that can give Marx a run for his money and if he wins that's what you should do okay so while we're on that then let's pivot and let's start talking about I mean that some of the sort of some of the issues that are the issues that we need to be think of thinking about in terms of trade-offs what are the so I will I will raise this so when I first heard I was going to be involved in a panel about synthetic foods and that they are inevitable and they're coming I kept thinking oh well gee there's all of these societal cultural political questions that are inevitable that are going to be raised in and we've been dealing with these same questions for with genetically modified organisms now for 20 years and we're still fighting about them and so what if we haven't been able to to establish a sort of a sense of societal acceptance for these for a variety of reasons you know what what are the kinds of questions that we should be thinking about that are potential speed bumps or roadblocks that we can anticipate so so that we can can sort of help educate and inform the public about being transparent about this trying to help people understand the value of this kind of work so Laura well I think the first thing of course is that we as scientists have to do it all very much openly very have everything very transparent the available the information there and also not only utilize the possibilities that we have for evaluating the safety of these compounds and and all the effects that they will have on let's say environmental health and our own health etc to have all those methods like really find the methods that can ensure that they are safe they're safe for us to use safe for safe to produce etc but then also keep on improving those methods further so so really making sure that the safety aspects are covered for without any any possible holes in any so that the bag of water is really tight and then also have and aim for and hope for critical communication about it but also fair communication and neutral communication and always finding ways like when once once I guess also must have experienced all these outdoors of people coming to you and saying you're like when you're why are you producing synthetic need that's unnatural and so on so to be able to find also neutral platforms for people to be able to discuss these questions show their concerns be able to receive information from neutral sources and and people who are who are capable of answering the questions and all this in open and not just trying for us scientists to work in the lab and on our own and then coming up with this solution and say here's the solution but rather trying to involve all the stakeholders and making it public okay I'm going to start bringing the audience in in just a minute but I want to go to Chris and the rest of you first you know they the thing that I see in regards to what really is what was the mistake that was made with GMOs you know why why has it taken 20 years and GMOs are not accepted worldwide that the United States has broad acceptance although an increasing minority now also starting to grow in the United States of non-acceptance what is it what's the core what's the core lesson from that to me it was that as soon as new technology is introduced there has to be some sort of advantage for the end consumer or and an advantage large enough that that will outweigh the things that I might worry about in regards to this new technology maybe I don't understand it and so fully but the advantages are so great that I will actually utilize it and that I think in GMO this problem was that in GMOs there was it was not clear to the consumer that there was a clear advantage to them there was an enormous vantage to the farmers without a doubt our hometown of Des Moines Iowa 500,000 people we used to have atrazine in our in our drinking water because that's what was sprayed all over the state of Iowa today we have no atrazine because it's all round up and you have lots of nitrates and now with a lot of nitrates in the water in Des Moines Iowa so that's another issue but it's but I guess what it is is it comes back to the what is the advantage for the end so communication transparency and then benefit to the feed to the eater to the eater it has to be to the person consuming it right Richard yeah I this is a there's no way to say what's right or not but I've heard this point of view from a lot of people in industry and it certainly has a lot of merit I mean you can listen to this it sounds that makes a lot of sense my experience having been in the GMO craft as the one of the few neither academic nor corporate actors working as I did as a molecular bios for the FAO of the United Nations for years my assertion is that it's about power structures it's about distrust of non-transparent power structures and the early adopters of the technology as Chris now we're really contributing substantially to the effectiveness of the industrial agriculture practitioners I mean no till activities better and less toxic herbicides decreasing on cotton production millions of leaders of very toxic insecticides the benefits are totally quantifiable to the growers into the environment there's no doubt about that in any scientific forum that's ever looked at it wisely however what is true is that there was an early war of attrition that happened between what were initially small family or medium-sized family companies and the desire to dominate the food chain the companies that are practicing this are full of actually a lot of people I know and like or good scientists and sometimes good business people but because they're very large corporations they give us a very very funny feeling at the pit of our stomach because to be honest the issue you raised mark about culture is really at the core of agriculture there's nothing nothing else that we as humans do that's essential except food and water everything else even the iPhone is really optional okay and so there's a built-in concern about the normative and cultural basis of the provision of food because it makes us very vulnerable now most of us don't understand the food system anyway but we like to think that if it's local it has resonance with us and we have local and natural well we can go to the farmers market and exactly but a lot of that is the normative comfort zone and the challenge I think is that had had round-up ready soybeans been developed by Stein or by a family-owned company one reason your company is so trusted isn't just the good products it's because it's a family company and this has an evocative resonance with most people if we had 50 or 60 interesting competing companies not just to make the same thing but to make different types of interventions I think people would have seen that is going to be looking out so maybe something had been invented by our neighbor yeah well that's a little bit much but I might but let's put this I think having to my technology a democratized process where the entry barriers are acceptably low they'll never be zero but we're using technology can be based on a sense of community sensitivities I mean most of us would love to get our bread from a baker not from the supermarket but many times for convenience we go to the supermarket it's the same thing with technology based solutions if we can get technology based solutions that have local resonance they also have local accountability and I think people will look at science and technology very differently when there has that so I would love to see tens of thousands of companies producing all sorts of new innovations using science and technology they're different from each other not a large corporate monoculture doing one or two things very very well but just one or two things more diversity come back to your point mark I'll turn to you and then I want to open it up so these trade-offs these yeah well they have pretty much covered I think transparency is a big thing that also translates into what what Richard said there is the regulatory aspects that eventually should cover some of the safety aspects what was striking in the response of the audience was that you know when you look at when you ask the question do you trust the product if it's developed by scientists and in other words do you trust the scientists very very few people do right you had three other people which is you know so it's not only companies it's also scientists everybody who messes with our food or tries to mess with our food is by definition sort of suspect and yeah we can I think in a lot of ways we can come up with an efficient sort of production system that has a local feel I think it can be done but they're also then for this to go forward there almost needs to be a preemptive transparency that was absent with GMOs if we're gonna move forward with some of this kind of yeah I think in addition to the very good point of point that I didn't have an immediate benefit for the consumer it also had a big transparency issue right from the very start and it still has continues that so it yeah I think transparency is key okay so I'm gonna open it up questions queries concerns yes ma'am safety problem is very serious and in many many words so I need to ask in Chinese sorry sorry the microphone is not working so just now you mentioned a lot of issues related to the GMOs and about increasing the transparency of the GMOs I would like to ask how the American government cope with this issue just now one panelist mentioned that the American government actually supports the GMO I would like to clarify whether this is a case and whether the American government supports the GMO and before so after this information is released what's the response of of the general public from the USA the second question is sorry I forget my second question okay so the first question was about public government response to GMOs in the United States I'm from Australia he's from the Netherlands you're from Finland you're from Iowa you know the GMOs underwent a huge amount of regulatory scrutiny before they were released into into the environment in the United States and the the USDA was primarily the primary group that did this and they have had enough credibility with the American public that after GMOs were released there was no really significant outcry at all and thus the consumption say of vegetable oil which is enormous within the United States is as today almost in the night plus 95 percentile of consumption lately and I think maybe that's that's been of an interest is this that lately there has now been a question about GMOs and perhaps that GMO should be the food should be labeled that contains GMOs I can tell you from the standpoint of agriculture that this may sound strange but we would really welcome that because there are higher profit margins in non GMO foods because they are so less if that is so less efficient to be able to produce that we can we can charge consumers an enormous amount of money for for non GMO products and so you will see that most of the companies in the United States are very softly actually opposing these rules to actually expand some of the non GMOs they know they as far as they're concerned this is an opportunity for more money and if you look at is actually supporting much of the labeling it's very very large multinational or large national organic companies the beat the there's a beautiful wordsmithing going on here that we think natural is agriculture which is not an organic is super cool and in factual these are huge billion-dollar corporations and they love this premium Chris is talking about so hey we label it we make more money off the consumer so part of it is really a truth is understanding what labels mean or what's behind what's on a label and I think really what we should do is have a label that describes pretty much what color cap the farmer wore when he harvested it or she harvested it because that's probably got as much to do with the safety of the product as as whether it's GMO or not but hey transparency and everything and I think the John Deere cap versus the case so when I go for what coupons in the cereal box so any next taste you yes ma'am ladies and gentlemen good afternoon I'm a farmer from China from Dalian questions the first questions for your five person which one is a presence now are you a scientist or path farmer I want to ask you the first question are you scientist or farmer the second one which can OSM food you eat in ordinary life the third one in China GMO scary in the hearts of every Chinese person well in China GMO is a scary concept therefore I want to know all the more because the question was raised by a speaker about the regulations of GMO in the United States do you think it is absolutely safe to export GMOs to other countries these are the three questions I have I'm sorry I've missed the I heard the third one about are you a farmer or a scientist yeah me who you I guess us I am I am not a scientist I am not a farmer I grew up on a farm I earned money to go to college by farming I studied agriculture in college and have a graduate degree in agricultural communications I'm a medical doctor I live on a farm but I only have a vegetable garden I'm a food scientist I'm a wannabe urban farmer or vegetable gardener but don't have a garden myself I'm a scientist and also I have our company farms large amounts and I will maintain that if you're a successful farmer you're also a scientist that's a lovely state very wise statement I live on an apple farm that I manage appallingly I'm a scientist which career I manage appallingly and that's a great statement though because farmers really are some of the best observational manipulators in the world which is really science so next round what was the next question is there what do we eat what each of us eat in regards to organic GMO etc and when we make personal food choices I eat lots of vegetables and salads and I can say that we have grilled chicken perhaps once a week and that's the extent of the meat in our diet for the most part but lots of pulses beans I eat pretty much everything that's edible and have complete trust of scientists and companies that provide my food I also eat everything I I definitely eat everything I avoid organic and I do that because I worry about the relative level of microbiological biological safety of organic products very well controlled and non-organic but not as well controlled in organic products you eat I eat therefore I am and what was the last one it's about GMOs and be safe and the US government US government maybe maybe she could repeat it oh export export sure our GMOs safe and should they be exported what the export yeah but I don't I don't have it I mean if the if the US government has said that it's okay to grow them I don't have a problem with that the question of whether or not they should be exported I guess should be a question for the countries who've chosen to import them or not actually I think the core of the question has to do it in some ways China's food sovereignty if I understand you correctly I spent many years working with China's best plant geneticists and plant molecular biologists working with Rockefeller Foundation and many other organizations here in China and I got to know many of the finest scientists I've ever known who are working and still working here in China whom I trust very much example the great Zhang Qifa in Wuhan one of the finest rice geneticists I've ever known brilliant scientist he's had his hands tied as have many other Chinese scientists by the lack of clarity priorities in using modern genetic research in China there is enormous possibility for completely domestic industries 100% autonomous domestic industries that use the very best of modern genetics most of the patents that are being taken out are still largely not in force in China for the older technologies and China is now the largest patenting entity in the world so autonomous scientific development of new types of agriculture within China is fully within China's grasp if there's political will there's extraordinarily good science within this country okay and let's everybody else I'm gonna have somebody else have a question yes ma'am I have a question that's just slightly peripheral to the main part of the discussion and that's something that came to mind in terms of I thought of it in combining the adequate nutrition comments I thought of it in combining the food waste comments and if you look at the differences in chronic disease susceptibilities around the world that are associated with the diet you see western countries where you're basically eating too much meat and developing countries where you don't have adequate nutrition because you don't have things like one egg a day would be a great luxury and also something that has come up is basically the consumer behavior how adaptable is consumer behavior so I was wondering if you guys could comment on the fact that maybe reducing the urgency of the problem could be changing people's changing people's dietary habits for example what would be the situation if the people eating too much meat would eat a diet more like your view about what's necessary yeah yeah how much could even with where we are now with having with having some sort of equilibration is this is this possible and like I said it's just it's not I'm not suggesting this in place of the main part how high do we really need to eat on the food chain it's interesting may I just say one quick response which is more technological because we only have a couple of minutes there are a very large number of interesting startup companies amongst them Pat Brown's company called impossible foods that are trying to use completely vegetable sourced proteins and fats because that's essential to create really exciting tasty foods that are 100% plant based so for those that are concerned about animal growth and using more wise use of plant resource there are actually scientific approaches which admittedly are techno fixes to this which are the heart of your question is vastly more interesting with no time here about can we change cultural norms and expectation behavior in three minutes but that's an interesting question perhaps comes out of this and I think as we're running out of time I think each of you panelists think about that that's one interesting question to take forward out of this what are others that you know could come out of this that then could perhaps inoculate future discussions on this just a small comment you know I I always say the most potent chemical on earth is DNA and our DNA is has we have evolved so strongly over so many years that we have to eat meat and fat those are those those to our ancestors who are able to find the most fat and the most meat and maybe some sugars about salt and then salt was always a that was a luxury but is what we had to have that too but meat and meat and fat were the we they were the ones who survived and we're able to bring Indians that might not agree with you on right right so in one sense I mean going forward it's like how changing that's going to be hard changing that sort of cultural tradition of needing meat and fat can we change that it's going to be very tough that's very tough beer I mean questions going forward that we can think about out of this I think question going further what that we should think about is how to how to distribute and I mean we can try to change consumer behavior to average for example the meat consumption so the highest meat eaters and then distribute that around the world but I think overall the whole scene is so polarized like there are those who are in favor of synthetic food and those who are totally against GMO and are for organic and for and then there is the biggest mass in between but I think sort of trying to distribute it and trying to sort of soften some of the edges is an approach that we need to take both from just the thought point of view but also how to distribute the food and how to equally manage the global food production and food change how to find common ground between extreme views and the as it relates to food exactly Mark well I have to agree with disagree with Chris about the the need for animal proteins we don't need animal proteins there are two billion people on this planet who are unvoltaire vegetarian if you want to look ahead what's going to happen with meat consumption being ingrained in our cultures and being ingrained also in the in the ideas of people who when when they become richer they want to eat meat is that if you if you do that observation right now the only continent right now where meat consumption is going down is Western Europe so yes it can happen over time interestingly in the United States there that the amount of meat consumption is twice as much as in Europe and that is still leveling off and it it may at some point go down as well we all expect that it will but globally that's that's at least not the trend in the next 30 years what happens after that will we all become vegetarian can we all become vegetarian we can will we do it I'm not so sure so we're out of time and so one thing I would say to come back to our original question is what if the organisms we eat are made by humans and not by nature by and large what we've come to the conclusion is that well they already are anyway thanks to our panelists and for all of you for being here this afternoon and enjoy the rest of your day thank you