Both government and industry have dipped their toes in the water with a few initial experiments using consensus conferences, citizens' juries, focus groups and deliberative polls. But these should be used more widely and integrated into decision making if the public is to understand and decide what risks with GM are acceptable, argues the report. The basis against which risks are measured also needs to become more sophisticated. Simply assessing the effects of GM technologies and crops against existing practices in conventional agriculture, especially when conventional industrialised agriculture itself is under attack for being unsustainable. This natural time, however, is a barrier to economic efficiency, which seeks to overcome natural time and control time to suit production processes, she argues.
Genetic engineering is only possible because all species share a very early prehistory.
These different species have settled down into some form of stability with their environment through trial and error processes of evolution over millennia, but genetic engineering takes elements of that common genetic heritage and mixes them up in an instant. Taking account of time and uncertain risk is also a problem for the law, argues another of the GECP researchers, Chris Williams, from the Institute of Education at the University of London. The justice system must evolve to meet the challenge of scientific uncertainty so that those responsible for new technologies with potential adverse impacts are held responsible for any harm they cause.