Nanotech – the Sucessor to GMO’s?

On February 9, 2009, in Europe, Nanotech, Sustainability, by Tim

I spent the weekend in Paris enjoying delicacies such as “os a moelle” and eating couscous at Au Rendezvous, a Tunisian restaurant so fashionable that Jacques Chirac was at the next table, but came home to find a great deal of tweeting and blogging about nanotechnology & food (again).

It struck me as odd that in Paris cracking open a couple of beef shin bones and spreading the marrow on a bit of toast (os a moelle) is a perfectly normal thing to do, whereas most people in the UK wouldn’t dream of eating such a thing. On the other hand, many people in the UK are quite happy to eat at McDonalds and KFC but won’t touch GMO’s. There’s obviously nothing rational about attitudes to food.

Strangely, we now have government environment ministers hyping up the possibilities of the use of nanotechnologies in food, although I was a little concerned to see that the Observer summed up nanotechnology thus:

Nanotechnology is increasingly being seen as a successor to genetically modified (GM) techniques in food production, with GM trials meeting consumer resistance and sabotage by activists.

Tagged with: • • • •
 
1 Comments
Leave A Response

Nanotechnology in Food (again)

On February 5, 2009, in Development Issues, Europe, Health & Safety, Nanotech, Products, by Tim

The House of Lords Science & technology committee (or more accurately a sub committee) has started to investigate the use of nanotechnologies in the food sector and is calling for evidence.There’s plenty of it here.

Certainly if our experience of running a  few Nanofood confernces and producing a number of reports on the subject is typical, the committee could find it hard to gather firm evidence. Richard Jones gave a nice overview of the difficulties of even defiing the subject last year, but the marriage of nanotechnology and food is such an emotive and sensitive issue that it is hard to get anyone from major food company to stick their neck above the parapet.

My colleague Dexter Johnson who was the organiser of most of our food events has a few words to say on the subject, and I have to say I agree 100%. What the world needs is a joined up and sustainable food policy that makes the best, and most appropriate use of the technologies at our disposal, whether replacing horses with tractors or pesticides with GMOs. Many of the hard line groups advocating veganism or organic agriculture are in societies where that is an affordable lifestyle choice, whereas to most of the world food is just food – when it is available.

Banning a particular subsection of food, whether nanotechnology, chemistry (artificial fertilizers for instance) or physics (mechanised agriculture) is a pretty silly thing to do. However, it does work as a campaigning tactic as we have seen in the past. As most of the population is scientifically illiterate, it is very easy to make a convincing arguments by adding two bits of plausible science together and then coming to an implausible conclusion.

If some people want to live in a field eating a diet of grass and weeds fertilized by their own poo then they are quite at liberty to do so (although not in my garden!), and if the use of nanomaterials in packaging is shown to be safe then that is also fine. But just because we are wealthy enough to have a choice doesn’t mean that choice should be denied to the rest of the world – that is just selfish.


Tagged with: • • •
 
3 Comments
Leave A Response

Another Boring Swiss Risk Report

On January 23, 2009, in Europe, Health & Safety, Nanotech, Products, Publications, by Tim

There must be something in the water in Switzerland this year. Hot on the heels of the International Risk Governance Council‘s rather pointless report comes another missive from TA-Swiss (Schweizerische Akademie der Technischen Wissenschaften) looking at nanofood.

The TA-SWISS study concludes that people with certain “nutritional styles” could actually be open minded about food containing additives produced by nanotechnology. Even more so if we assume that nanofoods might be easier to manage and/or could have added health benefits. In developing countries, such additives could help to combat malnutrition; for example, by fortifying basic foods with iron, zinc, vitamin A or folic acid. It must, however, be taken into account that such products must also be affordable and accessible to the demographic groups that need them.

I’m not sure whether to yawn or gnash my teeth at this point – doing both might result in another trip to the dentist so I’ll just curse softly.  Why do people waste time putting out this kind of tedious, derivative and inconclusive research? Is the credit crunch already affecting the supply of scientific insight and creativity?

Tagged with: • • • • • •
 
0 Comments
Leave A Response

Go To Top »