On evaluating the GM Nation? Public debate about the commercialisation of transgenic crops in Britain

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Horlick-Jones, Tom, Walls, John, Rowe, Gene, Pidgeon, Nick, Poortinga, Wouter and O'Riordan, Tim (2006) On evaluating the GM Nation? Public debate about the commercialisation of transgenic crops in Britain. New Genetics and Society, 25 (3). pp. 265-288. ISSN 1469-9915

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Abstract

The public debate about GM crops that took place in Britain in 2002-03 was an unprecedented experiment for the UK in public engagement. The Government, which sponsored the exercise, made a pledge: to take into account lay perspectives, as well as the views of its expert advisers, when making a decision about the possible commercialisation of this controversial technology. As officially accredited but independent evaluators of the debate, we were given unique behind-the-scenes access to the organisation and execution of the debate process. In this paper we report on our findings, which reveal a debate process that, whilst innovative, suffered from a number of important flaws: in terms of both design and implementation. These shortcomings in part reflect constraints on time and budget, and the context of political pressure in which the debate took place. However, they also demonstrated a lack of design knowledge and availability of appropriate expertise: matters with an important bearing on future plans for such initiatives.

Item Type:	Article
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences University of East Anglia Research Groups/Centres > Theme - ClimateUEA
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment (CSERGE) Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Resources, Sustainability and Governance (former - to 2018)
Related URLs:	http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?...
Depositing User:	Rosie Cullington
Date Deposited:	25 Jan 2011 14:41
Last Modified:	09 Aug 2023 15:30
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/19495
DOI:	10.1080/14636770601032858

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