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On July 18th, I attended a horizon-scanning workshop on food sustainability hosted by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. The aim of the meeting was to scope out the challenges facing food sustainability over the medium and long-term, and to examine what biological research and innovation is being conducted to try and meet those challenges.

The meeting featured a panoply of attendees from agriculture, food policy, academic historians, philosophers and social scientists, as well as natural scientists involved in research on crops and livestock.

The Nuffield Council on Bioethics convenes programmes of work to produce reports concerning ethical issues in medicine and the life sciences. The food sustainability workshop was the first such horizon-scanning event.

The meeting operated under Chatham House rules, so I cannot attribute views to attendees. I urged caution concerning the potential future scope of genome editing in the livestock industry, techniques that were of concern to some participants. I observed that genomic selection is, and will likely continue to be, more significant in effecting genetic change in livestock (and in the future crop-plant) populations. Genomic selection is an approach that uses quantitative methods and the ability to detect the presence of many thousands of genetic markers to generate predictive models to make selective breeding quicker and more precise.

Given the advent of a new inquiry into genome editing in livestock by the Nuffield Council, it is crucial to contextualise and qualify the potential extent and role of genome editing, alongside other powerful methodologies for effecting change in livestock populations.

A summary of the proceedings of the meeting will be circulated to participants.

James Lowe