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Agriculture and Environment Biotechnology Commission (AEBC) | |||
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AEBC/03/03
UPDATE ON WORK OF GM PUBLIC DEBATE STEERING BOARD 1. This is a short note to update Commission Members on the headline developments on the GM debate since the last AEBC meeting. 2. Mrs Beckett has now written to the GM public debate steering board confirming a doubling of the debate budget from £250,000 to £500,000 (DEFRA will also meet COI’s management fee on top of this) and an extension of the debate timetable. The steering board plan to report to Government in September the public views expressed in the debate. 3. The report from the foundation discussion workshops in which members of the general public framed the issues for debate has been published and its findings incorporated in planning. 4. The steering board meeting on 20 February signed off a costed programme of activity to take place in May/June/July this year. The plan is - as particularly requested by the devolved administrations – that the period of debate should incorporate the publication of the first tranche of results from the Farm Scale Evaluations. 5. The programme of activity signed off by the board is broadly in line with the AEBC’s original advice. It includes development and dissemination of a toolkit of debate which will include a CD-rom, a film, paper-based materials. The toolkit will be designed for use by local networks to facilitate debate. The different parts of the toolkit will draw on balanced stimulus material The steering board will also run six large ‘first tier’ meetings across the UK (including one each in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) functioning as events in themselves and platforms to stimulate local use of the toolkits. Working with individual county councils and others it is planned to offer facilitation (in addition to the toolkit) for a second-tier of larger meetings. How many second–tier meetings can be facilitated will depend on how much partnership arrangements defray the costs of running the six first-tier meetings. 6. The steering board will also devote resources to working in advance to develop partnerships and interest among local networks and in the national and regional media. It is expected that a national broadcaster will partner the steering board in providing a web-based moderated discussion forum for the debate. Mechanisms for feeding back and analysing the output from meetings at all levels and from individuals are at present being developed. The steering board has appointed an external report-writer who will draft the report for the steering board to give to Government. 7. In parallel with the broad public programme of activity, a series of reconvened deliberative focus groups will be conducted (by Corr Willbourn) involving the general public. The results of these will be compared with the outputs from the broad public debate and will themselves offer in-depth information about people’s deliberation on the issues. 8. The steering board has also been maintaining close contact with the science review and the Prime Ministers’ Strategy Unit team undertaking the economics study on GM crops. GM Public Debate Steering Board Secretariat February 2003 |
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