Future foods – who decides? International trends in food governance

1. Future foods – who decides? International trends in food governance Lynn J. Frewer and Gene Rowe

2. What is “public engagement”? • Need to develop societal trust in the motives of actors involved with developing the products of novel technologies or policy practices • Identify the concerns of interested stakeholders (including the general public), and to ensure that these concerns are addressed in the process of risk analysis and regulatory enforcement

3. The decline in public trust John Gummer, UK Minister of Agriculture, demonstrating the alleged safety of British beef (6 May 1990)

4. Some illustrative examples of “food scares” BSE

5. MAD COW CAN KILL YOU! I cannot rule out 500,000 deaths Europe bans British beef Mad cows and British science! McDonalds stops selling British beef Victims face insanity and certain death Fear of huge death toll Nature bites back

6. Imagery of BSE

7. Media reporting about BSE in 1996 Trust and blame Risk 3 0 n u m b e r Quality papers o f a r t i c l e s Tabloids 2 0 Frewer, Miles and Hunt (2002) 1 0 0 d a t e

8. (2007) Source. OIE 2008

9. The impact of BSE was more than just economic • Trust in Regulators and Scientists diminished • Why did the UK government deny the uncertainties regarding the potential link between BSE and vCJD in the early 1990s, while simultaneously funding research into the potential link? • Public perception that the government was acting to optimise industry interests and the economy not consumer protection • Institutional perception that the public could not understand scientific uncertainty • Lack of transparency in decision-making practices Public concern focused on trust and culpability

10. The assumed benefits of public engagement • Regaining societal trust in policy makers • Acquisition of political efficacy • Enhancement of democracy • Societal acceptance of decisions associated with policy development and implementation • Improvement of policy decisions (Adapted from Walls, Rowe and Frewer, in press)

11. Risk Assessment • Which hazards? • When are they assessed • and with which method? • What consequences are • judged important, and with • what level of uncertainty? • Who is affected? • Risk Management • How do values • influence the selection • and implementation of • policy alternatives? Risk Communication and Stakeholder Involvement Risk Communication and Stakeholder Involvement • Risk Assessment • Which hazards? • When are they assessed • and with which method? • What consequences are • judged important, and with • what level of uncertainty? • Who is affected? • Interactive exchange of information and opinions • Interactive exchange of information and opinions • Risk Management • How do values • influence the selection • and implementation of • policy alternatives? Increased transparency raises more communication needs?

12. The emergence of new governance models which explicitly include public participation

13. Emerging risk identification and improved risks analysis model Public participation Adapted from Koenig et al, in press

14. Public and stakeholder engagement • The public represent a specific stakeholder group • The focus of what follows will be on public, not stakeholder, participation • Other methods may be more appropriate for effective expert stakeholder participation, such as Delphi methodology Wentholt et al, 2009

15. A typology of different societal engagement mechanisms (Adapted from Rowe and Frewer, 2005)

16. Criteria for evaluating public participation (1) Acceptance (fairness) criteria • Representativeness • Participants should comprise a broadly representative sample of the affected public. • Independence • The participation process should be conducted in an independent, unbiased way. • Early Involvement • The public should be involved as early as possible in the process as soon as value judgments become salient. • Transparency • The process should be transparent so that the public can see what is going on and how decisions are being made. • Influence • The output of the procedure should have a genuine impact on policy.

17. Criteria for evaluating public participation (2) Process (competence) criteria • Task definition • The nature and scope of the task should be clearly defined, so that participants understand what is required of them, and why. • Resources • Participants should have access to the appropriate and sufficient resources (e.g. in terms of time and information) to enable them to fulfill their designated role. • Structured dialogue • The exercise should use appropriate mechanisms for structuring dialogue to ensure fair and accurate information exchange.

18. Genetically modified foods in Europe – consumer protest

19. The societal pressure for public participation into the UK GM debate • The coming to an end of a de facto moratorium on GM crop cultivation • The Blair administration’s ‘Modernising Government’ programme • A pre-occupation within government about a “perceived” loss of public trust • A major review of the regulatory framework for biotechnology • The establishment of the Agriculture and environment biotechnology council • The House of Lords report on Science and Society • The impact of BSE and the Phillips report

20. What the sponsors of ‘GM nation?’ required • To allow the public to frame the issues • Representativeness (‘grassroots’) • To create new opportunities to debate about the issues. • To enable (through dialogue with experts and other activities) access to the evidence • To create widespread awareness in the UK population of the debate, and give opportunities to register views • To allow mutual learning between the public and experts. • To complement and inform the economic and science strands and utilise their outputs • To calibrate the views of organisations who have already made their views known by contrasting their views with other participants in the debate • To provide intelligent qualitative information about public views emerging from the debate in a report to Government Generic and non-specific requirements which are difficult to measure!

21. November 2002 Foundation Discussion Workshops Nine large ‘focus groups’, eight with ordinary citizens pre-selected to represent a spread of socio-demographic characteristics, one with GM stakeholders. Exploratory ‘framing’ of issues in preparation for the main debate process the following summer. Open Meetings Tier 1 Major ‘national‘ meetings organised by Steering Board executive (n=6) Tier 2 Meetings organised by local councils or national organisations and supported by Steering Board executive (n= 40 estimated) Tier 3 Local meetings organised by community groups, educational centres etc. (n=629 estimated) estimated) Closed ‘Narrow-but-Deep’ Groups 10 re-convened focus groups held with 77 ordinary citizens pre-selected to represent a spread of socio-demographic characteristics. Each group met twice to deliberate on GM issues, with a period in between to gather information. MAIN DEBATE June-July 2003 Debate Website Including information on GM, and the opportunity to register views in qualitative and quantitative form. Transcripts and Questionnaire Emails/ Qualitative Analysis Rapporteurs’ Responses Letters of Participants’ Reports Discourse Steering Board Final Report (24th September 2003)

22. Distribution of perceived risks and benefits of GM crops (MORI 2003) (n=1,363) (n=1,363) Pidgeon et al, 2005

23. Distribution of perceived risks and benefits of GM crops for GM Nation? open questionnaires (n= 36,557) Pidgeon et al, 2005

24. Impact on public awareness How much do you know about ‘GM Nation? The Public Debate’, the National Debate on Genetic Modification of Food and Crops that has been going on recently? (n=1,363) Pidgeon et al, 2005

25. Impact • Level of impact on wider public uncertain • Impact on Government • International and legal requirements undermine its relevance of the exercise • Cynicism among both participants and the wider public about the likely impact of the debate on government policy

26. Conclusions - GM nation • There were significant flaws with the event e.g. extent of outright opposition to GM food and crops amongst the UK population is probably lower than indicated in the GM Nation? • Public participation is still potentially useful in a governance structure, but needs to be conducted and independently evaluated • Need to use results of the evaluation to inform improved events in future Rowe et al (2005)

27. Recommendations • Independent evaluation of both the process and impact of a specific public engagement or consultation exercise against theoretically underpinned criteria • Willingness to re-specify direction and goals of research and development based on the outcomes • Identification of the most appropriate mechanisms to apply to public engagement given the context of the exercise

28. How to do it? • Combine public engagement (for example, consensus conference) with public consultation (representative polling) • Methods for conducting and evaluating such exercises available • Identification of values, not policy options per se, unless this is done early enough in the process of policy development and formulation to make a difference? • Quantification of individual differences • What is the topic of interest?

29. Conclusions • Past failures in managing food-related hazards (and in other policy domains) has undermined public trust in policy makers • The traditional one-way model of communicating to the public is no longer appropriate • A new tradition of public (and/or stakeholder) engagement has arisen • Many mechanisms have been developed to enable such involvement • Evaluation has lagged behind practice • Systematic evolution of the benefits of engagement are scant • Further research is needed • to define what is a good outcome of engagement • to develop ways to measure outcomes (and processes) • to evaluate real-world examples

30. Thank you! Any questions?