Published: 03-01-2026
Genetic engineering cannot be contained in living systems. From bees to crops, engineered genes and microbes inevitably spread, exposing regulatory blind spots and challenging assumptions of control, precaution and accountability in rapidly deregulating governance frameworks.
Published: 09-10-2025
Our Turbo Charging Nature report explores how the UK’s rush to deregulate gene editing rests on a myth of speed. Drawing on five case studies, it shows that “fast science” has delivered slow results and obscured deeper questions about progress and accountability.
Published: 07-07-2025
Too often, research on agricultural biotechnology focuses on citizens as consumers, analysing buying habits, but ignoring bigger issues like the environment, fairness and values that may inform their views. We need a broader, more well-rounded view of citizens that encompasses different perspectives, explores why people may be sceptical and includes citizens in shaping the future of these technologies.
Published: 18-02-2025
As the UK pushes ahead with plans to deregulate both environmental and commercial releases of gene-edited crops and foods – and, soon, farm animals – this thoughtful long-read considers whether we are building a bright new future or just a more sophisticated form of man-made pollution.
Published: 18-12-2024
In 2024 we briefly considered – but rejected – a cheeky suggestion to bring back the provocative term ‘Frankenfoods’. The days of that kind of polemic may have passed but, as we note in our year-end reflection, the story of the Modern Prometheus still has something to teach us about foresight and accountability.
Published: 31-10-2024
Engineered rats, facial recognition for wildlife, ‘disestablishment’ of crucial horizon-scanning and disregard for international treaties. As COP16 wraps up in Cali, Colombia, here’s a trick-or-treat guide to what, sort of, just happened.
Published: 01-10-2024
The Royal Agricultural University’s Cultured Meat & Farmers project was a two-year study that examined the potential impact of cultured meat on UK farmers. Now that it’s wrapping up, what did we learn?
Published: 24-09-2024
If you can’t control or predict the future, how can you prepare for it? In his new book, Prof Ian Scoones suggests that in an increasingly unpredictable world conventional risk management – in finance and banking, critical infrastructures, pandemics, disasters and climate change and technology – is no longer working.
Published: 11-12-2022
The UK’s Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill, currently making its way through Parliament, allows gene editing of wild and free-living species. Shouldn’t we be talking about that?
Published: 31-10-2022
The UK government has committed itself to deregulating genetically engineered organisms created using new ‘gene editing’ technologies. But how well do its proposals align with those elsewhere in the world?
