Genome editing is revolutionising the field of genetics, which includes novel applications to food animals. Responsible research and innovation has been advocated as a way of ensuring that a wider-range of stakeholders and publics are able to engage with new and emerging technologies to inform decision making from their perspectives and values. We posit that genome editing is now proceeding at such a fast rate, and in so many different directions, such as to overwhelm attempts to achieving a more reflective (...) pace. An alternative location for reflection is during the much slower process of taking products from the lab to market. We suggest emphasising Responsible Innovation, putting the ‘I’ back into RRI, and encouraging companies to embrace an RRI approach. We review some previous attempts at developing industry-relevant frameworks for RRI. We then describe two examples of genome editing in livestock; hornless cattle and disease resistant pigs, and reflect on the sorts of questions that could be considered in these two genome editing examples. This paper seeks to take forward the discussion on RRI by extending it to bringing products to market in the context of genome edited livestock. (shrink)

The magnitude of public concerns about agricultural innovations has often been underestimated, as past examples, such as pesticides, nanotechnology, and cloning, demonstrate. Indeed, studies have proven that the agricultural sector presents an area of tension and often attracts skepticism concerning new technologies. Digital technologies have become increasingly popular in agriculture. Yet there are almost no investigations on the public acceptance of digitalization in agriculture so far. Our online survey provides initial insights to reduce this knowledge gap. The sample represents the (...) German population in terms of gender, age, education and size of place of residence. Results showed that if the potential of digital farming technologies regarding animal welfare and environmental protection was described, respondents reacted positively. Thus, the general attitudes of respondents toward the benefits of DFT were mostly positive. The approval to increasing adoption rates of particular DFT by providing subsidies was also high. Linear regression models showed that the dominant positive influences on respondents’ attitudes toward the benefits of DFT were a generally positive attitude toward farming and a strong trust in farmers in Germany. Confronting respondents with pictures showing DFT resulted in many spontaneous negative associations and general criticism of agricultural production. The latter holds true for DFT in animal husbandry in particular. However, as agriculture as a whole is criticized by many groups in Germany, it is unlikely that benefits from digitalization will significantly increase the public acceptance of agriculture as a whole. (shrink)

Bioeconomy solutions potentially reduce the utilization demand of natural resources, and therefore, represent steps towards circular economy, but are not per se equivalent to sustainability. Thus, production may remain to be achieved against losses in natural resources or at other environmental costs, and materials produced by bioeconomy are not necessarily biodegradable. As a consequence, the assumption that emerging bioeconomy by itself provides an environmentally sustainable economy is not justified, as technologies do not necessarily become sustainable merely through their conversion to (...) using renewable resources for their production. A source of the above assumption is that the utility of bioeconomy is mostly assessed in interaction between technology developers and economists, resulting in biased assessment with private commercial technology benefits being included, but environmental costs, especially longer term ones, not being sufficiently considered in the economic models. A possible solution to this conceptual contradiction may come from bioethics, as a strong concept in environmental ethics is that no technological intervention can be imposed on nature beyond its receptive capacity. To achieve a better balanced analysis of bioeconomy, environmental and ecological, as well as non-economic social aspects, need to be included in the overall assessment. (shrink)

The use of virtual fencing in pasture-grazed farm systems is currently close to commercial reality but there are no studies applying the principles of responsible research and innovation, such as foresighting, to this technology. This paper reports results of a study aimed at foresighting potential implications associated with virtual fencing of cattle. A Delphi method was used to survey the opinions of farming practitioners and researchers, using pasture-grazed cattle farming in New Zealand as a case study. The key benefits were (...) identified as environmental protection, improved feed allocation, access to previously unavailable grazing areas, labour savings and individual animal management. The five most important potential barriers identified were device reliability, farmer perception of a value proposition, ethical issues related to community perception of negative animal welfare, lack of feed budgeting skills of farmers, and excessive training time. We suggest that more knowledge is needed on ethical issues associated with VF, including understanding public opinions of such technology developments. We suggest that development and use of VF has been focussed primarily on technical features and user benefits and needs to include consideration of wider socio-ethical principles to ensure responsible innovation processes. The findings from this study will aid focussed research and development to incorporate ethically acceptable development alongside technical factors. (shrink)

Societal attitude acceptance can influence the digital transformation in agriculture. Digital technologies, such as robots in dairy farming, can lead to more sustainable, animal welfare-friendly and consumer-oriented milk production. This study used the example of the milking and feeding robots to investigate whether society accepts the use of robots in dairy farming and whether there are differences in society based on perceived risks and opportunities of digitalization in dairy farming and acceptance. To this end, an online-based study was conducted with (...) a total of 1007 citizens in Germany. Overall, the respondents in this study suspect that the use of robots in dairy farming is associated with various risks but also with opportunities for society and for farmers in particular. However, these attitudes are quite heterogeneous. Four clusters could be identified: “proponents of robots”, “indifferent citizens”, “skeptical citizens”, and “critical supporters of robots”. Proponents of robots see only opportunities and little risks, whereas the critical citizens perceive not only opportunities but also many risks of using robots in dairy farming. The indifferent citizens show a rather indifferent attitude, in contrast to the skeptical citizens, who reject the opportunities at the societal level, while they agree with the opportunities of robots for farmers. This research contributes to understanding societal attitudinal acceptance and highlights differences in society that can help inform future decisions about the development and adoption of robots in dairy farming. (shrink)

The integration of a Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) approach to food systems can contribute to redirect research and innovation toward the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2 - Zero hunger - as well as other intertwined SDGs. Even though the scientific literature bridging RRI and food systems has grown over the past years, no critical reviews of this scholarship are currently available. This paper fills this gap by producing a critical review of the scientific literature on RRI in food systems (...) that has been published between 2017 and 2023. Our search led to a selection of 47 research articles that were analysed for this review. Our findings show that studies in this scholarship have focused on the stages of inputs/agricultural production, with a focus on digital technologies for agriculture. When analysing the motivations for applying RRI, we found that this varied from reasons that are more market-related, such as increasing technologies’ societal acceptance, to a reorientation of food systems towards the tackling of societal challenges. Concerning the conceptualization of RRI in food systems, we found that scholars relied on a widely known definition, but its interpretation varied greatly among the studies. Finally, we analysed how RRI has been applied in this literature and found that while some scholars provided examples of responsible innovation, others applied it to analyse innovation governance, and others used RRI to analyze research projects or innovations to ‘improve’ their alignment with this concept. Overall, this literature review showed that there is a need to develop more collaborative and reflexive work to unlock RRI’s potential to inform policy and practice that can foster more responsive and inclusive food systems capable of achieving SDG2. (shrink)

This paper presents results of a systematic literature review of RRI practices which aimed to gather insights to further both the theoretical and practical development of RRI. Analysing practices of RRI and mapping out main approaches as well as the values, dimensions or characteristics pursued with those practices, can add to understanding of the more conceptual discussions of RRI and enhance the academic debate. The results, based on a corpus of 52 articles, show that practices already reflect the rich variety (...) of values, dimensions and characteristics provided in the main definitions in use, although not all are addressed yet. In fact, articles dealing with uptake of RRI practices may be improved by including more methodological information. RRI practices may further the conceptual debate by including more reflection, and these may foster mutual responsiveness between theory and practice by early anticipating impacts. (shrink)