How Often Do You Eat A Mutant Food? – 6pm, Wednesday 14th November 2012

As the World’s population continues to grow past the 7 billion mark more and more crops are needed to feed us, our livestock and grow biofuels. This increasing global food demand creates significant environmental and health concerns, driving up food prices and exerting extra pressure on the land we use for agriculture.

Alternative ways to increase crop yields are urgently required and the area of research that has attracted by far the most attention is genetic-modification or GM food.

Dr Elli Gilroy from the James Hutton Institute in Invergowrie asked how does GM compare to the process of cross-breeding plants and livestock that humans have undertaken in the past 6000 years and why scientists are trying to use this technology to better the world.