Hi Everyone
Great to be part of this group! Thank you.
For those who don’t know me I am Pat Thomas, Director of the UK’s Beyond GM and its parallel activity A Bigger Conversation. We operate with quite a small staff. I come from an investigative journalism background working mainly in the field of food, health and environment. I am a former editor of the Ecologist magazine a former trustee of the UK’s Soil Association and also of the Organic Research Centre.
Beyond GM, which is very much focused on representing citizen perspectives in the GMO debate, has taken up most of my time since 2014 and A Bigger Conversation, launched in 2018, which aims to bring a more diverse mix of perspective together to discuss GMOs from ethical, social, academic, scientific has made me even busier!
In the UK, over the last 2 years we have begun to pay greater attention to the patents question. Here, the deregulation of gene edited organisms (what UK calls precision bred organisms, or PBOs) has been sold to regulators and the media on the notion that that they are the same as natural organisms. We have lobbied to remove this language from the new legislation (which it was) – and the patent issue was one of our strongest arguments. But the narrative is still very much in play. We believe the patents question is crucial to the debate on regulatory reform.
Looking forward to working with you all,
Best,
Pat
From: Npos_2018 npos_2018-bounces@testbiotech.de On Behalf Of Christoph Then Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2023 10:21 AM To: npos_2018@testbiotech.de Subject: [Npos_2018] welcome to to Eva and Pat
Dear all
Eva Gelinsky (IG Saatgut) and Pat Thomas (Beyond PM) are now on our list of No Patents on Seeds! This was decided at our annual meeting.
welcome and maybe the new colleagues want to introduce themselves to our group.
looking forward for a good cooperation!
Christoph