Nano and Food section

The public and other stakeholders have a particular concern about Nanotechnologies when used in food. This was identified as a key area by MATTER Steering Group as early as 2008 and MATTER is becoming increasingly involved in this area. Key initiatives we have created or been involved in area as follows:

December 2010

Food Standards Agency Public Dialogue
Hilary participated as an expert in a Food Standards Agency public dialogue on Nano and Food

April 2010

Future Foods project

As part of a European Commission FP7 Project the NANOPLAT, we worked with scenarios design company Strategic Design Scenarios and the Leatherhead Food International to explore a methodology to engage the public on the use of technology in food.

The Future Foods Project was developed to use creative photo-representations of fictional foods using new technologies to explore the attitudes of the public and to feed in to policy, research and business development.

This was an exploration only and has not been used in a public dialogue as yet, though we are exploring how this could be taken forward in future public dialogues.

If you would like to know more about this project, please contact Hilary on hilary@matterforall.org

9th February 2010

Stakeholder Reflections on the House of Lords Nano & Food report

One month after the House of Lords published their Nano and Food report in January 2010, MATTER (then Responsible Nano Forum) convened a meeting of stakeholders to respond to the report. Their responses were also fed back to the House of Lords Committee at a personal meeting with Lord Krebs.

Here is the Agenda, the list of attendees and the notes of that meeting.

The Walking with Stakeholders project and the MATTER Business Group were created in response to this meeting.

6th March 2009

Nanotechnologies and Food Stakeholder meeting

In February 2009, just prior to the announcement of the House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee inquiry into Nanotechnologies and Food, MATTER (then Responsible Nano Forum) organised a meeting of stakeholders to explore the issues of Nanotechnologies and Food (scheduled for February 6th, but postponed to March 4th because of snow).

We consulted many key stakeholders in the area of Nano and Food and prepared a Nano and Food Issues Paper which summarised stakeholder concerns. This was used as a stimulus for the stakeholder meeting.

A Task List of those issues which stakeholders felt were a priority was created as an output of the meeting.