Revision as of 01:35, 29 October 2013

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 var DEVPROJECT = "Phage contamination plagues the process of milk fermentation in British Columbia's large dairy industry. We therefore sought to focus our human practices section on this problem and the potential of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) to combat this issue. We designed a flowchart of steps that would take us from identifying the main challenges surrounding the use of GMOs in combating phage contamination, developing GMOs in the lab, and creating a marketing strategy for their commercial application. ";

 var GATHERINFO = "We began by aiming to gain a better understanding of the factors we needed to consider in our public survey. To achieve this, we chose to interview industry professionals and academics with backgrounds in Genetically Modified Organisms, the Dairy Industry, Food and Nutrition, Marketing, and Ethics.";
 var INDUSTRY = "Through interviewing industry professionals, we gained a better understanding of their needs, concerns, interactions between farmers, suppliers and consumers and their opinions on genetically modified organisms. Some individuals interviewed also offered suggestions regarding the marketing strategy for dairy products. Click to view the interview questions and watch the documentary..";
 var ACADEMIC = "In choosing the academic professionals, we selected our interviewees to be individuals whose opinions were expected to be biased according to their academic background. Professors in Land and Food Systems, Ethics and Philosophy, and Microbiology who have studied genetically modified organisms were asked to participate in our professional interview. Their responses opened our eyes to factors that we had not considered previously.Click to view the interview questions and watch the documentary.";
 var MARKETINGPROFS = "We spoke with two marketing professors, Tim Silk and Joey Hoegg and discussed our human practices mission statement. They assisted us in considering all of the marketing aspects of our project and helped us in developing our professional interviews with various other professors. After the academic interviews, having gained some perspective about the opinions individuals may express, we sat down with two marketing professors to lay down the basics of a public questionnaire. ";
 var DEVSURVEY = "We developed a survey composed of three sections: General yogurt purchasing habits such as price, size, and consumer use, Factors that buyers consider when making yogurt purchase and What factors individuals would consider in choosing to buy a genetically modified yogurt as opposed to a non modified yogurt.Through our industry and academic interviews, we isolated five motivators to test: Health Benefit, Health Hazards, Ecological Impact, Price, and Taste.Click to view the survey.";
 var ETHICSAPPROVAL = "To conduct our survey at Telus World of Science, we needed to obtain Ethic Approval from the UBC Behavioural Research Ethics Board. We submitted our application to the board, obtained approval from the Microbiology and Immunology Department, and with the help of Research Ethics analysts obtained the approval within two weeks.  Click to view the steps we followed to obtain our approval and the approval document.";
 var SCIENCEWORLD = "We decided to conduct our public survey at Telus World of Science. We met with Ms. Mila Cotic, the manager of community connections at Science World, and discussed the steps required leading up to the day when we would conduct the survey.";
 var CONDUCTSURVEY = "We conducted our survey at Telus World of Science on September 25th and 26th.  We set up a booth in the atrium on the upper floor and had some of our team members walk around the facility, asking individuals if they would like to take part in our survey. Anonymous results were collected.";
 var ANALYZESURVEY = "The survey results were entered into Excel and graphical analysis was conducted. Figures show the general purchasing habits as well as the factors considered when individuals buy yogurt in general and genetically modified yogurt.  Click to view the data collected and their analysis.";
 var DESIGNMARKETING = "Based on the results collected from the survey, we designed a marketing strategy for a genetically modified yogurt. We took into account the factors individuals consider when purchasing yogurt and how their choice may be swayed depending on changing those factors.Click to view the marketing strategy.";

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Human Practices

For the human practices component of our project, we aimed to understand industry and public’s perception of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) and how this can affect our project. Human practices include four main components: researching perception of GMOs through <a href="https://2013.igem.org/Team:British_Columbia/humanpractices/Interviews">interviews</a> and <a href="https://2013.igem.org/Team:British_Columbia/humanpractices/Analysis">surveys</a>, designing a <a href="https://2013.igem.org/Team:British_Columbia/marketing">marketing strategy</a> outline for GM yogurt, creating a comprehensive <a href="https://2013.igem.org/Team:British_Columbia/humanpractices/GMOLabeling">labeling guide</a> for GM products, and developing a <a href="https://2013.igem.org/Team:British_Columbia/humanpractices/SpaceR">Spacer Repository</a> for CRISPR systems. This particular approach was chosen for our project due to the consumer-based nature of our final product.

To understand the major struggles and concerns regarding GMOs in the dairy industry, we collected the opinions people have of GMOs through first interviewing various industry and academic professionals. The industry and academic professionals we worked with have backgrounds in yogurt production, dairy marketing, Philosophy, Bioethics, Biology, Microbiology, Genetics, Engineering, Land and Food Systems, and several other fields that are not directly involved with the issue of genetic modification. We then designed a public survey according to the feedback we obtained from the interviews to gather the general public’s opinion. The public survey (conducted at the Telus World of Science on 100 participants) improved our understanding about the major concerns that the public have with regards to consuming Genetically Modified foods, and specifically in our case, yogurt.

Through the public survey, we obtained preliminary data needed to develop a marketing strategy outline for our GM yogurt. After consulting with dairy industry professionals from the BC Dairy Association and Olympic Dairy Products Inc., we developed a marketing strategy outline for our GM yogurt. At the same time, we researched the various labelling standards employed by countries around the world, and taking in feed back from our interviews, generated a comprehensive labelling guide to accompany the marketing strategy for our yogurt.

On the CRISPR end of human practices, we researched the concerns surrounding CRISPR bacterial immunity. Due to recent discoveries with regards to the CRISPR system and scientific advances made in this field, we concluded that creating Space-R, a Spacer Repository, would be beneficial in assessing the potentially unintended implications of these sequences. We developed a submission sample and included the information that would be necessary in the repository.

Genetically Modified Yogurt

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Team:British Columbia/humanpractices

From 2013.igem.org

Revision as of 01:35, 29 October 2013

Human Practices

Genetically Modified Yogurt