london

Representatives of the science academies of the United States, Britain, Brazil, China, India and Mexico and the Third World Academy of Sciences are to meet in London next month to discuss a possible joint study on genetic modification (GM) in world agriculture.

The meeting will be held on 13 July at the Royal Society in London, which is organizing the gathering jointly with the US National Academy of Sciences.

Several recent studies — including ones from the Nuffield Council on Bioethics (see Nature 399, 396; 1999) and the Royal Society (see Nature 395, 5; 1998) — have concluded that GM technology has a significant role to play in tackling world hunger. But this meeting will be the first time that academies from developing countries have been invited to contribute their ideas.

Each academy has been asked to send up to three experts. The meeting will discuss the possibility of a common position on issues such as the extent to which GM crops can contribute to food production, and the environmental risks of GM crops, along with specific issues such as ‘Terminator’ seeds (see main story) and regulatory matters, such as the United Nations biosafety protocol.