CBAN AgTech Intensive Workshop Series
CBAN member groups and allies are invited to join us for our new “AgTech Intensive” series on emerging and converging technologies. These unique online invitation-only events will help us understand complex issues and build our collective capacity to respond. You are encouraged to register and participate in all three workshops as we build our analysis together.
These are not public events.
These are closed events for CBAN members and other key civil society actors in Canada. We encourage CBAN members and our allies in the food and environmental movement to circulate this notice within your own organizations. You are also welcome to contact us with suggestions of other civil society invitees. Please contact Lucy with these suggestions or with any questions or for more information.
Each training session will include a presentation by an expert resource person(s), followed by discussion to build analysis and strategic priorities.
- Artificial intelligence (AI) and genetic engineering (GE), March 24th, 1:00pm Eastern.
- An introduction to RNAi pesticides, March 31, * 2:00pm Eastern
- Gene editing and the future of genetic engineering, April 7, 1:00pm Eastern.
If you would like an introduction or refresher to genetic engineering, please click here.
Workshop #1
Introduction to AI and GE:
The implications of organisms as data sets and data platforms
Monday, March 24, 1:00 Eastern
The workshop will include presentations by Professor Élisabeth Abergel from the Université du Québec à Montréal, Jim Thomas of Scan The Horizon; with response from Ricarda Steinbrecher of EcoNexus, UK, as well as discussion between key and trusted allies.
AI is being used to digitally design new genetic systems. The reductionist science of genetic engineering is reaching its zenith as organisms are being remade as digital data sets and conceived as data platforms for corporate exploitation. These new and converging technologies are transitioning genetic engineering to synthetic biology, and molecular biology to ‘generative biology’.
AI models trained on large amounts of biological information can appear to generate credible-seeming new arrangements for biological molecules – including new DNA sequences and protein sequences. The AI software then develops its own model to sort and ‘understand’ those biological codes, which, in turn, can be prompted to generate ‘new’ biological language – such as novel DNA codes for genomes or new arrangements of amino acids for novel proteins. All of these processes depend on first accepting a highly reductive (and incomplete) understanding of how genetic systems function…Using AI to digitally design genetic systems moves the process of genetic engineering into an unknowable algorithmic ‘black box’ where individual design decisions can be neither traced nor explained. This opaque ‘black box’ character of AI biodesign…is inherent to generative AI.
– From Black Box Biotech, African Centre for Biodiversity, 2024.
Resources:
Black Box Biotech, African Centre for Biodiversity, 2024.
When Chatbots breed new plant varieties, Save Our Seeds, 2025.
Workshop #2
Introduction to RNAi pesticides
*Please note that this event takes place at 2:00 Eastern
Monday, March 31, 2:00 Eastern
Join us to find out about proposals to genetically modify organisms with RNAi sprays. Featuring a presentation and discussion with Professor Jack Heinemann, University of Canterbury, New Zealand.
RNAi pesticides are being designed to kill target insects by silencing genes essential for their survival. Gene-silencing RNAi pesticides can be applied to insect pests but also to plants, directly in fields or other open-air settings via sprays, root soaks, or trunk injections. RNAi applications could also be designed for other functions, including as to enhance growth or to reverse herbicide resistance, to modify post- harvest traits such as ripening, to initiate resistance to disease in target crops or animals, and more.
Gene-silencing RNAi pesticides would be applied to entire fields, and any exposed organism with a matching or similar gene sequence may potentially become genetically modified, whether it is a target or non-target organism. Unintended genetic consequences could be inherited and persist in the environment for generations. Read Gene-Silencing Pesticides: Risks and Concerns, Friends of the Earth US, 2020.
Professor Heinemann is a geneticist with expertise in genetic engineering, bacterial genetics and biosafety. He has participated in the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development as a lead author and as a contributing author to the International Panel on Climate Change 6th Assessment. His research interests include the genetics and molecular biology of bacteria, phage, plasmids and some single-celled eukaryotic microorganisms with particular interest in antibiotic resistance, but also in biosafety science and the history of genetics.
Resources:
Securing the safety of genetic modification (article) Jack Heinemann et al, 2013.
Gene-Silencing Pesticides: Risks and Concerns (report) Friends of the Earth US, 2020.
Transferring the laboratory to the wild: An emerging era of environmental genetic engineering (briefing) Eva Sirinathsinghji, 2019.
Workshop #3
Gene editing and the future of genetic engineering:
Directions, meaning and risks
Monday, April 7, 1:00 Eastern
This workshop will feature a presentation and discussion with Dr Ricarda Steinbrecher (EcoNexus, UK), a leading expert in global discussions on the risks of gene/genome editing, and the ways in which it is being used to, for example, create gene drives and other new GMOs such as gene-edited forest trees. Dr Steinbrecher will review the techniques of gene/genome editing, such as CRISPR, and discuss where they are leading us: Why do we do it? What does it mean?
This is a critical discussion to confront the future direction of genetic engineering and key to CBAN’s new “No GMO Salad” campaign, which aims to stop Bayer from selling gene-edited salad greens and other gene-edited vegetables and fruits, and from selling gene-edited seeds to market gardeners. Gene editing is being used to develop a wide range of GM plants, microorganisms, insects and other animals, for many different purposes.
We need to be equipped to counter corporate public relations that falsely promote gene editing as being risk-free and more natural than older genetic engineering. We will hear how gene editing is both the same and different from earlier genetic engineering techniques. Health Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency have removed pre-market regulation from many gene edited plants and foods from these plants (if they have no foreign DNA). Dr. Steinbrecher will address the arguments used by Canadian regulators, CropLife Canada, and regulators around the world, that are used to reassure the public that gene editing does not need government safety assessment. Get a refresher on gene editing and a new perspective on its risks and the breadth of its intended applications, and discuss what it all means for our campaigning.
Dr. Ricarda Steinbrecher is a biologist and molecular geneticist based in the United Kingdom. She has examined genetically modified organisms, their risks and impacts on agriculture, environment and health since 1995, including the risks of genetically engineered trees. Dr. Steinbrecher is involved in United Nations-led processes and has been appointed to international expert groups on the risk assessment of genetically modified organisms as well as synthetic biology. She is a founding member of the European Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental Responsibility, and she is a member of the Federation of German Scientists. She is co-director of the small public interest research organisation EcoNexus. www.econexus.info
