Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications

NOTE: This document is a work in progress.

Environmental Impact of Dairy Industry

ToDo: Copy the stuff from the BioCoder article here. Link UN report on impact of dairy industry.

Efficiency of biomass conversion

Note: These are all very rough first estimates. Don't rely on this. Needs more research.

"...biomass formation can be achieved by innumerous metabolic pathways (Frick and Whitmann, 2005) and biomass yield on substrate can reach values up to 50% in pure oxidative growth (Akinyemi, Betiku and Solomon, 2005)." source

If we can get 1% to 3% casein yield per biomass, then we could maybe get between 0.5 to 1.5% casein per substrate efficiency.

Some info on dairy cow efficiency

Normal milk is about 2.6% casein. If a normal cow produces 25 kg of milk and consumes 25 kg feed per day (which is approximately normal), then that is about 2.6% efficiency.

Milk production in North America is estimated to produce 1.3 kg CO2 equivalents per kg of milk http://www.progressivedairy.com/index.php?option=com_content&id=6491:how-much-gas-do-cows-produce&Itemid=121

Anti-GMO Sentiments

Here's a good resource from the skeptiforum wiki

According to estimates, between 80 and 90 per cent of cheese in the USA and Great Britain is manufactured using chymosin produced using gene technology[1].Most of the rest is produced using rennet extracted from the stomachs of suckling calves[2]. "Take your pick: eat GMO cheese, or be a baby-killer?"

The "Yuck Factor": Eating Human Proteins

Even among people who are perfectly willing to contemplate genetically engineered cheese, there seems to be a distinct "yuck factor" regarding using the human genes, even though there could be significant health benefits to doing so.

As an additional mind-twister: if we use the human reference sequence, we would essentially be making cheese from Craig Venter's genes...

STATEMENT OF ETHICS

Purpose of this statement

This document describes our core values and how we are striving to implement them in our work on the Real Vegan Cheese Project. Our code of ethics is based on the draft code formulated by participants in the 2011 North American DIYbio Congress. See also, the draft code developed at the 2011 European DIYbio Congress. These ethics are for the Real Vegan Cheese Project and do not represent the ethics of Counter Culture Labs, or Biocurious.

Open Access

Promote citizen science and decentralized access to biotechnology. We believe all people have the right to engage in scientific inquiry and we strive to promote access to tools and technical knowledge to make that engagement possible. Asking questions and seeking answers is a fundamental part of who we are as humans, and crucial to securing a hopeful future for the planet. We are committed to keeping Real Vegan Cheese 100% open, but in a world in which openness is not the norm, it is not necessarily obvious how best to achieve that goal. Our meeting notes and lab experiments are available online, but would this be enough to keep another entity from patenting our techniques? We considered several options to ensure that anybody who wants to can continue to work on this project in the future. One option we considered is the newly developed Defensive Patent License (DPL), which would make our technique freely available to anyone else who also agrees to put their patents in a common “pool” (a legal mechanism similar to and inspired by the GNU General Public License and other efforts to promote free and open source software development) (Schultz and Urban 2012). However, the DPL would restrict access to those who do not opt in to the pool. After some spirited discussion and a vote, our current plans are to patent our innovation and then “abandon” the patent into the public domain. This way, no one will be able to privatize our work and it will remain truly open to anyone who wants to use it. [add citation on “file and abandon” method?] [How does Biobricks Public Agreement fit in? We will be donating some of our parts back to the iGem registry...]

Transparency

Emphasize transparency, the sharing of ideas, knowledge and data. We believe that transparency breeds trust. So many organizations work behind closed doors or patent walls. Like the many processes before us, our open process enhances innovation, brings the conversation to a wide audience, and asks for participation - not exclusion. We implement transparency by publishing meeting minutes and lab notes on our wiki, and publicizing our meeting times and location on Meetup.com and on our website. Those who want to participate but are not local can join us virtually.

Education

Engage the public about biology, biotechnology and their possibilities. Our education philosophy moves beyond a “deficit” model that sees the public as lacking in scientific knowledge, to one that seeks to harness the diverse skill sets of community members and engage them in substantial discussion about how to steer the development of biotechnologies. We recognize that everyone – those with scientific training included – comes to the table with expertise in some areas and not others, and we seek to learn from each other. By working on meaningful, member-guided projects, the question we are asking the public changes from “should scientists or corporations be allowed to…?” to “how should we use these tools?” This education philosophy is supported by recent scholarship in Science and Technology Studies (STS). STS scholarship has moved beyond often misleading and over-simplifying “for or against” opinion polling to show that both European and US publics are not anti-GMO, but rather ambivalent about technologies that seek to modify organisms. In general, people who express apprehension about these technologies are not dead set against a particular technique (such as genetic modification). Instead, they frequently have concerns about the context in which such techniques are “developed, evaluated, and promoted” - concerns which can stem from a lack of faith that institutional actors and processes are acting in the best interests of the public (Marris 2001). Finally, members of the public also express concern regarding the complexity of biology and the unknown consequences of intervening in systems which are not fully characterized (Pauwels 2013). These concerns will not necessarily evaporate by feeding the public more technical information, although many of our members join because they want to learn more about biology. Instead, we believe that the best and most respectful response to public ambivalence is to develop and use biotechnologies in a radically open and transparent manner.

Safety

Adopt safe practices. (What safety standards do our labs comply with?) FDA guidelines; Biosafety level 1; people experimenting on self by eating cheese

Environment

Respect the environment. We believe that using animals as large-scale food production machines is ethically and environmentally irresponsible. The Real Vegan Cheese project was motivated by a desire to find more sustainable and humane alternatives to the model of industrial agriculture. While using yeast seems clearly preferable from an animal welfare perspective, assessing the environmental impact of shifting production to yeast is more complicated. To understand whether large-scale cheese production using yeast would be more environmentally friendly than the current mammal-based model, our team is working on comparing the efficiency of each method: how much biomass is required to produce a given amount of cheese through each method? How much energy input is required for both? Finally, the dairy industry is known to be a significant contributor of the greenhouse gases that are warming our planet (producing 4% of the total human-caused greenhouse gases, according to a 2010 UN report). Could our method of cheese production help reduce this number?

Peaceful Purposes

Biotechnology should only be used for peaceful purposes. We are currently living the consequences of science used in the name of creating power and profit for people (environmental degradation, poor access to meds). If humanity wants to grow and evolve into the future, we must harness the power of biology for the betterment of the planet and its inhabitants. Real Vegan Cheese has committed itself to producing a sustainable and renewable food source that is not only good for human consumption, but also good for the planet. We recognize the potential of open-access projects to contribute to resource equality and peace around the globe and are committed to playing our part in moving humanity forward.

Tinkering

Tinkering with biology leads to insight; insight leads to innovation.

Tinkering in the labs = molecular lab, social lab

Community

Reach out to the local community, carefully listen to any concerns and questions and respond honestly.

Citations

Food and Agriculture Association of the United Nations. “Greenhouse Gases From the Dairy Sector: A Life Cycle Assessment.” 2010. Available: http://www.fao.org/docrep/012/k7930e/k7930e00.pdf

Marris, Claire. “Public Views on GMOs: Deconstructing the Myths.” EMBO Rep., 2(7): 545–548. Jul 7, 2001.

Pauwels, Eleanor. “Public Understanding of Synthetic Biology.” BioScience, 63(2):79-89. 2013.

Schultz, Jason, and Urban, Jennifer M. “Protecting Open Innovation: The Defensive Patent License as a New Approach to Patent Threats, Transaction Costs, and Tactical Disarmament.” Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, Vol. 26, 2012. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2040945