Journal of Food Processing & Technology

Global food security and sustainability: The regulatory issues

2^nd International Conference on Food Safety and Regulatory Measures

June 06-08, 2016 London,UK

Malcolm Elliott

The Norman Borlaug Institute for Global Food Security, UK

Scientific Tracks Abstracts: J Food Process Technol

Abstract:

At the end of October 2011, United Nations�?? demographers observed that the World�??s population had reached 7 billion. The UN FAO estimated that, in 2010, more than a billion people went to bed hungry or starving every night. The World�??s population will approach nine billion by the middle of this Century, so, we face the supreme challenge of producing much more food on less land with less water, fewer agrochemicals and less energy while maintaining biodiversity and confronting global climate change. It is apparent now, that agriculture must be sustainable. We understand this to mean that our agricultural practices across scales of time and space must be in long term balance, meeting human needs with safe, healthy outcomes within the boundaries of our natural resource base. Nineteen seventy Nobel Peace Laureate, Norman Borlaug (�??The Man Who Fed the World�?�) initiated the Green Revolution in Agriculture. He championed the application of cutting edge science to crop improvement and in this cause he espoused crop gene manipulation and other state-of-the-art genetic approaches. The use of GM technology has been accepted in medicine but certain NGOs have campaigned so vigorously against the use of GM techniques in food production that regulatory and legal constraints have proliferated and they now threaten to cripple the developments that promise to deliver a more sustainable existence for humanity, in spite of the global consensus among scientific societies that GM technology is safe. However, the political systems of Japan and most European and African countries remain opposed to growing GM crops. Many countries lack GM regulatory systems or have regulations that prohibit growing and, in some countries, importing GM food and feed.

Biography :

Malcolm Elliott graduated with First Class Honors in Plant Sciences from the University of Wales in 1963. His PhD in Plant Biochemistry (1966) was followed by a period as a Fulbright Scholar and Research Staff Biologist at Yale University (1967-1969). He returned from the USA to the post of Lecturer in Plant Biochemistry at The University of Leicester (1969-1971), then he became Professor and Head of The School of Life Sciences at De Montfort University, (1971-1994), Chairman of the College of Deans at De Montfort University (1989-1993) then Founding Director of The Norman Borlaug Institute for Global Food Security (1994 to 2011) and Editor in Chief of the BioMed Central open access Journal of Agriculture and Food Security (2011 to date). He is the author of several hundred research publications and he has directed the Higher Degree programmes of more than 50 graduate students. He was honored by the award of the Charles University Medal (1992), the Gregor Mendel Gold Medal for Biological Sciences Research of Exceptional Merit (1993), the Jan Evangelista Purkyne Medal (1994) and the DSc (Honoris Causa) of the Bulgarian Academy of Agricultural Science (2006).

Email: prof.m.elliott@gmail.com