Difference between revisions of "Team:Paris Bettencourt/Sustainability/Acceptance"

Revision as of 21:04, 4 September 2015

Law :

During our iGEM experience, we had to contact lawmakers and assess what they were thinking about our project. For that, we contacted the FSSAI, the Food Safety and Standard Authority in India, and we had a quick reply from Dr. A. K. Sharma, the consultant of the FSSAI on the behalf of the Chairperson and CEO of FSSAI. He advised us to make sure we chose the right microorganisms so they can survive and work together, along with the use of critical genes for the vitamins pathways. For the law, there is currently no authorisation for GMO microorganisms in the Indian Food regulation and if we want to have our product in India, the safety needs to be established.

Indian Citizen Acceptance :

Because the law is not the only element we needed to consider for our project, we decided to build a survey on the food habits of Indian citizen, to understand what they eat the most and when, how they cook, how often the food varies, how they see our idea, etc. In order to get in touch with Indian populationd, we shared our survey with an ex- iGEMer (Alice LEBOEDEC from the 2014 INSA­Lyon team) who went in the end of July in South India. She helped us gather information by assissting people to fill it so our team would benefit from this survey and shape our project along with people preferences. Collecting information on the field is essential, to understand people’s acceptance toward our project, and to find ways of introducing this project into their daily life without disrupting their tradition and culture. Not only Alice brought few survey filled by inhabitant of a small village, but she also took for us few samples of idli batter, curd (fermented milk), rice, lentils and condiments for us to analyze. Among the farmers that filled the survey, we could see that everyone eats rice daily with vegetables as a side dish, while fish and meat are eaten once or twice a week. The people she interviewed were really enthusiatic towards our project and they would try the modified microorganisms that make food more nutritious. You can see below the photos of the Idli preparation and the batter.

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