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The spectre of a food security crisis has raised important questions about future directions for agriculture and given fresh impetus to a long-standing debate about the potential contribution of agricultural biotechnology to food security. This paper considers the discursive foundations for promotion of agricultural biotechnology, arguing that notions of progress and "science-based" risk assessment act as "anti-political" strategies to remove consideration of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) from the cut and thrust of politics, while the concept of "food security" reconstitutes agricultural biotechnology as a moral imperative. We argue that a debate ostensibly focussed on developing countries in fact largely arises from discordant views about the future of farming and rural areas in the developed countries where these arguments are taking place. These debates are examined through a comparative study of the UK and Australia. Whereas acceptance of GM crops and foods at government and industry level has not led to commercial adoption in the UK due to consumer resistance and the influence of EU regulations, Australian governments at federal and state level have increasingly embraced GM crops, potentially locking Australia into a food and farming trajectory based on agricultural biotechnology. (Contains 1 table and 1 figure.)

Recent studies, including genome-wide association studies, have identified several putative low-penetrance susceptibility loci for melanoma. We sought to determine their generalizability to genetic predisposition for multiple primary melanoma in the international population-based Genes, Environment, and Melanoma (GEM) Study. GEM is a case-control study of 1,206 incident cases of multiple primary melanoma and 2,469 incident first primary melanoma participants as the control group. We investigated the odds of developing multiple primary melanoma for 47 SNPs from 21 distinct genetic regions previously reported to be associated with melanoma. ORs and 95% confidence intervals were determined using logistic regression models adjusted for baseline features (age, sex, age by sex interaction, and study center). We investigated univariable models and built multivariable models to assess independent effects of SNPs. Eleven SNPs in 6 gene neighborhoods (TERT/CLPTM1L, TYRP1, MTAP, TYR, NCOA6, and MX2) and a PARP1 haplotype were associated with multiple primary melanoma. In a multivariable model that included only the most statistically significant findings from univariable modeling and adjusted for pigmentary phenotype, back nevi, and baseline features, we found TERT/CLPTM1L rs401681 (P = 0.004), TYRP1 rs2733832 (P = 0.006), MTAP rs1335510 (P = 0.0005), TYR rs10830253 (P = 0.003), and MX2 rs45430 (P = 0.008) to be significantly associated with multiple primary melanoma, while NCOA6 rs4911442 approached significance (P = 0.06). The GEM Study provides additional evidence for the relevance of these genetic regions to melanoma risk and estimates the magnitude of the observed genetic effect on development of subsequent primary melanoma., (©2015 American Association for Cancer Research.)