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From 2014.igem.org

Survey of New England Farmers

Because our diagnostic tool was designed for the livestock disease Caprine Arthritis Encephalitis Virus (CAEV), we wanted to determine whether or not it would be accepted by the farming community. To do this, we designed a brief survey and had it distributed to members of the New England Farmers Union. You can click this link to view our survey.

To gauge a respondent’s previous knowledge of synthetic biology, we asked if they had ever heard the phrase “synthetic biology.” Of the 29 total respondents, only 29% claimed they had ever heard of synthetic biology. Because we were unsure how many respondents would have previous knowledge of synthetic biology, we asked them what their initial impressions of it were. The responses to this question can be seen in the pie chart below. 46% of the respondents either did not know what synthetic biology was or selected other. 8% thought the phrase “synthetic biology” had negative connotations while 46% were interested in or open to the idea of synthetic biology.

Once we asked the respondents about their initial opinions and knowledge of synthetic biology, we provided them with a basic definition and asked them what they thought the overall impact of synthetic biology would be in the future. 26% of the respondents were still unsure, but 57% believed it would have at least a slightly positive impact. Only 17% of respondents thought synthetic biology would have a negative impact in the future. The full breakdown of responses to this question can be seen in the following pie chart.

After we acquired responses to the synthetic biology questions, we asked the respondents about their experience with livestock diseases. 88% of respondents have had trouble with diagnosing livestock diseases, which indicates that better diagnostic tools need to be developed. To specifically focus on CAEV, we asked respondents if they raise goats or sheep, and then asked the people who answered yes whether or not their herds have been affected by CAEV. The responses to this question can be seen in the pie chart below. 27% of the respondents who currently raise or have raised goats and/or sheep said that their herds had been affected by CAEV, which indicates that this virus is still relevant, even in New England.

The main point of our survey was to determine whether or not our diagnostic tool for CAEV would be used by farmers. We made it clear that this tool was an engineered E. coli cell and that the E. coli would be introduced to an external blood sample from the potentially infected animal to test for the virus. The full breakdown of responses to this question are shown in the pie chart below. The responses we received were overall very positive. 93% of respondents said that they would either use this tool or at least consider it, while only 7% said they definitely would not use it. These results are fairly promising. However, we were only able to cover a small demographic by surveying farmers from New England. More farmers would have to be surveyed to determine whether or not this positive response would be uniform throughout the country or even the world.