Science and technology foresight: a provocative tool for contending with future challenges in food safety and public veterinary medicine.

The author describes how foresight methods can provide a provocative approach to some of the key challenges faced by the world of animal health and public veterinary practices while supporting the safety and security of the food system and public health in general. Being provocative is important because the future may be very unfamiliar and demands an approach of critical thinking, which can best be activated by having to consider the prospective reality of one or more substantially different policy operational environments. The factors that are shaping our future may also be quite disruptive (for example from 1989 to 1994 when the Cold War abruptly ended, the Soviet Union dissolved and the internet was born). Consequently it is essential that any forward preparedness efforts explore a range of plausible options and not immediately discount those that may in today's terms appear unlikely. The author reviews the methods through to the point where scenario parameters are defined, and then switches to observations about how the process can influence and provoke policy formulation. The results of the foresight and scenarios employment are described by Willis in another paper in this volume.