The politics of genetically modified organisms in the united states and europe

The Politics of Genetically Modifi ed Organisms in the United States and Europe... 2 The Story of Genetically Modifi ed Organisms in the United States and Europe 21 3 The Ideology of S

THE POLITICS OF GENETICALLY MODIFIED ORGANISMS IN THE UNITED

STATES AND EUROPE

Kelly A Clancy

the United States and Europe

The Politics of

Genetically Modifi ed Organisms in the United States and

Europe

ISBN 978-3-319-33983-2 ISBN 978-3-319-33984-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-33984-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016956891

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

This work is subject to copyright All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed

The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information

in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made Cover image © Caiaimage/Martin Barraud

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The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG Switzerland

Nebraska Wesleyan Unviersity

Lincoln , Nebraska , USA

This book is based on the research I did for my dissertation project in the Political Science Department at Rutgers University I am grateful to all my friends and colleagues from Rutgers, particularly Dilya Dorgabekova, Diah Kusumaningrum, Wendy Wright, and Brian Humphreys I’d especially like

to thank Professor Jan Kubik, my mentor, dissertation advisor, and friend

I owe a great personal and intellectual debt to Jan for his guidance during

my time at Rutgers My work on this project benefi ted tremendously from conversations in Professor Kubik’s multiyear Post-Communism Seminar, and I’d like to thank all my colleagues from the seminar My experience

at Rutgers was enhanced by the support of the faculty I’d particularly like

to thank Professors Jan Kubik, Stephen Bronner, R. Daniel Kelemen, and Gabriela Kutting for their work as members of my dissertation committee Professor Bronner offered advice and encouragement as I transformed the dissertation into the book I learned an enormous amount from Eric Davis, Rick Lau, and Bob Kaufman in their seminars Beth Leech and Dennis Bathory were sources of wisdom and professional advice for me Dominik Tueber also helped with research assistance on the Germany part

of the project

During the spring and summer of 2010, I was awarded a Baden- Württemberg stipendium to study at the University of Konstanz in Konstanz, Germany This experience was one of the most transformative of

my life, both in terms of the way it changed my thinking about European politics and because of the friends I made while I was there In particu-lar, I’d like to acknowledge Sebastian Feitkau, my longtime friend and future co-author I am also grateful to Rutgers for the Special Opportunity

Award and to the University of Pittsburgh for a Foreign Language and Area Scholarship Award, which together enabled me to spend the sum-mer of 2009 studying Polish in Pittsburgh and at the Prolog Institute in Krakow, Poland I fell in love with Krakow that summer, and am thankful for the opportunity

I’d also like to thank the editorial team and anonymous reviewer from Palgrave Macmillan for their help and thoughtful comments Finally, I’d like to acknowledge my colleagues on the faculty and in the administration

at Nebraska Wesleyan University, for creating a fi rst-rate environment for conducting research and educating students I’m lucky to have found an academic home here

None of my professional successes would have been possible without the support of my husband, Jim, who has read countless drafts, done more than his fair share of household chores, and taken our son Cyrus on adven-tures so I could write He’s the best partner I could ask for

My family has also been an immense help on this journey, emotionally and materially For their constant love and support, I’d like to thank my parents, Ann and Paul, my brothers Tommy and Ben and their partners, and my in-laws, Lorraine and Jim My brother Tommy has read numerous drafts of this at every stage in the project, providing thorough and careful critiques My brother Ben, who reminds me every day why I went into academia, is also my newest co-author, and I look forward to collaborating with him in the future

Finally, a thanks to Andrew Bird, who creates music for the part of my brain that loves to write

2 The Story of Genetically Modifi ed Organisms in the 

United States and Europe 21

3 The Ideology of Sound Science and Its Defense 67

4 Strategies of Resistance: Visual Depictions of 

Genetically Modifi ed Organisms 97

5 Conclusions and Implications 135 Bibliography 163 Index 169

Table 2.1 Public opinion toward GMOs across Europe 22 Table 2.2 Labeling ballot initiatives in the United States 50

Table 4.2 Test 1: Image count and category 103 Table 4.3 Test 2: Image count by country 109 Table 5.1 Contrasting the global and the local 138 Table 5.2 Change in orientation toward GMOs over time 142

© Author(s) and Editor(s) 2017

K.A Clancy, The Politics of Genetically Modifi ed Organisms in the

United States and Europe, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-33984-9_1

In November 1999, a Greenpeace protestor stormed the Kellogg headquarters, proclaiming himself to be FrankenTony, a hybrid of Tony the Tiger and Frankenstein The protest targeted the cereal manufacturer’s use of genetically modifi ed (GM) grains, and played on the “Frankenfood” theme popularized by British tabloids FrankenTony was one of the fi rst high-profi le protests of genetically modifi ed organisms (GMOs) in the United States, and foreshadowed the debates that were to follow on both sides of the Atlantic 1 Indeed, 20 years since GMOs became ubiquitous

in American grocery stores and 10 years since the European Union (EU) lifted its moratorium, GMOs continue to engender resistance on both sides of the Atlantic

An increasingly robust body of scientifi c literature declares GMOs to

be safe for humans, animals, and the environment, and there have been no GMO-linked food safety scandals This record would support the prediction that public attitudes toward GMOs would moderate over time and that reg-ulation would become increasingly permissive Indeed, some countries like the United Kingdom follow this pattern However, GMOs remain objects

of contention on both sides of the Atlantic, and resistance to the technology remains high In the mid-1990s, 85 % of Europeans supported tougher regu-lations on GM food; the 2005 Eurobarometer found that 27 % of Europeans regarded GM food positively, but the number fell to 23 % by 2010

What explains the high levels of resistance? To answer this question, this book explains the current status of GMOs in American and European

Introduction

public and political life by analyzing the symbolic construction of risk

sur-rounding the process of manufacturing, the GM products that are produced, and the unknown implications of the technology To do so, I compare the

state of the debate over GMOs in the United Kingdom, Germany, Poland, Spain, and the United States. These countries represent the range of cultural orientations and policies toward GMOs Chapter 2 presents a case study of the history of resistance to GMOs in each country Chapter 3 examines the strategies adopted by proponents of GMOs to defend the technology in the United States and Europe Finally, Chapter 4 compares the anti-GMO images that have emerged from each country This analysis allows for a nuanced understanding of the way GMOs are perceived across national contexts There are generally two camps in the debate over GMOs One group—the skeptics—rail against Monsanto and the evils of the ag-biotech industry They indict the political economy of knowledge production, attacking the validity of studies fi nanced by Monsanto and big ag-biotech Additionally, they question the long-term implications of this technology, warning of a tipping point after which it will be impossible to scale back the use of the technology

The second group of people—the rationalists—posit that GMOs are emblematic of American ignorance These people are closely aligned with the trend in popular literature to dismiss the concerns of GMO skeptics

On July 15, 2015, William Saletan wrote an article in Slate categorically

dismissing the “fraud” of the anti-GMO movement; it echoed the work by Michael Spector and others bemoaning the hysteria of GMO opponents These authors cite studies which fi nd that 75 % of the public believes that

products with genes should be labeled The public rejection of GMOs is

based on misunderstanding and fear, and thus any attempt to label or regulate GMOs is giving into popular hysteria

The goal of this book, then, is to facilitate a rapprochement between these two groups To do so, I argue that understanding the state of GMOs requires bracketing the veracity of the scientifi c evidence, and instead taking seriously the discursive climate surrounding GMOs Biologists, agri-culturalists, and food scientists on both sides of the Atlantic speak with one (cautious) voice that GMOs are more or less safe There remain questions, and very good reasons to conduct, fund, and support rigorous, sustained,

independent scientifi c testing But as of now there is scant scientifi c basis for

rejecting the technology of GMOs Even so, this scientifi c evidence has not been suffi cient to counter the skepticism in the United States and much of Europe, and the politicization of the scientifi c fi ndings However, people

on both sides of the debate draw the boundaries around questions of risk and safety: this is both the root of the dispute and what makes GMOs a unique topic As virulently as proponents and opponents of the technol-ogy engage each other, they both believe they can gain political ground by disputing the truth content of the science Proponents of GMOs argue that there is no genuine distinction to be made between the truth content of the science and the products of the science, whereas opponents of GMOs argue that the truth content of the science itself ought to be indicted What do we make of this? Regulated or not, GMOs seem safe But labeling them seems to moderate public opinion, while not labeling them

seems to increase opposition Ultimately, I argue that the lack of

label-ing of GMO products in the United States allows opponents to create far-fetched images of GMOs that work their ways in to the minds of the public The way forward out of this seemingly intractable debate is to allow GMOs, once tested, to enter the market without penalty—and then to label them In this book, I advocate a policy of cautious deregulation in the United States and Europe coupled with a rigorous labeling requirement

I argue that policy makers on both sides of the Atlantic ought to approve

GM products as though they are any other product, insuring that they are safe for humans, animals, and the environment This will streamline the approval process, while allowing greater autonomy for member states and greater incentive for companies to invest in the process This approach will allow scientifi c advancements to fl ourish, while a rigorous labeling process will allow the public to make educated decisions about what they want to purchase—essentially creating a situation under which the producers and manufacturers of GMOs must make an argument to the public about the comparative benefi ts of GM food The debate over GMOs is an intensely important one In this book, I attempt to advance the debate by bracket-ing the veracity of the scientifi c questions and instead exploring the impli-cations of the application of GMO technology, particularly the potential benefi ts of GMOs to humans and the environment I also argue that label-ing would benefi t industry in the United States, putting to rest one of the more divisive political battles over the technology and creating a means by which to forge a more productive future This argument is supported by the analysis throughout the book and explored further in the conclusion The remainder of the chapter frames the debate over GMOs in terms of two controversies: the controversy over the science and politics of GMOs and the regulatory politics of GMOs These provide the background necessary

to understand the way the debate takes shape on both sides of the Atlantic

CONTROVERSY ONE: THE SCIENCE AND POLITICS

OF GENETICALLY MODIFIED ORGANISMS

Genetic engineering is a foundational innovation that prompted many people to fundamentally reimagine the relationship between science, politics, and society Genetic engineering is a phenomenon that is at once political and scientifi c, thus revealing the intertwined nature of politics and science (Latour 1988 ) Although politicians and scientists attempt

to separate science from politics and portray them as existing in two different realms, genetic engineering uniquely challenges this process Thus, GMOs—the most visible product of genetic engineering— provide

a means to explore the contentious relationship between science, the public, and the state This section reviews the scientifi c history and cur-rent state of the controversy over the technology of genetic engineering

An analysis of the scientifi c arguments provides necessary foundation to understand the way the political debate unfolds, particularly in terms of the memes that emerge

History

The twentieth and twenty-fi rst centuries have been marked by “green” revolutions, as technological innovations have increased agricultural yields, thereby increasing the capacity to feed more people In the 1930s, the fi rst revolution was driven by an effort to apply Mendel’s work on inheritance

in plant breeding on a large scale High-yield hybrid corn was developed, and inexpensive nitrogen fertilizer began to be mass-produced (Bernauer

2003 , 5) In the 1960s and 1970s, the Green Revolution brought these green technologies to the developing world Finally, a third revolution, that of agricultural biotechnology (ag-biotech) began in the 1970s with the discovery of recombinant DNA (rDNA), which gave birth to mod-ern genetic engineering This process involves splicing the DNA from

a plant, animal, or microbe onto the DNA of another plant, animal, or microbe in order to transfer qualities of one organism to another, thereby changing the characteristics of the host plant As proponents of genetic engineering are quick to point out, the mechanics of this process are not new Historically, gene splicing was done manually to change the size or color of plants (e.g the Mendel hybrid experiments) As technology has evolved, genetic engineering now involves complex gene splicing in labo-ratories to manufacture resistance to drought or pests, improve the color

or size of a product, and to accentuate other positive traits Most often, the plants are engineered to either produce a pesticide or to be resistant to pesticides used during crop spraying The process of genetic engineering

is part of a larger agricultural struggle to increase yields and create more

resilient plants The controversy is over both the unintended health and

environmental consequences as well as the political, economic, and social impacts of genetic engineering

Controversy

Advocates of GMOs argue the dual threat of population explosion and climate change requires technological intervention Proponents of the technology hold that, despite rigorous scientifi c studies, risk assess-ments, and fi eld trials, there has been no evidence of GMO-related harm

to people, animals, or the environment 2 GMO technology has the pensity to reduce hunger, address public health problems (like vitamin

pro-A defi ciencies), and alleviate environmental stress such as that caused by drought and pests (Bernauer 2003 ) These innovations also help meet the challenges of the looming population boom by increasing crop yields

As the world’s population is predicted to reach 10 billion by 2050, and climate change is likely to increase drought conditions and decrease arable land, GMOs provide the most pragmatic means of addressing the ecologi-cal strains Additionally, GMOs have the potential to address environmen-tal problems by increasing yields, requiring fewer pesticides, and allowing for soil conservation (Bernauer 2003 )

Opponents of GMOs assert that the benefi ts articulated are both lous and unrealized, in contrast to the unknown, potentially calamitous risks of the technology Although proponents of GMOs claim the tech-nologies are critical to preventing starvation, curing vitamin A defi ciency, and growing crops that are more resistant to climate change, these global benefi ts promised by proponents have yet to materialize Consumers are asked to assume all of the risk by consuming GMOs, but see little benefi t Whereas Roundup Ready (RR) crops, 3 for example, may benefi t farmers while producing a profi t for ag-biotech companies, the benefi ts are never passed onto consumers in terms of either quality or cost savings At the heart of the critique is the fear that the technology “promotes excessive corporate power through patenting of the food chain” (Bernauer 2003 , 5) The critique of GMOs has evolved to emphasize future threats to bio-diversity posed by monoculture Opponents argue that there are myriad

nebu-“unknown unknowns” inherent in the technology; even if short-term ative effects have yet to materialize, opponents also warn of medium- to long-term health risks to the environment, including the loss of biodiver-sity Cross-pollination of GM crops into conventional or certifi ed organic crops is a continual concern both in the United States and in Europe, which requires all GM crops to be certifi ed, labeled, and traceable The concern about cross-pollination is not only one of the seeds spreading to conven-tional fi elds but also of unpredictable hybrids occurring when cross-breed-ing occurs, as well as the production of antibiotic resistant crops as a result

neg-of cross-breeding pesticides with certain types neg-of pesticide- resistant GMs

In short, there are different risk assessments based on perception of probability of risk embedded in the process of manufacturing the technol-ogy, as well as the end product of GM foods The way these competing scientifi c claims are translated to the political debate requires a sophisti-cated construction of risk and probability GMOs are, at once, scientifi c, technological, agricultural, political, economic, commercial, ethical, and personal issues In a 2014 interview, Michael Pollan argues that the pro- GMO community has successfully, but artifi cially, limited the debate to one over the veracity of the science, but this is not suffi cient to under-standing the complexity of the debate over GMOs:

[We] never escape politics and we never escape economics, even when we are talking about science and technology Even for science writers who have satisfi ed themselves on the health and safety of GM, there are other issues— much messier issues—that they need to pay attention to (2014, n/p)

These messy issues—what cappocia, giovanni, and ziblatt term a “knotty set of factors” ( 2010 , 939)—seep into each other, affecting risk calculi and the way the larger debate is framed

CONTROVERSY TWO: REGULATORY POLITICS

The primary approach in the political science literature to the question

of GMOs has focused on the subject of regulation, particularly the latory gulf on the issue between the United States and Europe and its impact on trade and transatlantic relations 4

In the early 1970s, rDNA was discovered, which proved to be the key

to genetic engineering In 1974, foreseeing a potential political lash against the technology, Paul Berg, the father of genetic engineering,

persuaded molecular biologists working in the fi eld of rDNA to impose

a moratorium on their research and assess the potential hazards of their work (Johnson 2013 )

In the late 1980s, life sciences corporations began to heavily invest

in bringing agricultural biotechnology to the market (Schurman 2004 ) This led to genetic modifi cation of organisms, and reached the thresh-old of mass production in the 1990s By building an infrastructure for seed delivery, securing patents, navigating regulatory regimes, and heavily lobbying governments, it seemed clear that ag-biotech companies would remain global competitors in the emerging market However, all of that began to change as the market, reacting to the vocal opposition from the European public and the tension between the United States and the European Union, began to turn against GMOs

The United States and Europe have traded places in terms of the strength

of regulation over the past 30 years 5 Vogel ( 2012 ) observes that a regulatory

fl ip-fl op occurred around 1990; before 1990, the United States tended to be more risk averse than the European Union, whereas after 1990 the regulation adopted by the European Union tends to be more risk averse 6 The follow-ing sections provide the political and economic context for the dispute over GMOs in the European Union over the past three decades

When Congress began considering the regulation of biotechnology, genetic engineering was understood as a scientifi c, not environmental

or agricultural, process This framework has had enormous ramifi cations for the way in which GM crops are understood and regulated Monsanto anticipated that there would be regulations placed on GMOs, and so they approached the initial conversations with the US government with the goal

of shaping regulation in its favor—both to preempt harsher regulations and so that it could squeeze out competitors unable to afford to comply with a new regulatory schema However, despite the fact that the ag-bio-tech industry itself expected some version of GMO-specifi c regulation, the anti-regulatory sentiment of the Regan era prevailed In 1985, the Reagan administration unveiled a coordinated framework that regulated biotech-nology using the existing bureaucratic mechanisms, rather than creating

an independent regulatory agency During the Reagan administration, a framework for risk assessment was codifi ed that placed faith in “sound science” as an external, neutral arbitrator over confl icts surrounding sci-entifi c questions (see Chapter 3 ; also, Runge et al 2001 ; Jasanoff 2011 ) Confronted with the challenge of regulating GMO crops, the adminis-tration set up a regulatory apparatus that fi t into the existing regulatory

framework, assigning responsibility to three different executive branches: the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the United States Department

of Agriculture (USDA), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) This framework is still in place in 2015 The FDA determines whether new food is safe, and only conducts risk assessments when there is a question

as to whether the product is substantially equivalent to conventional food The USDA regulates pests, and so has jurisdiction over plants that might increase weeds or vulnerability to pathogens The EPA regulates pesti-cides, and so has an important role in approving crops that produce their own pesticides (Kleinman et al 2009 ) By employing the same regulatory schema used to administer conventional crops, the United States was able

to avoid passing any GM-specifi c legislation or regulations Thus, ous GMO crops were created, grown, and marketed in the United States with little political or public challenge (Pollack and Shaffer 2009 ) The Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations have maintained a relatively consistent regulatory policy Obama appointed Tom Vilsack,

numer-a supporter of the biotech industry, numer-as Secretnumer-ary of Agriculture Pollnumer-ack ( 2013 ) provides a succinct summary of the reason why there has been little movement on questions of GMO regulation on the federal legislative level despite broad public support:

This, in turn, points to the importance of what one might call the political geography of GM regulation in Congress, where support for stricter regula- tions was concentrated overwhelmingly in the northeast and the west coast, while legislators from rural areas in the Midwest and elsewhere were far more likely to oppose mandatory labelling or other new regulations Thus, despite the sharp politicization of the issue and the broad public support for labelling in polling, the concentrated interests of farmers and biotech industry groups constituted a signifi cant obstacle to regulatory reform So did the structure of the American federal system (which left state labelling rules open to legal challenge) and the institutional rules of the US Congress (which effectively required bipartisan agreement in order to pass a divided Congress, and which disproportionately empowered Senators from farm states to block any proposed legislation) These factors did not absolutely preclude new and stricter GMO legislation, but they placed an extraordi- narily high hurdle to its adoption in the foreseeable future

One of the most controversial legislative initiatives regarding GMOs was the dispute over the Monsanto Protection Act The Farmer Assurance Provision, more commonly referred to as the Monsanto Protection Act, was

introduced as part of a six-month funding bill that expired on September 30,

2013 The bill was written by Senator Roy Blunt from Monsanto’s home state of Missouri, with help from the late Senator Dan Inouye, of Hawaii The bill limited the power of federal courts to halt the growth or sale of crops that were found to be dangerous This legislation faced sustained opposition and public outcry after Obama signed it into law Although there have been attempts to reintroduce the bill since its expiration, they bill has been derided as special interest and hasn’t been reauthorized In July 2015, H.R 1599, The Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act of 2015, passed the House 275–150; however, it is expected to die in the Senate The bill would forbid states from passing their own labeling laws, and instead creates a framework for a voluntary federal labeling schema

Because of the lack of movement in the regulatory arena, opponents

of GMOs have increasingly turned to the courts for oversight over GM crops, with limited success The most high-profi le example of this was the controversy over RR alfalfa, which was deregulated by the USDA in

2005 A district court judge initially ruled that the USDA failed in not conducting an environmental impact statement and issued a permanent injunction on planting RR alfalfa The decision was upheld by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals before being struck down by the Supreme Court

on a 7–1 decision (Oliphant and Huffstutter 2010 ) In 2013, the Supreme Court also ruled in favor of Monsanto, ruling that farmers could not grow Monsanto seeds without buying them; however, the decision, authored

by Elena Kagan, emphasized that the ruling was narrow and could not be generalized to other questions of genetic engineering (Liptak 2013 ) Thus, both the courts and the executive branch in the United States have upheld the “sound science” approach of the biotech industry The executive branch has acted aggressively internationally to export the ide-ology of “sound science” and to open markets to American GM crops Although the tone of US foreign policy in regard to GMOs has shifted, the substance has stayed consistent

EUROPEAN UNION European regulatory policy on GMOs is a story of change and confl ict

In the mid-1990s, Dolly the Sheep, the world’s fi rst cloned animal, was born in Scotland and quickly rose to fame Around the same time, hun-dreds of people died across Europe of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human variant of mad cow disease Against this backdrop of uncertainty,

tragedy,  and confl ict, Monsanto sent a shipment of mixed GM and conventional soybeans to the United Kingdom, setting off a fi restorm

of protest that resulted in a fi ve-year European Union-wide moratorium

on GM crops At the same time, the United States began to aggressively attempt to open European markets to imports of American GM prod-ucts, lodging a complaint with the World Trade Organization (WTO) over the European de facto ban on GMOs (Ansell et al 2006 , 97)

In 2004, the European Union moratorium was lifted and replaced with a comprehensive, farm-to-fork, regulatory framework based on the precautionary principle The principle of precaution adopted by the European Union implies that the risk assessment used by the govern-ment takes into account all relevant uncertainties (Waterton and Wynne

2004 , 96) However, writing about regulation in Europe is a moving get In 2013, only fi ve European countries cultivated GMO crops: Spain, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Romania, and Slovakia (James 2013) 7 In June 2014, the EU’s Environment Council voted to devolve regulatory powers over GMOs to individual states, which was met with considerable controversy The decision to devolve the regulatory power over GMOs

tar-on its face permits greater choice, as it would simultaneously allow tries like the United Kingdom to begin cultivating GM crops and coun-tries like Poland to ban all GM crops However, opponents of GMOs strongly oppose this legislation, saying it will make regulation impos-sible and allow GM companies to reestablish a foothold in Europe The European Parliament had the power to block the legislation and began hearing testimony during the week of October 15, 2014 On January 13,

coun-2015, the Parliament voted to approve the new rules 480 to 159, with

58 members abstaining The implications of the new rules are unclear at the time of this writing Although the discussion alludes to the new rules when possible throughout the following discussion, it is unclear what the

fi nal ramifi cations will be, so the regulatory discussions are largely based

on the status quo as of June 2014

The European Union limits the GM products which are allowed to

be produced and sold within its borders As of 2013, a few ity crops and enzymes used during food processing produced by GMOs within contained facilities are allowed to be sold, with each crop specifi -cally approved (Frewer et al 2013 ) The following sections trace the evo-lution of the EU’s regulatory history across three time periods: pre-1996, 1996–2004, and 2004–present

Pre–1996

Europe’s regulation of food safety has evolved over time In 1978, the Directorate-General XII on Science, Research, and Development proposed that all research involving rDNA would require notifi cation of the EEC (European Economic Community, the precursor to the European Union) and authorization by national authorities (Rosendal 2005 ) The United Kingdom, the leaders in rDNA research, strongly resisted any proposals for EEC-wide regulation This debate over whether biotechnology ought

to be regulated on the state level or the EEC level persisted throughout the 1980s It revolved around three questions: whether to use “sound science” or a precautionary approach to risk evaluation and assessment, whether the legislation should be tailored to specifi c sectors (e.g agricul-ture or pharmaceuticals) or should encompass all sectors, and whether the regulation should concentrate on the process of genetic engineering or the products generated (Rosendal 2005 ) In response to these questions, there was an expansion of European oversight as the EEC developed the mutual recognition principle and the minimum harmonization method of food regulation Until the mid-1990s, food-related debates were gener-ated by economic rather than health or safety concerns Alemanno notes that “no explicit reference to public heath or consumer protection was made in the Treaty of Rome until the adoption of the Single European Act (1986) and the Maastricht Treaty (1992)” ( 2006 , 233)

In 1990, the European Union began to create an explicit framework for regulating GM foods Directive 90/220/EC attempted to balance the power of individual states and the European Union in regulating biotech-nology Under this directive, member states maintained regulatory pow-ers over GMOs, such as individual risk assessment and authorization for release, but it allowed for 18 GM crops to be imported and cultivated, and thousands of research trials began across the continent (Skogstad 2003 ) Thus, the early 1990s were the most prosperous for GMOs in Europe

1996–2004

By the mid-1990s, the European Union-level regulatory framework had

“lost public credibility and legitimacy” (Skogstad 2003 , 328) This was due primarily to the handling of the BSE (bovine spongiform encepha-lopathy, or mad cow disease) scandal The European Union regulatory

committees tasked with investigating BSE and advising the European Commission politicized the confl ict, downplaying the potential risk to the public and underestimating the number of people who would contract BSE. When it became evident that the Commission had underestimated the impact of the crisis, NGOs exploited this oversight, advertising the fact that the scientists advising the Commission had willfully distorted the risk from BSE, thus putting the European public at risk As a result, the BSE crisis weakened the trust that Europeans had both in the “objectiv-ity” of scientists advising the Commission and the European government

as a whole The issue also underscored the ability of consumer groups to mobilize public sentiment over food issues

Opposition to GMOs varied on a state-by-state basis; however, tries like Spain that supported GMOs were unable to gain real traction on the European Union level for European Union-wide support of GMOs Instead, the tides turned against GMOs because of the unwillingness of domestic governments to trust the European Union and because of increas-ing public concern over food scandals that NGOs used to capitalize on the fear of GMOs In 1996, the EC approved Monsanto maize in the face of widespread protest In response, the European Parliament condemned the Commission’s decision, and Austria, Italy, and Luxembourg invoked the safeguard clause of the treaty of Rome to prevent the licensing of GM prod-ucts in their countries This triggered a legitimacy crisis in the European Union system; Austria, Denmark, Luxembourg, Greece, France, and Italy, later joined by Belgium and Germany, instituted domestic bans on GMOs

In wake of the opposition, the European Union was compelled to take proactive measures to create a food safety regime that would “avoid the balkanization of the internal market” (Alemanno 2006 , 232) These cri-ses led to the precautionary principle being written into the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1999 In response to the growing protests, the Council of Environmental Ministers put the moratorium into place in 1999, halting all new approvals of GMOs for commercial use

Postmoratorium Regulatory Processes

In 2004, the EC lifted the moratorium and put in its place a “farm-to- fork” regulatory schema to govern GMOs inside the European Union. Levidow ( 2006 ) argues that European policymakers began to frame the issue as one

of restoring public confi dence and accommodating the “consumer rights” agenda, which helped to placate critics and to strengthen the European position

while bypassing the debate over sound science versus the precautionary ciple Bernauer ( 2003 ) argues that the fragmentation of decision-making authority among the states forced a harmonization of policy on the European Union-wide level, ultimately leading to more European Union control The total ban was replaced with a policy that required each use of GMOs to be labeled, traceable, and approved on a case-by-case basis; a few GM products, mostly for animal feed, were approved by the Commission The regulatory framework retained the requirement that GM foods and crops undergo man-datory case-by-case risk assessments in order to stay licensed and that risk assessments must be made public 8 Additionally, there were comprehensive labeling and tracing provisions that identify and follow GM foods through each step of the production, processing, and marketing process (Skogstad

prin-2006 , 231) Finally, the new provisions did away with the 1997 Novel Food Regulation, which followed the United States and Canada in declaring that

GM foods were substantially equivalent to conventional foods

This process was not without controversy In 2012, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) broke with European Union precedent and fast-tracked the approval of Monsanto’s Intacta GMO soybean and Amfl ora potato for use in food and feed Jose Barroso, the president of the European Commission, was widely considered to be instrumental in persuading the EFASA to fast-track the approval of the new GM crops The EFSA’s justifi cation for the fast-tracking mimicked the language used

by the FDA and declared that the soybean was “substantially equivalent

to the natural bean” (Onusic 2012 ) The European Union Parliament responded to this controversy by postponing a vote on the European Union budget in order to withhold funding for the approval of other GMOs This issue again points to the lack of cohesion on the European Union level over GMOs, which stymies the ability of GMOs to gain much traction moving through the process

Until the moratorium on GMOs was passed, the life science industry was predicated on a model that integrated agrichemicals, crop sciences, pharmaceuticals, and health care (Schurman 2004 ; Bernauer 2003 ) This model began to disintegrate as life science fi rms began to reevaluate the wisdom of keeping agricultural fi rms as part of the model Avanta Seeds stopped testing GM seeds in the Netherlands after deciding it was unprof-itable, and BASF moved its headquarters from Germany to the United States. Finally, biotech fi rms began undertaking an economic restructuring and sold their agricultural divisions (Schurman 2004 ) Sensing that the ag- biotech industry was in disarray, the anti-GMO movement, spearheaded

by Greenpeace, focused on lobbying the European Union for a mandatory labeling of products containing GM foods, assuming that consumers would refuse to buy anything labeled GM, and so stores would refuse to sell them The biotechnology fi rms “became persuaded that labeling was the price to pay to end the moratorium,” and retreated, withdrawing their objection to the labeling legislation (Skogstad 2003 , 331)

The European Union continues to be charged with reconciling able differences between member states The European Union faces largely anti-GMO public opinion and a dried up market for the technology, but sustained international pressure to open the market to products from the United States. Less than a quarter of citizens in the European Union regard

irreconcil-GM foods positively, although there is some optimism about the technology

In sum, even as the European Union approves crops, there is no real market for them, and European Union regulation represents a controver-sial deepening of European Union power In the early 1990s, GMOs were allowed in Europe, largely regulated on the state level, and there was a market and a research agenda After the United States began exporting crops, and the BSE scandals of the mid-1990s, member states revolted, which led to a de facto moratorium on the crops In 2004, the moratorium was lifted, replaced by a farm-to-fork regulatory regime Although broadly workable, the regulatory apparatus still came under fi re both from coun-tries that wanted relaxed regulations and from countries that didn’t want

to grow crops at all In 2014, a new policy was introduced that would allow states to opt in or opt out of European Union restrictions The European Parliament approved these regulations on January 14, 2015, but as of this writing the implications are still unclear

PROJECT ORIENTATION AND CHAPTER LAYOUT

This book takes seriously the politics and culture of GMOs I conceive

of the debate over GMOs as a contest of competing narratives between sound science and the rejection of sound science In order to systematically investigate the phenomenon of GMOs as a symbolically constituted, global phenomenon, 9 I compare fi ve countries: the United Kingdom, Germany, Poland, Spain, and the United States. To understand the way that these nar-ratives function across the fi ve countries, I adopt a constructivist approach

to the study of risk, built on an assumption that risk, in and of itself, must

be activated—risk is not inherent in an event or process but rather thing must be construed and then perceived as a risk, the “truths” of the scientifi c investigations of GMOs are incidental to the perception of risk

some-surrounding them GMOs are not merely a neutral agricultural technology: both opponents and proponents have infused the technology with social, cultural, and political import The core of the debate is not a scientifi c one, and the political and scientifi c attempts to limit the debate to questions of hard science do not suffi ciently capture the cultural and political salience

of the issue Thus, this project situates the controversy over GMOs within

a wider political and social climate The role of constructivists is to stand the way in which science, politics, and society interact in order to produce meaning This requires moving away from essentialist understand-ings of culture as fi xed toward an understanding of culture as a dynamic, contingent force Studying the artifacts that emerge from these contexts

under-is done through adopting a semiotic approach A constructivunder-ist, semiotic approach to the study of the politics of GMOs reveals the way in which stories about GMOs are told using text and images

Adopting such an approach that is sensitive to the dynamic relationship between cultural and political forces is particularly useful for complex questions of environmental crisis and controversy because it allows researchers to “attend to the complex interplay between agency, institu-tional/economic structures and ideologies but be embedded further in

a political economy of the environment which pa[ys] explicit attention

to the environmentally hazardous results of specifi cally capitalist forms of organisation of economic life” (White 2006 , 61) A constructivist perspec-tive underpins the study of the interaction between science and policy in administrative, economic, political, and cultural contexts Science, and its role in political life, is socially constructed Jasanoff explains the notion of

a co-production framework as “the proposition that the ways in which we know and represent the world (both nature and society) are inseparable from the ways in which we choose to live in it … [s]cientifi c knowledge,

in particular, is not a transcendent mirror of reality It both embeds and is embedded in social practices, identities, norms, conventions, dis-courses, instruments and institutions—in short, in all the building blocks

of what we term the social The same can be said even more forcefully of technology” (Jasanoff 2004a , 4)

The chapters that follow examine the phenomenon of resistance to GMOs in fi ve countries I argue that resistance to GMOs persists because it manages to successfully refute the doctrine of “sound science.” Opponents

of GMOs activate the idea of risk as an emancipatory strategy that reasserts the public’s role in decision-making over GMOs The resistance narrative relies on the logic of association, which portrays GMOs as a “Frankenfood”

or a foreign, other food, which severs the link between GMOs and food

Finally, the resistance narrative nurtures doubt and the possibility of trophe if GMOs are allowed to move forward The way to reconcile these disparate depictions of GMOs and to overcome the political and cultural barriers to the technology being accepted is to confront GMOs directly: remove barriers to them entering the market, and then require labeling Chapter 2 articulates at the state of the debate over GMOs by exploring the battleground over the technology in fi ve countries: the United Kingdom, Germany, Poland, Spain, and the United States 10 What emerges is a disciplined comparative study and a thick description of the different challenges “sound science” encounters across different political and sociocultural contexts

As a result of the controversy, the science of GMOs is politicized on both sides of the debate The book thus looks at the way in which the politiciza-tion functions To that end, Chapter 3 of the book explores the construc-tion and deployment of the “sound science” defense of GMOs: examining the way in which proponents of GMOs use the supremacy of science as a means to silence critiques of the technology Whereas political constraints force antagonists of GMOs to resort to alternative, and in some respects innovative, rhetorical strategies in order to politicize the issue of GM, I fi nd that proponents of GMOs adopt a discourse of “sound science,” which professes itself as a neutral, objective mechanism to evaluate GMOs By refusing to label products as containing GMOs, producers and manufac-turers of the technology attempt to render the product invisible

The counterstrategy employed by opponents of GMOs is to make GMOs visible while critiquing the process of their production, the prod-uct itself, and implications of their introduction to the environment Chapter 4 looks at the way in which visuals are used in the debate In response to the single coherent narrative of scientifi c certainty, a diffuse set of challenges emerges The risk of genetic engineering holds within

it the potential for catastrophe, leaving the industries that produce and manufacture the technology in a perpetual state of crisis Instead of the a unifi ed narrative of scientifi c certainty, each challenge presents a multiplic-ity of diffuse narratives that unsettle the public’s understanding of the risk presented by GMOs Although the discourse of “sound science” offers neutral, complete explanations about the safety of GMOs by presenting itself as a closed, apolitical system of thought, challenges emerge on politi-cal, economic, and cultural levels that rupture that narrative The cumula-tive effect is that GMOs are in a constant state of uncertainty and doubt

In Chapter 5 , I conclude by advocating a vigorous practice of labeling be adopted alongside a policy of deregulation

NOTES

1 Genetically modifi ed foods are the products of plant biotechnology and are produced from organisms in which the genetic material has been altered in a way that does not occur naturally by mating or natural recombination Most

GM crops have been modifi ed for insect resistance or herbicide tolerance There are three parts of the genetic modifi cation process: manipulation of DNA to remove important cells, transporting into plant cells, and then regenerating the whole plant from those cells

2 Chapter 3 addresses the way that pro-GMO actors dispute the research over danger to Monarch butterfl ies and tumors in lab animals

3 Roundup is the herbicide manufactured by Monsanto Roundup- Ready crops are immune to Roundup, and so the herbicide can be used in fi elds

4 Perhaps the most prominent work is Pollack and Shaffer’s ( 2009 ) book When Cooperation Fails : The International Law and Politics of Genetically Modifi ed Foods , which provides a multilayered analysis that takes into account institu-

tional, legal, domestic, and international relations and constructivist factors that have created the current legal regime surrounding biotechnology

5 Vogel argues that change occurs for three reasons: the intensity of public sure, the policy preferences of government offi cials, and the criteria policy mak- ers use to assess and manage risk This regulatory politics perspective (Vogel

pres-2012 ; Kelemen and Vogel 2010 ) asserts that domestic politics shapes a ment’s position on international environmental policy both through the strength of domestic environmentalists asserting pressure on their government and because the strength of the environmental movement means that there are stronger domestic regulations on corporations; as such, there are incentives to support incentives on foreign actors as well This argument is broadly similar to Kurzer and Cooper’s (2007a; 2007b) explanation of how GMO regulation came about in the European Union: the anti-biotech movement pressured domestic governments to oppose GMOs, and these states thus shaped European policy through casting their votes on the European Union level A similar line of argument asserts that GMO regulation is a form of protection- ism; this is the position that the United States argued at the WTO in 2003 Because GMOs are primarily produced by multinational corporations, most of which are not European, regulations in fact help small and medium European businesses compete (Rosendal [ 2005 ] fi nds some support for the protectionist argument) Thus, the way in which the debate over GMOs has manifested itself

govern-in the govern-international arena has a major impact on domestic politics and policy

6 Jonathan Wiener and his colleagues ( 2011 ) dispute the fl ip-fl op hypothesis and argue that, when looking beyond food-related questions, the United States is often more risk averse—they take a quantitative approach and look at

a broad spectrum of regulatory situations including terrorism and tobacco regulations This dispute has led to considerable scholarly exchanges, includ-

ing a 2013 special issue of the European Journal of Risk Regulation However,

for the purposes of this project, GMOs fall well within the scope conditions

of Vogel’s argument

7 If the new European Union policy on devolving GM decision-making to the states goes into effect, it is widely believed that the United Kingdom will begin to cultivate crops as well

8 Before early 2015, in order to apply for approval of a new crop, a request for release of GM food, feed, or seed is submitted to the EFSA. If the EFSA approves the request, then the European Commission accepts their recommendation and presents the proposal to a committee of national offi cials; if the expert committee

is undecided, the Council of Ministers weighs the issue—only the expert mittee and the Council can block the proposal from the EC, which requires 232

com-of 321 votes to block (Kurzer and Cooper 2007a; 2007b) Abstentions do not count as nos and are often nearly a third of the votes Germany often abstains because of internal divisions within the government, as does Spain, because of cross-cutting social pressures (Kurzer and Cooper 2007b)

9 The arguments I make in this book are limited to these fi ve countries but are likely not generalizable beyond developed countries The political economy

of GMOs is substantially different in developing countries, where increasing yields and fortifying crops with vitamins likely accrue larger benefi ts to the consumer than seen in western countries Additionally, developing countries have been afraid to plant GM crops because of perceived blowback from the politics in western countries Thanks to the anonymous reviewer of the man- uscript for articulating the scope conditions of the book

10 This follows Gerring’s conceptualization of case studies as “an intensive study of a single unit for the purpose of understanding a larger class of (similar) units” ( 2004 , 342) Medium-N analysis of GMOs is rare in the literature; although myriad studies compare two cases, or conduct in-depth case studies of one case, a systematic comparison of typical countries across Europe has yet to be conducted on a substantive level

REFERENCES

SECONDARY SOURCES

Alemanno, Alberto 2006 Food Safety and the Single European Market In What’s the Beef? eds Christopher K. Ansell and David Vogel, 237–258 Cambridge,

MA: MIT Press

Ansell, Christopher K., Rahsaan Maxwell, and Daniela Sicurelli 2006 Protesting

Food: NGOs and Political Mobilization in Europe In What’s the Beef? eds

Christopher K. Ansell and David Vogel, 97–122 Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

Bernauer, Thomas 2003 Genes, Trade, and Regulation: The Seeds of Confl ict in Food Biotechnology Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press

Capoccia, Giovanni, and Daniel Ziblatt 2010 The Historical Turn in Democratization Studies: A New Research Agenda for Europe and Beyond

Comparative Political Studies 43(8–9): 931–968

Frewer, Lynn J., Ivo A van der Lans, Arnout R.H. Fischer, Machiel J. Reinders, Davide Menozzi, Xiaoyong Zhang, Isabelle van den Berg, and Karin

L.  Zimmermann 2013 Public Perceptions of Agri-Food Applications of

Genetic Modifi cation–A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Trends in Food Science and Technology 30(2): 142–152

Gerring, John 2004 What Is a Case Study and What Is It Good For? American Political Science Review 98(2): 341–354

Jasanoff, Sheila 2011 Designs on Nature: Science and Democracy in Europe and the United States Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press

——— ed 2004a States of Knowledge : The Co-production of Science and the Social Order London: Routledge

Jasanoff, Sheila 2004b Heaven and Earth: The Politics of Environmental Images

In Earthly Politics: Local and Global in Environmental Governance eds Sheila

Jasanoff and Marybeth Long Martello, 31–52 Cambridge, MA: MIT Press Kelemen, R.  Daniel, and David Vogel 2010 Trading Places: The Role of the United States and the European Union in International Environmental Politics

Comparative Political Studies 43(4): 427–456

Kleinman, Daniel Lee, Abby J. Kinchy, and Robyn Autry 2009 Local Variation or Global Convergence in Agricultural Biotechnology Policy? A Comparative

Analysis Science and Public Policy 36(5): 361–371

Latour, Bruno 1988 The Politics of Explanation: An Alternative In Knowledge and Refl exivity: New Frontiers in the Sociology of Knowledge , ed Steve Woolgar,

155–176 London: Sage

Levidow, Les 2006 The Transatlantic Agbiotech Confl ict: A Policy Problem and

Opportunity for European Union Regulatory Policies In The International Politics of Genetically Modifi ed Food: Diplomacy, Trade and Law , ed Robert

Falkner, 118–137 London: Palgrave

Pollack, Mark A 2013 International Trade and Risk Regulation: Whatever Happened to the Transatlantic GMO Confl ict? APSA 2013 Annual Meeting Paper, American Political Science Association 2013 Annual Meeting

Pollack, Mark A., and Gregory C.  Shaffer 2009 When Cooperation Fails: The International Law and Politics of Genetically Modifi ed Foods New York: Oxford

University Press

Rosendal, G.  Kristin 2005 Governing GMOs in the European Union: A Deviant

Case of Environmental Policy-Making? Global Environmental Politics 5(1): 82–104

Runge, C. Ford, Gian Luca Bagnara, and Lee Ann Jackson 2001 Differing US and European Perspectives on GMOs: Political, Economic and Cultural Issues

Estey Centre Journal of International Law and Trade Policy 2(2): 221–234

Schurman, Rachel 2004 Fighting “Frankenfoods”: Industry Opportunity Structures and the Effi cacy of the Anti-Biotech Movement in Western Europe

Social Problems 51(2): 243–268

Skogstad, Grace 2003 Legitimacy and/or Policy Effectiveness?: Network

Governance and GMO Regulation in the European Union Journal of European Public Policy 10(3): 321–338

——— 2006 Regulating Food Safety Risks in the European Union: A

Comparative Perspective In What’s the Beef? eds Christopher K.  Ansell and

David Vogel, 213–236 Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

Vogel, David 2012 The Politics of Precaution: Regulating Health, Safety, and Environmental Risks in Europe and the United States Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press

Waterton, Claire, and Brian Wynne 2004 Knowledge and Political Order in the

European Environment Agency In States of Knowledge: The Co-production of Science and Social Order , ed Sheila Jasanoff, 87–108 New York: Routledge

White, Damian Finbar 2006 A Political Sociology of Socionatures: Revisionist

Manoeuvres in Environmental Sociology Environmental Politics 15(1): 59–77

Wiener, J., M Rogers, J Hammitt, and P Sand 2011 The Reality of Precaution Comparing Risk Regulation in the US and Europe, Resource for the Future Press Washington: Resource for the Future Press

PRIMARY SOURCES Johnson, Nathanael 2013 Pointed Talk: Michael Pollan and Amy Harmon Dissect a GM Controversy The Grist , August 28 http://grist.org/food/ pointed-talk-michael-pollan-and-amy-harmon-dissect-a-gm-controversy/ Liptak, Adam 2013 Supreme Court Supports Monsanto in Seed-Replication Case New York Times , May 13 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/ business/monsanto-victorious-in-genetic-seed-case.html

Oliphant, James, and P.J.  Huffstutter 2010 Supreme Court Overturns Ban on

Monsanto’s Genetically Modifi ed Alfalfa Seeds LA Times , June 22

http://arti-cles.latimes.com/2010/jun/22/business/la-fi -court-monsanto-20100622

Onusic, Sylvia 2012 The Current Status of GMOs in Europe Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund , September 19 http://www.farmtoconsumer.org/news_ wp/?p=1752

© Author(s) and Editor(s) 2017

K.A Clancy, The Politics of Genetically Modifi ed Organisms in the

United States and Europe, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-33984-9_2

At the end of the 1990s, anti-GMO campaigns mobilized with remarkable speed, framed in part as a resistance to globalization In 1999, GMO protestors joined in the protests against the WTO in Seattle, Washington, which were hailed as the birth of collective action against globalization Brock et al depict the protests as beginning of an anti-globalization story, with “the new radicals” as the agent of change:

Uniting under a banner proclaiming ‘another world is possible,’ many groups see themselves as part of a radical civil society made up of locally based organizations responding to the ravages of global capital They have been consciously broadening their scope of action, positioning themselves

as the representatives of a new global civil network in opposition to the corporate, governmental structure Almost without notice, they have set the stage for a new form of collective action and have become a potent force

in world politics, swelling in numbers from a few thousand organizations a decade ago to tens of thousands today (2006, 116)

The anti-GMO protests were among the most successful protest movements

in modern history, strategically fusing notions of the global and the local, synthesizing universally recognizable symbols with local appeals 1

This chapter explores how this debate over GMOs varies across countries

To understand how the issues are articulated in different contexts, this ter explores fi ve battlegrounds: the United Kingdom, Germany, Poland, Spain, and United States. These countries were chosen because they vary

The Story of Genetically Modifi ed

Organisms in the United States and Europe

politically and historically: they represent old and new members of the European Union, importer and exporter countries Additionally, they rep-resent the range of policy, public opinion, and cultural orientations toward GMOs In no case is the issue of GMOs settled The United Kingdom was initially extremely opposed to GMOs but the opposition has softened some-what in recent years Germany initially had some public support for GMOs but the public turned against them in the early 2000s Poland has been steadfastly opposed to GMOs, concerned that the technology will threaten the strong agricultural industry in the country Spain has the highest levels

of GMO growth as well as the highest level of support for GMOs among the public In United States, which grows the most GMOs and has the least reg-ulation, the opposition has increased considerably Table 2.1 demonstrates the way in which European perceptions of GMOs has changed over time Why is there such variance in perceptions of GMOs? To understand the answer to that question, this chapter tells the story of GMOs in each coun-try Each case examines the way that political, economic, cultural, and pub-lic opinion variables shape the distinct context of GMOs, and how these have changed over time from the lead up to the European moratorium to present Of course, these cases are not independent: there is considerable overlap in terms of the global market, the media environment, and the anti-GMO activism; thus, actors in different countries draw “from the same

Table 2.1 Public opinion toward GMOs across Europe

1991 1993 1996 1999 2002 2005 2010

Percentage of respondents Europeuropean perceptio—who agree or strongly agree that GM food

will improve the way of life (compiled from Gaskell et al 2010 )

Percentage of respondents who agree or totally agree that GM food should be encouraged

(compiled from Gaskell et al 2010)

Note: These are based on data from the seven editions of the Eurobarometer on Biotechnology and the

Life Sciences survey

discursive fi eld” and are affected by “a global economy and polity” (Kleinman

et al 2009 , 364) The technology is global and plays out in a separate but interrelated way across the different countries This global/local fusion is

a manifestation of what Sidney Tarrow identifi es as “scale shifting,” or the coordination of collective action at a different level than where it began ( 2005 , 32) This is one of the markers of the anti-GMO movement, at once responsible for the success of the movement and for the failure of “sound science” to persuade the public of the safety of GMOs The appeal to uni-versal, objective truths has usually been the domain of “science,” so the local knowledge—in the form of “common-sense” stories and images—has become a venue for communicating doubt and uncertainty

Thus, the specifi cs of each cultural locality interact with the broader discursive fi eld and global environment, producing distinct mobiliza-tion strategies and articulation of the narrative of GMO opposition The lack of a clear causal relationship reinforces the utility of a constructivist, cultural approach to understanding GMOs What emerges from telling these stories is that there are fi ve separate, but overlapping, understand-ings of GMOs These differences nuance the way we understand the politics of the technology, and they serve as the backdrop against which pro- and anti-GMO discourse is constructed

CASE ONE: UNITED KINGDOM

of mad cow disease, damaging the credibility of both the government and food scientists on questions of food safety When Tony Blair attempted to assure a skeptical British nation of the safety of GMOs, the media immedi-ately resurrected the Cordelia incident, both reinforcing the link between GMOs and other food safety incidents and impeaching the government’s credibility on food safety The public was convinced that the BSE scandal

“suggested systematic confl ict of interest on the part of United Kingdom authorities, and the cases discovered at the time threatened to be merely the tip of the iceberg” (Ansell and Vogel 2006 , 14) Against this background, GMOs arrived in the United Kingdom

The Beginnings

Despite the British public’s sustained resistance to GMOs in the 1990s, the United Kingdom was one of the fi rst countries to sell labeled GM products Zeneca, a British biotech company, sold GM tomato paste in Britain, and the product was selling quite well It was carefully labeled containing GMOs, with a sign offering “a world-fi rst opportunity to taste the future.” The front of the label read “Californian tomato puree: made with genetically modifi ed tomatoes” and the back of the can read

“the benefi ts of using genetically modifi ed tomatoes for this product are less waste and reduced energy in processing” (image in Redenbaugh and McHughen 2004 ) Zeneca’s strategy was to provide consumers with full information about the fact that the product contained GM ingredients: Simon Best, the director of biotech projects at Zeneca, marketed the product to the British public by telling them: “You will be able to go into a supermarket in February of 1996 and buy this …” As he recounts, “There was a huge uproar But then it was all over” (quoted in Charles 2001 , 188) Indeed, the initial response to GMOs in Britain was not one of panic and suspicion GMOs were met with not only some skepticism but also a

sense of humor and irony A reporter of London’s Daily Telegraph took

a Flavr Savr tomato home with him He wrote: “It prompted disturbing thoughts of Faust and Mephistopheles, devilish pacts with immortality, of Frankenstein and monsters with bolt running through their necks … the cuddliest of Frankenfoods” (Charles 2001 , 135) 2

Later that year, public sentiment turned against Zeneca and their cuddly tomatoes as Monsanto entered the market The major shift in the move-ment against GMOs was catalyzed by three events in 1996 and 1997: the cloning of Dolly the Sheep, the BSE crisis, and the import of Monsanto’s

GM “Roundup Ready” soy into the United Kingdom. As Monsanto pared to sell GM soy to the United Kingdom, Zeneca’s Simon Best met with Robert Shapiro, Monsanto’s CEO. Zeneca’s leadership encouraged Monsanto to label the produce as containing GMOs, but they ignored the advice, instead packaging it with conventional soy and sending it to Europe without advance notice or labeling it Schurman and Munro describe the

pre-situation as such: “Monsanto stormed into Europe with the urgency of a general going to war and made one political mistake after another in its dealings with the European public, supermarket sector and governments” ( 2009 , 172) Simon Best, in a premonition of what would transpire, wor-ried that Monsanto’s tactics were jeopardizing the future of biotechnology

in Europe Perhaps Monsanto believed it was better to ask forgiveness than permission, or maybe they believed that the United Kingdom public would fail to take notice of the possibility of GMOs in their food if no one called attention to it Whatever the rationale, it backfi red, creating a sustained—and successful—anti-GMO and anti-Monsanto movement that started in the United Kingdom and spread across Europe In the United Kingdom

in particular, the company was seen as an organization that would openly

fl out European citizens’ desires to abstain from GMOs (Gaskell et al 2003a and 2003b ; Charles 2001 ; Schurman 2004 ; Schurman and Munro 2006 ) Without that trust, the public turned against GMOs completely The move-ment in the United Kingdom mobilized three groups: consumers, activists, and the elite, forcing a national debate over GMOs in the United Kingdom

The Middle Years: The Protests

A consumer rights movement that advocated ethical consumption became

a prolifi c force of change in the United Kingdom and across Europe The protests tied Monsanto to the image of the “ugly American” exercising culturally insensitive and ethically shaky business practices They catalyzed the movement and gained the support of Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and the British Soil Association

The movements against GMOs included campaigns that directly geted consumers, as anti-biotech groups used leafl ets and letter writing campaigns to raise public awareness about the presence of GM foods in the grocery stores (Schurman 2004 ) Greenpeace produced a shopper’s guide to help customers avoid products and stores that contained GMOs Consumers directly targeted retailers and producers with phone calls and letter-writing campaigns

NGOs also targeted the grocery stores and producers themselves, as Friends of the Earth United Kingdom, the Soil Association, and the Women’s Environmental Network pressured the retailers and distributers to stop trading in GM products (Schurman 2004 ) In 1998, Iceland Foods agreed

to go GM-free; Malcolm Walker, the chairman of the chain, announced that he was determined to fi nd a way to eliminate all “Frankenstein foods”

from Iceland Foods This resulted in a cascade effect that fundamentally changed the industry’s approach to GMOs (Schurman 2004 ) Major retail chains in the United Kingdom such as Unilever, Sainsbury’s, and Tesco’s began to transition away from GMO products High percentages of food

in the United Kingdom are sold by major supply chains (Nicholson and Young 2012 ) As a result, the pressure from the anti-GMO movement

to boycott retailers who traded in GM foods was enormously successful because there was such a high concentration of food retail (Kurzer and Cooper 2007a; 2007b) 3 Anti- GMO groups produced blacklists of retailers carrying GM products, and this created enormous market pressure (Seifert

2006 ) As such, few stores in the United Kingdom carry GM products 4

Public opinion in the United Kingdom, as in the rest of Europe, changed markedly after the food scandals of 1996 In the 1996 Eurobarometer sur-vey, 52 % of respondents reported never having discussed biotechnology but

by 2000 more than 70 % had heard of GM foods 5 Opposition to GM food

in the United Kingdom rose more than 20 percentage points between 1996 and 1999 (Gaskell et al 2000 ) There is also evidence that the campaigns against GMOs infl uenced public opinion By 1998, two years after the con-certed campaigns against GMOs had begun, only 14 % of the British public reported being happy with the introduction of GM foods into the food sup-ply and 96 % wanted labeling (“Seeds of Discontent,” 1999 )

Protests Continue: Direct Action

Consumer protest was complemented by direct action, led in large part by Greenpeace Activists blockaded ports, disrupted seed trials, and engaged in other performative forms of protest successfully designed to capture the atten-tion of the media A major form of protest in the United Kingdom has been

“crop- trashing,” where protestors destroyed fi elds of GM crops (Doherty and Hayes 2012 ) In 1999, Greenpeace United Kingdom staged a high-profi le crop-trash at Lyng in Norfolk as a media-oriented spectacle This action resulted

in the arrest and eventual acquittal of 28 participants and was highly visible; most other crop-trashings have been covert and have taken place at night

In the United Kingdom the protestors, groups of radical environmental activists linked through an organization called Earth First!, had developed direct action techniques of occupying spaces and damaging property that they used to protest the Conservative’s plan to expand roads and airports (Doherty and Hayes 2012 ) These direct action techniques were redeployed

in the face of technocracy Activists perceived GM Nation, the public forum

initiated by Tony Blair, as an attempt to silence the public As GM Nation began, activists across the United Kingdom mobilized and began to participate in direct action like dressing as giant corncobs and bees danc-ing in supermarkets and fi elds As fi eld trials spread across Europe, author-ities hoped the fi eld tests would “clos[e] down and narrow the debate into technical issues, they produced a more complex, turbulent situation, generating new forms of activist knowledge and critiques of GM crop sci-ence and its entangled ecological and social potentials” (Reynolds 2013 )

The Royals Join in the Debate

The British royal family also added fuel to the anti-GMO fi re Prince Charles’s opinion on GMOs has been enormously infl uential, counterbalancing Monsanto’s attempts to sell the crops Philip Angell, Monsanto’s former head of public relations, credits the Prince’s critique with fundamentally changing the debate over the technology: “It changed the coverage of the debate and the profi le of the issue almost forever And it blew away the low profi le approach of our advertising” (quoted

in Charles 2001, 222) 6 Prince Charles has remained on the offensive;

in a 2008 interview with the Daily Telegraph , the prince called GMOs a

“gigantic experiment … with nature and the whole of humanity which has gone seriously wrong” (in Randall 2008 )

Genetically Modifi ed Organisms Come to Downing Street

There were also reverberations of Prince Charles’s outspoken position on Downing Street In 1999, William Hague demanded at Prime Minister Tony Blair’s question time: “Why hasn’t the Government accepted the advice of English Nature, which is by law the Government’s advisers on these matters, by delaying for at least three years the commercial release

of these crops until more research is done?” Mr Blair countered: “There

is a committee in the Government looking at this on the basis of tifi c evidence—I think that is the best way to proceed The worst way is

scien-to raise fears in the public mind before the evidence is put before them” (BBC News 1999 )

The Prime Minister became the target of media and activist sentiment

as well One 1999 headline read: “THE PRIME MONSTER; FURY

AS BLAIR SAYS: I EAT FRANKENSTEIN FOOD AND IT’S SAFE” (Voice of Mirror) There were also colorful symbolic acts of resistance;

in February 1999, Greenpeace dumped four tons of Roundup Ready soy outside the Prime Minister’s residence at 10 Downing Street; the truck transporting the soy bore a message to Prime Minister Blair; it read: “Tony don’t swallow Bill’s seed.”

This pressure persuaded Tony Blair to put in place a United wide moratorium on GM crops However, the government still felt pressure from United States to allow import and cultivation of crops, announced

Kingdom-“GM Nation” in 2003, a nationwide debate over GMOs to take place

in the United Kingdom.  GM Nation involved over 30,000 participants and was one of the largest ever public engagement exercises (Reynolds

2013 ) The government and biotech fi rms decided to stage this debate because they were concerned that “public and political opinion was learn-ing to see gene technology, genetic engineering, biotechnology and so on

as a single, vague and disquieting phenomenon” (Mark Cantley, quoted

in Gaskell et al 2003b, 5) GM Nation may have ultimately shifted the public perceptions over biotechnology, giving the public an outlet to voice their concerns, and bringing the topic into the forefront of public debate

Present Day

Genetically modifi ed crops currently enter Britain mainly as animal feed There is not yet commercial cultivation of crops, but there have been experimental trials of GM potatoes and wheat in recent years In 2014, Rothamsted Research successfully completed a fi eld trial of GM Camila sativa (“false fl ax”) (BBC News 2014)

There is some evidence that public resistance to GMOs is beginning

to wane A 2013 survey co-sponsored by Farmers Weekly and Barclays Bank found that 43  % of British citizens were completely against the technology, with 21 % in support Even though the public is still weary

of the technology, the opposition no longer registers the same intensity

of resistance As Chapter 4 explores in greater detail, neither Greenpeace nor Friends of the Earth currently maintains an active GMO campaign

in the United Kingdom.  Email correspondence with Issy Griffi n from Greenpeace United Kingdom indicated that, although a “watching brief”

on GMOs is maintained, there is no need for an active campaign against GMOs “because of the sterling work many grass roots groups and organ-isations like Greenpeace and FoE put in over 10 years ago now” (author correspondence 2015) Thus, professional NGOs consider GMOs a more

or less settled issue in Britain, and have taken the issue off of high priority

However, as of June 2014, when the new European Union policy to devolve decision-making over GM crops to the individual member states passed through the European Union Environmental Council, the United Kingdom government announced its intention to begin cultivating GM crops (although Scotland and Wales remain committed to a ban) The Conservative Minister

of Agriculture announced that, should the European Union vote to devolve power over regulating GM crops to the states, the United Kingdom will begin cultivating crops as early as 2015 (Nelson 2015 ) Owen Paterson, the United Kingdom environment secretary, who had been pushing for the “repatria-tion” of GM crop decisions, said that the agreement was a “major advance”

in his plan to turn England into a center of GM research (Harvey 2014 ) This intent was reiterated when the European Parliament approved the measure in early 2015; British Member of European Parliament praised the new rules as

a decentralization of power, and Sarah Cundy, the United Kingdom’s head of

GM Policy and Regulation, promised to fast-track the approval process for tivation in the United Kingdom (Nelson 2015 ) Although Conservatives are the most vocal supporters of GMOs, the Labour Party has voiced interest in the potential for job creation should GMOs be once again allowed in Britain 7

In 2015, the British government signaled its intent to begin cultivating

GM crops Although the majority of the public still distrusts the ogy, ambivalence toward the European Union makes the public reluctant

technol-to accept European Union-wide regulations Whether there will be a ket for the GM crops, and whether public opinion will continue to be cautiously optimistic, is an open question

Conclusion

The British government, partially because of its close ties to United States and its frosty relationship with the European Union, has long been in favor of GM crops The United Kingdom was the fi rst country to receive a shipment of GM crops from United States. The crops arrived in the wake

of the BSE scandal The public quickly mobilized, in part because of vocal concern from Prince Charles, and began protesting the crops A consum-ers’ rights movement emphasized a critique of the American corporations

as well as a focus on ethical consumption There has been considerable consumer-driven economic pressure, including boycotts, resulting in a closed market to GM crops The rapid mobilization of the public in the 1990s, as well as the government’s seeming willingness to engage in dia-logue through hosting GM Nation in the early 2000s, meant that the public’s opposition to the technology has moderated since the mid-1990s

CASE TWO: GERMANY

Introduction

German resistance to GMOs has followed a different trajectory than the United Kingdom.  In Germany, food biotechnology is linked to a broad spectrum of issues such as agricultural overproduction as a consequence of European Union policy, other technological controversies such as the nuclear power debate, and the perceived economic imperialism of multinational com-panies and United States (Peters et al 2007 ) The public discussion over bio-technology began in the 1980s, when civil society organizations began raising early warning signs about the potential dangers of GMOs From its early start, the country experienced considerable internal confl ict In the late 1980s, a sociologist named Wolfgang van den Daele brought opposing forces together

in a government-funded “participatory assessment” of genetically engineered crops Monsanto agreed to participate, followed by leading German seed companies, academic researchers, and critics of biotechnology Over the fol-lowing two years, the group met ten times in Loccum, vigorously debating the arguments on each side of the biotechnology controversy

Despite the early public concern, the German government remained heavily invested in biotechnology throughout the 1990s and biotechnolo-gies were viewed as an important economic opportunity not to be passed over (Ferretti and Pavone 2009 ) This focus on the economic benefi ts of GMOs was possible because the food scandals that hit Europe only reached Germany in 2000, when its fi rst case of BSE was documented However, there were major ramifi cations once BSE arrived in Germany The fed-eral agricultural minister was replaced with a Green Party member, who adopted highly critical approach toward genetic engineering in agricul-ture In 2001, as part of an alliance between the Social Democratic Party and the Green Party (the so-called Red-Green Government), Germany adopted a policy of “Agrarwende,” a signifi cant shift focused agricultural policy on the consumer rather than the producer (Boecker et al 2008 ) The government banned all GM crops in 2009 However, Germany remains in many senses a study of contradictions: Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Party supports GMOs, but they are opposed by the other parties in the coalition government Eurobarometer found that sup-port for GMOs declined in Germany from 56 % in 1996 to 30 % in 2005 However, Boecker et al ( 2008 ) fi nd that, aside for 15 % of the popula-tion deeply in support of or against GMOs, there is a general sense of

ambivalence toward the technology Christoph et al ( 2008 ) also argue that the characterization of Germans as vehemently opposed to GMOs is over-stated and that about 50 % are confl icted about biotechnology However,

a 2013 survey by the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation found that 84 % of Germans are against cultivation of the crops on German soil (EuroActiv 2015 ) As such, German popular opinion adopts something of

a “not in my backyard” approach, opposing cultivation on German soil

Direct Action

Although protests against GMOs began relatively early, the movement was “slow to gain resonance with German’s public” (Seifert 2013 , 224) Violent and divisive resistance to GMOs began in the late 1980s Charles writes that

a powerful antiestablishment youth movement had emerged in the try, hostile to mainstream commercial culture, big business, and tech- nological solutions of all sorts The Green Party was its political voice Among other parts of the population, biotechnology awakened traumatic memories of Germany’s recent past, in which modern science and technol- ogy became tools of military conquest and racial purity And for whatever reason, German culture nurtured a profound—some called it romantic— attachment to nature, and a conviction that it was threatened by modern technology (2001, 101)

At the height of the protests, bombs were planted inside the Max Planck institute as well as at other institutes conducting research into gene tech-nology Lothar Willmitzer, a biotechnology researcher at the Max Planck Institute, says “I know of colleagues which always look below their car before they enter their car and so on We had some tough times in Germany” (in Hecht 2010 )

Even as resistance to GMOs became calmer and more institutionalized

in the early 1990s, occupations of GM fi elds remained a unique feature

of German resistance Protestors from local communities would occupy

fi elds in attempts to keep the seeds from being disseminated, and, barring that, they would resort to nighttime fi eld destructions (Seifert 2013 ) In

2005, a public database began listing the locations of all GM test fi elds, which made it easy to design and execute anonymous fi eld destructions Between 1995 and 2009 (when Germany banned MON 810, the last remaining GM crop in the country), fi ve long-term fi eld occupations took