The regulatory structures underlying United States and European Union policies regarding genetically modified (GM) food and crops are fundamentally different. The US regulates GM foods and crops as end products, applying roughly the same regulatory framework that it does to non GM foods or crops. The EU, on the other hand, regulates products of agricultural biotechnology as the result of a specific production process. Accordingly, it has developed a network of rules that regulate GM foods and crops specifically. As a (...) result, US regulation of GM foods and crops is relatively permissive, whereas EU regulation is relatively restrictive. Why are genetically modified food policies in the United States and the European Union so strikingly different? In the light of the recent World Trade Organization dispute on agricultural biotechnology, it may seem that economic interests are the driving force behind policies. While they are certainly part of the picture, the issue is far more complex. This paper argues that three different elements help explain differences between US and EU GM food policies. First, an investigation of US and European policies of the 1970s and 1980s on recombinant DNA research and of events leading up to early GM food and crop regulation allows a deeper understanding of current policy. Second, scrutinizing underlying values and norms can uncover the beliefs that condition current GM food and crop policy. Third, an analysis of involved actors’ views and levels of success in influencing policy is essential to understanding US and EU policies. (shrink)

In the mid-2000s, rising gas prices, political instability, pollution, and fossil fuel depletion brought renewable domestic energy production onto the policy agenda. Biofuels, or fuels made from plant materials, came to be seen as America’s hope for energy security, environmental conservation, and rural economic revitalization. Yet even as the actual environmental, economic, and energy contributions of a biofuels boom remained debatable, support for biofuels swelled and became a prominent driver of not only US energy policy but of US farm policy (...) as well. This paper asks why biofuels became such a powerful force in farm policy debates, and draws on policy windows theory and discourse analysis to analyze biofuels’ contributions to the passage of the 2008 farm bill. It finds that budgetary and political factors combined with a particular set of patriotic biofuels-oriented discourses to carry energy policy debates into farm policy. It also comments on the implications of biofuels policies for conservation and sustainable land use in 2008 and beyond. (shrink)

I Norge har vi hatt kontroverser omkring regulering avhumanmedisinsk bioteknologi siden 1980-tallet. Denneartikkelen analyserer et lite utsnitt av disse reguleringsdebattene,nærmere bestemt kontroversen omkring forskningpå befruktede egg. Med utgangspunkt i skriftlig materialeknyttet til tre reguleringsrunder undersøker vi her hvordan ulike aktører arbeidet forå ramme inn denne kontroversen, bl.a. ved hjelp av ulikevitenskapelige og politiske representasjoner av det befruktedeegget.Vi finner at det i perioden 1987–2007 ble arbeidet medulike innramminger som utgangspunkt for retoriske ogpolitiske strategier: På den ene siden ser vi forsøk på (...) å innrammekontroversen i et risikorammeverk som først ogfremst fokuserte på de potensielle negative sidene vedhumanmedisinsk bioteknologi, og som spesielt vektlarespekten for det ufødte liv. På den andre siden ser vi atman arbeidet med en forventningsinnramming som lahovedvekten på håpet om nye behandlingsregimer foralvorlig syke mennesker.Forbudet mot forskning på befruktede egg som ble vedtatti 1987, ble opprettholdt i 1994 og 2003. Med lovendringeni 2008 fikk vi imidlertid et markant brudd i dennorske lovgivningspraksisen, da forskning på befruktedeegg ble tillatt på visse premisser. Vi argumenterer for at den viktigste årsaken til denne lovendringen var Mehmet-saken, en sak som medførtesåkalte «oversvømmelser» i begge innrammingsforsøkenesom er omtalt ovenfor. Mehmet-saken eksponerte samtidig et generelt demokratiskdilemma. Saken illustrerte hvor sårbare lovregler og etiske prinsippkan være for det som for allmennheten fremstår som helt urimelig, og dennesaken etterspør slik sett mer hybride måter å tenke forholdet mellom det universelleog det partikulære, mellom prinsipiell etikk og lekmannsskjønn, mellomfakta og verdier som utgangspunkt for politikkutforming.Nøkkelord: humanmedisinsk bioteknologi, forskning på befruktede egg,kontrovers, representasjoner, Mehmet-sakenEnglish abstract: Effective representations? Concerns and expectationsregarding research on fertilized eggsSince the 1980s, there have been several debates and controversies concerningthe regulation of medical biotechnology. In this article, we analyze three suchinstances in Norway, mainly the debates concerning research on fertilizedeggs. Analyzing the debates surrounding the regulations of 1994, 2003/2004and 2008, we investigate how different stakeholders strived to mobilize whatwe call different framings of the controversy, utilizing the different scientificand political representations of the fertilized egg.Framing involves creating baselines for rhetorical and political stratagems.Two framings appear more pronounced than others in the Norwegian debate.On one hand, we find attempts of framing the controversy in a risk centricframework, which mostly emphasizes the potential negative effects of medicalbiotechnology as it focuses on the universal reverence for the unborn life. Onthe other hand, we see attempts to mobilize a positive frame of expectationthat emphasizes on the hope of finding new and effective treatment options forthe severely ill.The ban against research on fertilized eggs that was passed in Norway in1987 was repeated in 1994 and 2003. However, with the changes introducedto the law in 2008, there was a noticeable shift in Norwegian legislation, asresearch on fertilized eggs became permissible if specific conditions were met.We argue that the turning point in this regulative change was the Mehmentcase, a particular case that entailed the so-called «overflowing» in both the negative and the positive frame. The Mehmet case exposed a moregeneral democratic and political dilemma. In our opinion, it illustrates howvulnerable can regulation that is based on general ethical principles be in theface of what appears to the laity as unreasonable. Thus, we argue that thisactualizes the need for more hybridized ways to view the relationship betweenthe universal and the particular, between principle-based ethics and theunderstandings of lay people, between facts, and values and actual cases inpolicy shaping and practice. (shrink)

The World Trade Organization has been the target of social justice activists since its inception in 1994, with many seeking to reshape or rescind the WTO agreements. This article instead explores possible interventions into WTO adjudication by compelling the reinterpretation of existing WTO documents. Such an approach can take several forms: mobilizing professional expertise, engaging technical standards, and constructing companion regimes. Using the recent United States/european Community genetically modified organisms case as a reference point, this article explores opportunities for implementing (...) the last two strategies. The Codex Alimentarius, an international food standards regime, seems to provide a particularly promising location for reconstructing WTO risk and governance procedures. The Cartagena Biosafety Protocol, an international environmental regime, deeply challenges narrow readings of WTO texts but may not have enough legal force in the WTO. These alternative locations for intervention hold promise and risks for activists seeking international justice in environment, food, and trade. (shrink)

Trust has become an important aspect of evaluating the relationship between lay public and technology implementation. Experiences have shown that a focus on trust provides a richer understanding of reasons for backlashes of technology in society than a mere focus of public understanding of risks and science communication. Therefore, trust is also widely used as a key concept for understanding and predicting trust or distrust in emerging technologies. But whereas trust broadens the scope for understanding established technologies with well-defined questions (...) and controversies, it easily fails to do so with emerging technologies, where there are no shared questions, a lack of public familiarity with the technology in question, and a restricted understanding amongst social researchers as to where distrust is likely to arise and how and under which form the technology will actually be implemented. Rather contrary, ‘trust’ might sometimes even direct social research into fixed structures that makes it even more difficult for social research to provide socially robust knowledge. This article therefore suggests that if trust is to maintain its important role in evaluating emerging technologies, the approach has to be widened and initially focus not on people’s motivations for trust, but rather the object of trust it self, as to predicting how and where distrust might appear, how the object is established as an object of trust, and how it is established in relation with the public. (shrink)

In this text, I respond to a paper by Erik Thorstensen entitled “Public Involvement and Narrative Fallacies of Nanotechnologies.” In his paper, Thorstensen critically reviews a previous ELSA project on engagement and nanotechnology known by the acronym DEEPEN. While I agree that the ELSA community could benefit from the critical examination of earlier research, I believe the approach taken by Thorstensen is not a constructive one. My response deals with three main issues: the character of the paper, narrative theory, and (...) interdisciplinarity. (shrink)

The paper investigates how field experimentation of genetically modified crops became central to the French controversy on genetically modified organisms in recent years. Initially constructed in the 1980s as a cognitive endeavor to be preserved from lay interference, field trials of genetically modified crops were reconceived as “an intrusion in the social space,” which had to be negotiated with actors from that space. In order to analyze this transformation, the authors suggest that it is necessary to develop an interpretive framework (...) that combines theoretical perspectives from science and technology studies and the sociology of social problems, and emphasizes the importance of the way in which actors compete in a heterogeneous public space, to put forward alternative framings of problems. The authors present a detailed analysis of the interactions and conflicts between actors in diverse social arenas in order to better understand the dynamics of this sociotechnical controversy. (shrink)

Over recent years, science and technology have been reassessed increasingly in ethical terms. Particularly for life science governance, ethics has become the dominant discourse. In the course of this ‘‘ethical turn’’ national ethics councils were set up throughout Europe and in the United States to advice politics in ethically controversial issues such as stem cell research and genetic testing. Ethics experts have become subject to traditional warnings against expertocracy: they are suspected to unduly influence political decision-making. However, any reliable ethics (...) expertise has to reflect societal disagreements in moral issues. Therefore, expert dissent is a normal feature of legitimate ethics expertise. Based on theoretical considerations we argue that in principle, expert dissent does not cause problems for political legitimacy; rather, it enhances the salience of politics: obviously decisions on ethical issues cannot be taken on the basis of expert knowledge alone. We therefore conclude that expert dissent, not consent, supports politics. Focussing on Germany and Austria, we show how politics deal with expert dissent in practice. While in Germany politics acknowledge dissent and use it to foster a fundamental political debate, Austrian politics attribute authoritative power to ethics expertise and try to construct an overall consensus. This illustrates how the drawing of boundaries between politic and expertise differs. (shrink)