Abstract

Comparative studies of agricultural biotechnology regulation have highlighted differences in the roles that science and politics play in decision-making. Drawing on documentary and interview evidence in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany, we consider how the "regulatory cultures" that guided national responses to earlier generations of agricultural biotechnology have developed, alongside the emergence of genome editing in food crops. We find that aspects of the "product-based" regulatory approach have largely been maintained in US biosafety frameworks and that the British and German approaches have at different stages combined "process-based" and "programmatic" elements that address the scientific and sociopolitical novelty of genome editing to varying degrees. We seek to explain these patterns of stability and change by exploring how changing opportunity structures in each jurisdiction have enabled or constrained public reasoning around emerging agricultural biotechnologies. By showing how opportunity structures and regulatory cultures interact over the long-term, we provide insights that help us to interpret current and evolving dynamics in the governance of genome editing and the longer-term development of agricultural biotechnology.

Keywords

genome editing; biotechnology; genetic modification; GMO; governance; policy; regulation

Published in

Science, Technology, and Human Values
2023, Volume: 48, number: 6, pages: 1292 - 1328
Publisher: SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC

SLU Authors

• Fischer, Klara

  • Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Sustainable Development Goals

Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels


UKÄ Subject classification

Genetics and Breeding
Social Sciences Interdisciplinary


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/01622439221122513

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/119643