Governance of GM Crop and Food Safety in the United States - Governing Risk in GM Agriculture - page 23

rice, beets, and other species have been approved for introduction into
commerce. 3 More recent but less definitive reports indicate much higher
rates for GM crops.
Nevertheless, as noted earlier, the cultural context that shapes the
market for GM products is not immutable. The consumer's utilitarian
calculus can be influenced by objective factors, such as verifiable evi-
dence of risk or a harmful incident that impugns the safety of a GM
food, hard data about price increases, and subjective factors such as the
views of elites about lifestyle and fashion, which can have a cascade effect
on the beliefs and behaviors of other consumers. Although no evidence
has convincingly shown a GM food to be unsafe for human health, and
claims about immediate threats to the environment have been blunted
somewhat by new GM crop management practices that try to minimize
their occurrence, there are indications that assumptions about the lower
cost of GM foods and their desirability due to less toxic pesticide use and
the reduced presence of pesticide residues, are in flux. In addition, as dis-
cussed in Chapter 7, the advent of engineering and growing GM crops to
produce pharmaceuticals and other industrial products may raise public
concerns about contamination of human food and animal feed by genetic
material intended for these other purposes.
GM agriculture also faces the prospect that it may be displaced by
competing technologies. Forthcoming uses of nanotechnology to endow
food products with increased nutritional value and shelf life, and other
appealing features are being planned, and may prove to be less costly for
the food industry and more acceptable to the public than GM options.
Despite considerable concern about the occupational hazards and envi-
ronmental impacts arising from use of nano-scale materials, regulatory
agencies and the public seem to be more comfortable with nanotechnol-
ogy than genetic engineering.
3 Clive James, International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications,
Global Status of Commercialized Biotech/GM Crop ( ISAAA Brief No. 35. 2006).