Governance of GM Crop and Food Safety in the United States - Governing Risk in GM Agriculture - page 54

conventional or GM food crops, it will cause turmoil in agriculture and
food systems, destroy consumer confidence in food safety, and endan-
ger public health. Thus, finding means for ensuring coexistence between
food crops and non-food GM crops must be a priority.
Finally, the isolation of the regulatory apparatus from human con-
cerns needs to be addressed. GM regulators at the FDA, APHIS,
and EPA operate in closed systems without transparency, and without
respecting and considering personal values and consumer concerns in
their deliberative processes, as if technical expertise and satisfying the
claims of corporate entrepreneurs will be sufficient for dealing with the
deep social consequences of genetic agriculture. These have become
essential features of risk regulation in progressive democracies and been
embraced by other regulatory programs in the United States. Their
absence from GM regulation is a cause for mistrust and the likelihood
that lawsuits involving narrow private interests would proliferate, creat-
ing a situation in which diverse court decisions and ad hoc settlements
across fifty states would play a major role in shaping the future of the
GM enterprise to the detriment of the public interest.
A new Congress could focus on these issues and provide the agencies
with a more enlightened and effective mandate than that provided by
the “coordinated framework” enacted almost two decades ago. It would
expand agency authority for dealing with safety issues, direct regulators
to provide transparency and engage with the public, and oversee agency
implementation. And it could address expanding markets for GM crops
and foods and the vulnerability of developing nations by working toward
creation of a coordinated international regulatory system.
There also remains the hope that GM agriculture, led by the large
firms producing GM seed and BIO, the industry's leading trade associ-
ation, will evolve into a more mature industry with socially responsible
self-regulation. This transformative process has been taking place in the
global chemical industry and reflected in its Responsible Care program, 53
53 M. Baram, “Multinational Corporations, Private Codes, and Technology Transfer for
Sustainable Development,” 24 Environmental Law Journal 33 (1994).