Cultural Politics of Food Safety - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 566

authorization to cultivate Bt176 maize hybrids. Opposition groups lodged more such
appeals against other authorizations, this time both for cultivation and commercial-
ization. Regulatory procedures continued to grow more open. In particular, the CGB's
dominance ended as the French Food Safety Agency (Agence Française de Sécurité
Sanitaire des Aliments, or AFSSA) was launched in April 1999 and took over premar-
keting risk assessment of GM food. Established to respond to growing public con-
cerns about general food safety, the new agency was independent from the Ministry of
Agriculture in an attempt to separate risk assessment and management, and it was con-
sidered more transparent than the CGB. Labeling and traceability increasingly became
more urgent policy issues, as the wide domestic consensus to demand a clear and reliable
labeling system was unmet by ambiguous EU standards. In June the French government
called for an EU-level suspension of further commercial authorizations of GMOs at the
European Council of Ministers, following an earlier move by Greece. France demanded
more stringent risk assessment procedures and more effective labeling and traceability
rules as conditions to resume authorizations. This development led to a de facto morato-
rium. Thus, France had become one of the most vocal GMO opponents in Europe.
Stigma beyond Risk Issues
This dramatic policy reversal was followed by further expansion and visibility of the
opposition movement, which more explicitly and successfully connected the issue
of GM food with the critiques of globalization and neoliberalism, highly resonant in
France at that time. Increasingly more stigmatized beyond risk issues, GM food in the
French public discourses quickly became antithetical to French tradition and ways of
life (Sato 2013).
The activist José Bové played a key role in this development, which had significant
consequences for market practices and policy regarding GMOs. In August 1999, he and
the Farmers' Confederation entered the media spotlight again by their direct action to
dismantle a McDonald's franchise under construction in southern France. This was
to protest the US government's decision to impose high duties on French products,
which itself was in response to Europe's refusal to import US beef from cows treated
with growth hormone. In his crusade against malbouffe (bad food), which included
hormone-treated beef, fast food, and GM food, Bové became extremely popular in
France.4 Meanwhile, the ATTAC, a popular alternative globalization group close to
Bové, joined the anti-GMO movement, while Bové joined antiglobalization protesters
at the December WTO meeting in Seattle and became their global icon. Bové's popu-
larity not only contributed to the new high level of public attention GM food received
in France, but it also facilitated the association of GM food with McDonald's and
hormone-treated beef. They all symbolized the global hegemony of market logic and
its implications, such as standardization of distinct local culture and market dominance
over democracy (Bodnar 2003). The issue of GM food was no longer merely about
ecological risks and food safety, it now encompassed the larger issues of democratic