Cultural Politics of Food Safety - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 575

From Political Struggles to the “Coordinated Framework”
Initial regulatory approaches to GMOs in the United States—a birthplace of recombi-
nant DNA technology and a perennial frontrunner in its agricultural application—were
undoubtedly intended to encourage R&D, but not necessarily more so than the French
or Japanese counterparts. Rather, the laissez-faire policy framework came out of early
contestation and politicization of the technology as a conscious governmental attempt
to establish a setting favorable to its development. In the late 1970s, a call for legisla-
tion to regulate rDNA technology emerged from the public, policymakers, and envi-
ronmentalists, but a concerted campaign by researchers and industry representatives
successfully prevented legislation, arguing that it would harm the competitiveness of US
science and industry (Wright 1994). In the mid-1980s, on their part, critics of biotech-
nology managed to delay the first field trials with lawsuits and local protests after the
government approved trials of the Ice-Minus, an engineered bacterium designed to pro-
tect crops from frost, in 1983. In this mobilization, the Foundation on Economic Trends,
a group founded by author-activist Jeremy Rifkin, played a key role, challenging the
government's evaluative criteria and decisions, especially in terms of ecological impact
of field tests (Krimsky 1991). Criticizing biotechnology for changing humanity's rela-
tionship with the nature, Rifkin worked with diverse actors, including animal welfare,
environmental, and religious organizations. Due to these efforts, it was not until 1987
that the California-based biotech firm Advanced Genetic Sciences and the University of
California, Berkeley conducted the first field trials.
Alarmed by these developments, Ronald Reagan's administration sought to cre-
ate a new regulatory framework that would facilitate domestic R&D efforts (Krimsky
1991). This subsequently resulted in a set of regulatory guidelines in 1986, known as
the Coordinated Framework for Regulation of Biotechnology, which pieced together
existing statutory authority of the three federal agencies. It explicitly stated that biotech
products would be “reviewed by FDA, USDA, and EPA in essentially the same manner
for safety and efficacy as products obtained by other techniques.”10 In other words, it
denied the uniqueness of rDNA plants as a new and distinct regulatory category and
institutionalized regulation based on measurable characteristics of the product , rather
than the process whereby the plant's genome had been altered.
In the mid- to late 1980s, skeptics attempted to introduce more stringent regula-
tion, but to no avail. Since 1987, the pro-agri-biotech United States Department of
Agriculture (USDA) oversaw most field tests, and some members of Congress made
legislative efforts to expand the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) author-
ity, which was limited to the release of pesticidal agents. However, with no apparent
problems arising from approved field trials, legislative efforts eventually died down
(Sheingate 2006). Some opponents were fundamentally critical of biotechnology itself,
but given the framework, they strategically targeted specific risk issues (Charles 2001).
Groups like the Environmental Defense Fund, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and
the Consumers Union began to critically examine the ecological and food safety risks
of GMOs, but such efforts did not lead to visible public interest. Furthermore, a 1989