Cultural Politics of Food Safety - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 577

genes. While Flavr Savr failed on the market and disappeared, other crops entered the
market rather quietly and spread quickly among American farms in 1996.
The government subsequently introduced changes in regulatory procedures that fur-
ther blurred the boundaries between GM and conventional crops. In 1993 the USDA
simplified the development and cultivation of GM crops by allowing them to be peti-
tioned for a “deregulated” status. As a result, GM crops with plant pest risks no larger
than conventional crops can be removed from the oversight for open commercial cul-
tivation. In 1994 the EPA set up a division for biopesticides, which included pesticidal
substances and genes that produce them in GM plants like Bt varieties, as well as nat-
urally occurring biochemical substances and microorganisms. By lumping modified
genes and proteins together with other biological pesticides, this move further under-
mined the idea that GM crops constituted a distinct regulatory category.
Unlike in Europe and Japan, the opposition did not flourish immediately after the
market entry of GM crops in the United States, despite the pioneering efforts of such
American organizations as the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Environmental
Defense Fund, and the Foundation on Economic Trends, which strongly influenced
opposition movements in Europe and elsewhere. The first consequential mobilization
of the public regarding GM food came later, not as direct opposition, but as part of a
broader struggle over national organic standards. In 1997 the USDA proposed allowing
the use of genetic engineering—as well as irradiation and sewage sludge fertilizer—to be
included in the definition of organic farming. This prompted an unprecedented mobi-
lization by diverse groups, including the Organic Consumers Association, a spin-off
of Rifkin's Pure Food Campaign, and the newly established Center for Food Safety, as
well as the Environmental Defense Fund, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the
Consumers Union. During the four-month period from 1997 to 1998, the department
received 275,000 public comments, an unparalleled volume, virtually all of which
opposed the inclusion of the three controversial methods (Klein and Winickoff 2011).
This development was indicative of the intricacy with which various actors struggled
and negotiated over the definitions and boundaries of organic, GM, and conventional
food. The initial logic of the USDA, consistent with the product framing of the FDA,
was that the process of genetic modification was not relevant to the organic standards.
However, the proposed standards in fact entailed specifications on methods and facili-
ties, amounting to much more than the composition or risks of the final product. The
industry's acceptance of organic-labeled GM food therefore was inconsistent with its
insistence on the product-based labeling, and behind this approach was its material
interest in entering the lucrative, fast-growing organic market (Jasanoff 2005). For the
USDA and the biotech industry, denying GM food the organic label would signal the
same unacceptable message as requiring GM food labels would; namely, that the process
of rDNA technology presents a distinct set of risks and other negative consequences in
food production. Conversely, the opposition mobilized intensely to exclude GM food
from the category of organic food, which was not simply about the use of synthetic pes-
ticides, but also about a system of agriculture, philosophy on nature, and way of life.
The struggle to protect the existing organic-conventional boundaries unified organic