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is it that we can hope to achieve these kinds of results in much more complex
fields such as GMOs, and moreover nanotechnology, while the inexistence of
labeling laws impede even a summary knowledge of its distribution?
In terms of public policy, nanotechnologies, just as GMOs, were not only
authorized but widely encouraged by public authorities, based on a discourse
taken on by public relations firms and some key actors within the public
apparatus (Roco 2005), a discourse according to which these technologies
would revolutionize all aspects of industrial production, so much so that any
state dominating these fields would also dominate international competition.
Moreover, questions regarding potential health and environmental
impacts cannot drive out the importance of including within the impact
analyses, evaluation and homologation strategy, the essential premises that
are the very soundness and pertinence of these innovations, in light notably,
of the “precaution principle.” Inasmuch as the dissemination of these “nano”
applications in the food chain stems from political and economical orienta-
tions on innovation, driven by the competitiveness of the main economic
powers in concert with large multinational agrifood and agrichemical com-
panies, this examination postfact should also inspect market mechanisms
that seem to be driving toward a new “nanotechnological” determinism.
Furthermore, insofar as they demand large investments, nanofood develop-
ments should be examined at a macroscopic scale, highlighting the impacts
of an increasing industrial concentration and the integration of these prod-
ucts throughout the production and marketing systems, which may come
with the weakening or even the disappearance of small and medium pro-
ducers and distributors altogether, and this comes with expected impacts on
food security and working conditions in the sector.
In order to circumvent the outright rejection of large areas of applications
for nanotechnologies, is it not essential to tackle the surfacing issues, some-
times even the soundness of commercial orientations, all the while stress-
ing the necessity to establish social and scientific assessment procedures in
order to avoid letting the market alone decide of an “anything and every-
thing nano” and in finally, to avoid nanofoods becoming the Achilles' heel
of the vast field of nanotechnologies.
Acknowledgments
The research for this chapter was funded by the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council of Canada and by Quebec's Ne 3 LS network
funds. We must also thank Aleck Guess, master student at the Institute of
Environmental Sciences, working on nano public policies, for the translation
of this chapter.
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