Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
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eld-testing and commercialization of GM products very quickly. Producers and/or
retailers may voluntarily label GM foods but are not required by law to do so. While the
EU has imposed the (involuntary) burden of labeling on producers and/or vendors of
GM products, the USA imposes the (voluntary) burden of labeling on producers of non-
GM products: there is a US market for labeled non-GM products, but not for labeled GM
products. More than 60 GM crop varieties are approved and grown in the USA. Many
more GM varieties have been authorized for
eld-testing. GM crop acreage increased dra-
matically between 1996 and 2007. And GM ingredients can be found in thousands of
processed food products.
These transatlantic di
fi
erences are associated, at the global level, with an increasing gap
between GMO-promoting and GMO-restricting countries, in terms of both approval and
labeling regulation and at the market level. The pro-biotech camp clusters around the
USA and includes in particular Argentina and Canada. The other camp clusters around
the EU and also includes several non-EU states in Europe, such as Norway, Switzerland,
and various Central and Eastern European countries. An unusual case in this respect is
Switzerland, whose citizens approved by large majority an initiative that imposes a
ff
ve-
year moratorium (2006-10) on the commercial cultivation of GM crops. We shall return
to this case because it pits fundamental principles of democracy against economic
freedom and scienti
fi
c risk assessment.
Many other countries (e.g. Australia, Brazil, China, India, Japan, Mexico, Russia and
South Africa) have moved towards stricter approval procedures. Many countries (e.g.
Australia, China, Japan, South Korea and Russia) have also adopted mandatory labeling
requirements for GM food. These regulations di
fi
er very much with respect to their strin-
gency. On average they position these countries somewhere in between the EU and the
USA.
Most developing countries have experienced great di
ff
culties in trying to make sense of
scienti
ts of GMOs. Many of them
have established some regulatory policies, often with the help of experts from industrial-
ized countries. In trying to enact and implement these policies, they have been caught in
con
fi
c and political controversies about risks and bene
fi
fl
icting pressures by big trading partners (notably the EU and the USA).
2. Explaining differences in regulatory policy
Popular views on why Europeans are more hostile to GMOs than North Americans center
on arguments about general technophobia and nutritional habits (culinary culture). Such
arguments are largely invalid. For example, survey results on public attitudes toward tech-
nology do not support the claim that Europeans are more technophobic (e.g. Bernauer,
2003). Moreover, while the obesity rate in the USA is much higher than in Europe,
Europeans smoke more than US Americans (despite higher cigarette taxes in Europe)
(Cutler and Glaeser, 2006).
Arguments that, on average, scienti
t analysis play a
greater role in US policy-making are probably accurate. But this claim is too generic to
help us to understand what we observe in the GMO area. Recent research has thus focused
primarily on institutional structures, the mass media, consumer perceptions, and NGO
and industry behavior to explain regulatory di
fi
c risk assessment and cost-bene
fi
er and Pollack, 2007;
Falkner, 2006; Bauer and Gaskell, 2002; Russell and Vogler, 2002; Gaskell and Bauer,
2001; Paarlberg, 2001).
ff
erences (e.g. Sha
ff
