Regulatory Logics and Politics of
Agricultural Biotechnology Diffusion:
The End of ‘the GMO Debate’
RONALD J. HERRING
([email protected])
CORNELL UNIVERSITY:
GOVERNMENT, INTERNATIONAL
AGRICULTURE
Do New Tools Make New Players?
The GMO is Going Away?
 ‘The USDA has chosen not to designate crops
created by DuPont and Caribou Biosciences
using their own CRISPR techniques as GMOs.
CRISPR results in genetically optimized,
rather than modified, organisms, because
there’s no foreign DNA introduced to the
original organism.’
 First CRISPR/cas9 meal consumed in
Sweden, 2016 – ruled not a GMO in European
Law
How Disruptive is the New Frontier?
 Can we project from the politics of the GMO
to the politics at the frontier?
 Acknowledgement: Herring, R. and R.
Paarlberg, 2016. “The Political Economy of
Biotechnology.” Annual Review of
Resource Economics. 8: 397-416 Annual
Reviews. Palo Alto, CA. 2016.
The Political Economy Puzzles
 Recombinant DNA technology is
normalized in many nations,
widely restricted or blocked in
others
 But
only in agriculture
 Unlike
agricultural technology of
‘green revolution’ crops
Why? Dimensions of Variance
 Common Fault Lines of global politics
fail to explain anything: N/S, E/W,
rich/poor, democratic/authoritarian
 Why? What explains the variance?
Variance is Driven by Regulation, Not Markets
 Exception that proves the rule: Stealth Seeds
 High utility -> Risk acceptance
Standard Regulatory Theory
 A Vector Sum of forces, weighted by
power, adjudicated by authority,
produces a regulation regime.
 Technology Regulation presents special
politics of disaggregation:
Risk/Utility
utility?
Matrix: whose risk, whose
First Probe: Risk Politics Varies
 Risk = hazard X incidence/probability or
exposure
 Uncertainty = unknown or un-measurable
hazards

Rumsfeld’s ‘unknown unknowns’ or Black Swan effect
 ‘Risk’ is by necessity socially constructed from
uncertainty
 Loss
dominates gain in behavior -> powerful risk
politics
Example: Risk/Utility Balance for ‘Red’ Biotech
(Medicine/Pharma) is Positive
Risk Balanced by High Utility: cp phones
Comparative Safety vetted by
authoritative knowledge and regulatory
authority – State Science
Voluntary acceptance of risk to gain
benefits
 POS unfavorable:
 Opposing
doctors involves increasing risk
Risk/Utility Balance for ‘Green’ Biotech
(Agriculture) is Negative
 Consumers gain nothing, hypothetical risk
dominates if mobilized/effective.
 Urban bias dominates rural interests
politically
POTATOES IN A SACK
 State science meant to verify acceptable social
risk is vulnerable to mobilized risk politics
Thought Experiment
 Imagine a hypothetical polity considering
adoption of rDNA plants for agriculture.
What questions would best predict the
outcome?
1. Utility
 Varies with economic structure
 Eg:
China/India/cotton
 Deep economic interests and severe
problems with insecticide pollution.
>
Bt cotton
 Europe
lacks these interests, no
utility from Bt cotton (except the
Euro)
2. Food First
 Anxiety about food safety is
universal > strong risk politics.
 Eg Bt cotton: neither India nor
China moved to commercialize a
major food crop even as Bt cotton
succeeded in the fields
 Animal ingestion/digestion is
magical! Or Miraculous Digestion
Why has study saying
GM could kill been
ignored?
exclusive By Rob Edwards
Sunday 1 September 2013
A scientific study suggesting genetically modified food killed
rats has been suppressed because of lobbying by multinational
biotech corporations, environmental campaigners claim.
The Herald Edinborough
3. Mobilization of Opposition
 What advocacy networks have access
and power?
 Argentina/Brazil:
urban campaigners/vs
farmer interests
 History matters: cp Gene and Green
Revolutions
 Emergence of powerful corporate actors
in natural products/organics
4. Ownership: Bioproperty
 MF “The most hated company in the world
right now isn't a member of Big Oil. It's not a
shady Internet company or a bailed-out
megabank. Populist discontent toward dirty
energy, high-tech snoops, and greedy
bankers has occasionally been fierce, but it's
never been laser-focused like the outrage that
drew an estimated (by the organizers) 2
million protesters to anti-Monsanto rallies in
more than 50 countries at the end of May.
(2013)”
5. Trade Structure
 Early enthusiasm for independent ag biotech
in Southeast Asia was dampened by worries
about exports to Europe after Europe turned
against GMOs in 1998.
 Africa
6. Trust in Science/State Science
 Societal risk profiles vary
 Trust in market outcomes varies
 Experience with state
science/technology varies
Mad
cow, Chernobyl, dioxin,
thalidomide
7. Regulatory Structure:
Chokepoints, Veto Players
 Information and mobilization
vary BUT
 Regulatory structures are decisive
and vary
 Who
has final authority?
 Who has access/skills?
 US vs EU
Regulatory Structure:
Chokepoints, Veto Players
 One generalization: Ministers of
Environment vs Ministers of
Agriculture.
 mission
of ministries > risk aversion
 Constituency
 Case: Bt in India/Bangladesh
 CRISPR in Germany
7. Regulatory Structure:
Chokepoints, Veto Players
 Information and mobilization
vary BUT
 Regulatory structures are decisive
and vary
 Who
has final authority?
 Who has access/skills?
New Tools: The End of the ‘GMO’?
 Have We Experienced a Global, Politicized
Angels-on-the-Head-of-a-Pin Discourse?
 Social
and legal construction largely
TRANSGENIC
 And never MUTAGENIC - - {!}
 And maybe CISGENIC
 But maybe not GENOME EDITED plants?
Do New Tools Make New Players?
 V1 Utility and Economic Structure
More
players with a stake
Greater utility across more
applications
 V2 Food
 More
Uncertainty/’Risk?’ Greater Utility?
Nutrition, anti-nutrients, gut biome?
Do New Tools Make New Players?
V3 Balance of Mobilization
‘Nature
of the Natural will not
change: ‘deal breakers’
More players with a stake in utility
GMO-free brand coalition will opt
out – most critical
Organic??
Do New Tools Make New Players?
 V4 Bioproperty
 Decisive
decline in concentration of power
 Oligopoly to level playing field
 Investment costs: a hundred flowers bloom’
 V5 Trade Structure
 Less
‘US’ dominance
 Less legibility/traceability/risk of
discrimination
Do New Tools Make New Players?
 V6 Trust in Science/State Science
 Trends
are not so good: Pew, ‘post-truth’
 Likely increases with utility: pharma/cell
phones
 Anthropogenic climate change
 Unknown unknowns: Chernobyl, Mad
Cow, Dioxin
Do New Tools Make New Players?
 v7. Regulatory Structure:
Chokepoints, Veto Players

Known Unknowns:
 Regulatory chaos: Canadian parliament
 Law abhors the undefinable: eg pornography
 Enforcement: There is no global state; wide
distribution of capacity, strong interests of farmers:
stealth seeds demonstrate the outcome
 Globalization/WTO works against idiosyncratic law
Political Will and State Capacity (what is regulated)
 Legibility/Transparency
Phenotypic/genotypic
Traceability
necessary for trade regime
Bt cotton: spurious and stealth seeds
 COST to state/interests of states: cp India, Brazil,
Thailand: states rely on symbolic politics over
regulation, it’s cheaper! And urban groups do not
know
Unknown Unknowns
 Genuine Ethical Dilemmas:
Eugenics and Hacking Evolution
 ‘Ethical
license’ to exclude germ lines -- but
enforceability?
 Designer babies? A Blue-Eyed Blonde
Revolution?
 Altering human embryos without their
permission?
 Gene drives and eradication of species?
Thank You Ron Herring [email protected]
Further Considerations
 Seeing like a State: legibility, investment, interest in
confronting farmers
 Industrial structure and branding

Sunk costs, great success : Dannon
 Cross overs
 Courts Canada legibility
 Stealth Seeds: diffusion if not adoption
 Density of actors, lower costs, more stealth
 Credibility of gmo-free type brand will not fly if
undetectable