Proposed Revision of the National Gene Technology Scheme for Australia

Plant breeding was provided access to wider genetic variation through genetic modification (GM) of crops in the 1980s. This involved transfer of DNA between species, and introduction of new traits into domestic crops. Concerns were raised for the outcomes in food health and in the environment with GM crops, with the spectre of ‘Frankenstien’ foods and fear of the unknown. This led to widespread adoption of GM regulations based on the ‘Precautionary principle’ of safeguarding the risks to health and to the environment, even when scientific evidence was lacking to support these concerns. The Green lobby required GM foods to be safe for consumption, with no ill-effects over the long term and for many generations into the future. GM foods have proven safe for over two decades, and with benefits to crop productivity, pest and disease resistances, improved nutrition and tolerances of extreme climatic stresses. GM includes the new biotechnology of Genome Editing (GE), with targeted and precise changes to gene sites, and inter-specific transfer of genes from poorly accessible Crop Wild Relatives (CRW), for adaptation of crops to climate change. Food and fibre crops need to be exempt from GM regulations.

Public Consultation on Proposed Revisions to Norway’s Gene Technology Act: An Analysis of the Consultation Framing, Stakeholder Concerns and the Integration of Non-Safety Considerations

In Norway, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are regulated through the Gene Technology Act of 1993, which has received international attention for its inclusion of non-safety considerations. In 2017, the Norwegian Biotechnology Advisory Board triggered a process to revise the Act that included a public consultation and resulted in the “Proposal for relaxation.” Using poststructuralist discourse analysis, we critically analyze the premises and processes through which the proposal for relaxation was developed—including the public consultation—to understand the range of stakeholder concerns and how these concerns shaped the final proposal. We find that the proposal does not include all concerns equally. The Norwegian Biotechnology Advisory Board’s privileging of technological matters and its preference for tier-based regulation skewed the proposal in a way that reduced broader societal concerns to technological definitions and marginalized discussion of the social, cultural, and ethical issues raised by new gene technologies. To prevent such narrowing of stakeholder concerns in the future, we propose Latour’s model for political economy as a tool to gauge the openness of consultations for biotechnology regulation.

Fünfter Gentechnologiebericht

In the ‘Fifth Gene Technology Report’, renowned experts provide an overview of current developments and their applications in the dynamically evolving research field of gene and biotechnologies. They examine, among other topics, genetic diagnostics, somatic gene therapy, the development of vaccines, stem cell and organoid research, green gene technology, synthetic biology, gene drives, genome editing, epigenetics and single cell analysis. In addition to reporting on the current state of affairs in this field, the authors also discuss society’s perception of gene technologies and ethical and legal issues relating to them, such as genome edit-ing, cerebral organoids and big data in personalised medicine. Moreover, the interdisciplinary task force ‘Gentechnologiebericht’ (Gene Technology Report) offers recommendations on action that could be taken in relation to the key issues. With contributions by Karla Alex, Sina Bartfeld, Meik Bittkowski, Inge Broer, Lorina Buhr, Stephan Clemens, Wolfgang Van den Daele, Hans-Georg Dederer, Tobias J. Erb, Nina Gasparoni, Heiner Fangerau, Boris Fehse, Jürgen Hampel, Louise Herde, Ferdinand Hucho, Ali Jawaid, Aida Khachatryan, Sarah Kohler, Alma Kolleck, Martin Korte, Cordula Kropp, Alfons Labisch, Markus Lehmkuhl, Melanie Leidecker-Sandmann, Annette Leßmöllmann, Isabelle M. Mansuy, Lilian Marx-Stölting, Andreas Merk, Yannick Milhahn, Fruzsina Molnár-Gábor, Stefan Mundlos, Staffan Müller-Wille, Angela Osterheider, Anja Pichl, Barbara Prainsack, Jens Reich, Marlen Reinschke, Ortwin Renn, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Arnold Sauter, Hannah Schickl, Silke Schicktanz, Volker Stollorz, Constanze Störk-Biber, Jochen Taupitz, Jörn Walter, Eva C. Winkler, Martin Zenke and Michael M. Zwick.

Differentiated impacts of human interventions on nature

Biotechnology describes a range of human activities in medicine, agriculture, and environmental management. One biotechnology in particular, gene technology, continues to evolve both in capacity and potential to benefit and harm society. The purpose of this article is to offer a policy bridge from unproductive descriptions of gene technology to useful methods for identifying sources of significant biological and socioeconomic risk in complex food systems. Farmers and the public could be voluntarily and involuntarily interacting with new techniques of genome editing and gene silencing in entirely new ways, limiting the usefulness of previous gene technology histories to predict safety. What we believe is a more consistent, verifiable, and practical approach is to identify the critical control points that emerge where the scale effects of a human activity diverge between risk and safety. These critical control points are where technical experts can collaborate with publics with different expertise to identify and manage the technology. The use of technical terminology describing biochemical-level phenomena discourages publics that are not technical experts from contesting the embedded cultural perspectives and uncertainty in “scientific” concepts and prejudice the risk discourse by ignoring other issues of significance to society. From our perspective as gene technologists, we confront the use of pseudo-scale language in risk discourse and propose an escape path from clashes over whether risks that arise spontaneously (from nature) can be perfectly mimicked by gene technology to a discussion on how to best control the risks created by human activity. Scale is conceptually implicit and explicit in gene technology regulation, but there is no agreement about what scales are most useful to managing risk and social expectations. Both differentiated governance (risk-tiered) and responsible research and innovation models could accommodate the critical control points mechanism that we describe.

Food System Transformation and the Role of Gene Technology: An Ethical Analysis

The global food system exhibits dizzying complexity, with interaction among social, economic, biological, and technological factors. Opposition to the first generation of plants and animals transformed through rDNA-enabled gene transfer (so-called GMOs) has been a signature episode in resistance to the forces of industrialization and globalization in the food system. Yet agricultural scientists continue to tout gene technology as an essential component in meeting future global food needs. An ethical analysis of the debate over gene technologies reveals the details that matter. On the one hand, alternative regimes for institutionalizing gene technology (through regulation, trade policy, and intellectual property law) could mitigate injustices suffered by politically marginalized and economically disadvantaged actors in the food system, especially smallholding farmers in less industrialized economies. On the other hand, GMO opposition has been singularly effective in mobilizing citizens of affluent countries against policies and practices that lie at the heart of these same injustices. As part of the roundtable, “Ethics and the Future of the Global Food System,” this essay argues that charting a middle course that realizes the benefits of gene technology while blocking its use in the perpetration of unjust harms may require a more detailed grasp of intricacies in the food system than even motivated bystanders are willing to develop.