Since the 1980s there has been a wide-ranging risk debate over biotechnology -- in particular, over genetically modified organisms (GMOs) which are designed for commercial use in the environment. Public concerns have included: ethical qualms about 'interfering with nature', environmental harm from the early trial releases, long-term effects on agriculture, and the commercial motives of the agrochemical companies involved. An underlying issue has been biotechnologists' stated aim of industrializing agriculture -- i.e., treating nature as a 'bioreactor' whose industrial efficiency must be optimized.
For all those reasons, biotechnology has faced a legitimacy problem. According to biotechnologists, they merely correct genetic deficiencies, thus supplementing or improving natural processes; they promise environment-friendly products for benignly protecting crops, even for 'feeding the world'. According to some critics, however, the most likely products will aggravate the familiar problems of intensive agriculture and technological dependency.
The wider public debate has featured incompatible concepts of 'risk'. For proponents, society is at risk of failing to reap the cornucopian benefits of biotechnology. For some critics, society is at risk from biotechnology, whose development marginalizes or even precludes beneficial alternatives. Each concept of 'risk' includes its own concept of benefit, with a particular account of nature and society. In these ways, the risk debate has served as an implicit technology assessment of a potential model for the future.
When scientists entered the public debate, they disagreed about what knowledge-base is necessary for assessing the environmental risks. Molecular biologists have portrayed GMOs as familiar products and thus as predictable, even as inherently safe. Ecologists have tended to regard the genetic novelty of GMOs as a source of environmental unpredictability; they have emphasized the need for careful safety testing and for better ecological knowledge. Some have warned that inserted genes might inadvertently confer a selective advantage, by analogy to the behaviour of some non-indigenous organisms entering a new environment. Along with environmentalists, some scientists have warned that GMO products could impose a genetic treadmill, by analogy to the chemical treadmill of pesticides which have generated selection pressure for resistant pests (Levidow and Tait, 1991).
Given the substantial overlap between public and scientific concerns about risk, biotechnology proponents foresaw political dangers from open debate. For example, some government regulators and advisors expressed concern that scientific disagreements 'could be amplified and misunderstood in public opinion' (OECD, 1989). Yet environmental NGOs have understood such disagreements -- perhaps all too well. In this context, safety regulation has had the implicit role of managing public debate. Regulators have sought ways to translate the risk debate into scientific terms, while separating risk assessment from any broader technology assessment. Let us examine the new legislative framework for doing so.
