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1. Introduction: Biotechnology, GMOs, and Risk Regulation
Few issues of European law and policy excite as much attention and concern as
the creation and marketing of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Lauded by many
scientists, policy elites, and members of the biotechnology industry as a step forward in
scientific and economic terms, genetically modified (GM) foods and crops have also been
rejected as unsafe or undesirable by many environmentalists and consumer advocates,
and by a majority of the European public as recorded in successive polls over the past
decade. Into this controversy have stepped the institutions of the European Union, which
increasingly play the leading role in establishing the regulatory framework for the
growing and marketing of GM foods and crops in the Union’s 25 member states.
In this chapter, we examine EU policy and policy-making in the area of
biotechnology, with a specific focus on agricultural biotechnology – namely, the
development and marketing of GM crops and foods. More specifically, the chapter aims
to summarize both the content of the EU’s rapidly evolving regulations, and the process
whereby these regulations have been promulgated, implemented, and comprehensively
reformed in the space of just over a decade. As we shall see, EU policy in this area is
predominantly regulatory in character, setting the increasingly detailed regulatory
framework within which genetically modified foods and crops may be developed,
introduced into the environment, and work their way into the food supply.
Throughout the chapter, we develop three interrelated arguments about the nature
of GMO regulation and the challenges it poses to the European Union. First, we
highlight the inherently multi-sectoral nature of GMO regulation, which links together
the internal market with industrial policy, research and technological development,
environmental policy, food safety, agriculture, and international trade. As a multi-
sectoral issue, the regulation of GMOs raises the challenge of coordinating policymaking
horizontally among a large number of public and private actors with diverse perspectives
about the aims and the content of EU regulation.
Convention