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This chapter introduces the technology of genetic engineering and addresses the arguments of both its advocates and its sceptics. The chapter is organized in five parts. Part 1 introduces the new technology of genetic modification, its purported benefits and risks, and the central concepts of risk regulation as well as their application in the US and EU in the context of rapid technological change. After presenting the US regulatory system for agricultural biotechnology in part 2 and the EU system in part 3, it analyzes and seeks to explain the causes of the regulatory polarization in part 4. It concludes in part 5 with a brief discussion of two-level games analysis, which helps model how domestic constituencies within the US and EU both empower and constrain US and EU officials when they attempt to engage in regulatory cooperation over agricultural biotechnology.

Most tree species are undomesticated and, in contrast to agricultural crops, there is often considerable genetic variation in the expression of resistance to different pests and pathogens within forests. This chapter focuses on the nature, physiological constraints, and environmental influences on resistance expression in trees. Following a brief discussion of defence theory, the genetic basis of resistance is discussed with examples of both preformed and induced resistance mechanisms in leaves, and in bark and wood. Ways of measuring resistance, the choice of appropriate discriminating assays for both insects and fungi, and the exploitation of natural variation in resistance in pest management are discussed. In practice, several defensive traits may determine the outcome of attack and this is briefly discussed under the theme of integrated resistance. In the final section, the topic of breeding for resistance is introduced, followed by a brief discussion of the potential for genetic modification of resistance expression.

This chapter, which concentrates on the question of human moral agency and how traditional notions of conscience and virtue might apply to case-by-case uses of germline modification, highlights those features of the human person that are particularly relevant to the discussion of inheritable genetic modifications (IGM) in terms of ethical practice. It argues that freedom is an integral aspect of humanity, and specifically analyzes how far IGM is in principle a genuine act of freedom which fosters humanity. The chapter suggests that Thomas Aquinas’s understanding of conscience was best situated within his more developed sense of prudence.

This chapter demonstrates how the enhancement debate embodies Me Medicine at its most questionable. “Enhancement” is defined as any medication designed to improve individual human performance, created through science-based or technology-based interventions. Physical and cognitive enhancement technologies are based on the idea that an individual is obliged to create the best possible version of himself, as well as a responsibility to produce the best children. However, even adversaries of enhancement technologies rely on the language of individuality, arguing that the child’s autonomy is jeopardized in the enhancement process. In relation to this debate, the chapter focuses on two main areas: neurotechnologies, particularly those affecting the cognitive function, as well as neurotransmitters; and genetic engineering, specifically germline genetic modification.

This chapter looks into the introduction of genetically modified (GM) materials into food. If there is a crisis, a crisis of confidence in GM science and its use in agriculture, it can be viewed as a kind of pre-emptive or anticipatory crisis. Clear evidence that GM food threatens the health of consumers does not exist. Yet European governments have invested considerable amounts of financial and political capital in responding to public anxieties. They have invested heavily in enhancing the public's understanding of the science underpinning GM crops.

This chapter shows how the adaptation strategy of plants facilitates the inheritance of somatic genetic and epigenetic variations. First, it discusses the genetic and epigenetic somatic variability in plants. Next, it describes the developmental plasticity in plants, which involves both genetic and epigenetic variations. It also discusses two examples of epigenetically regulated genetic modifications: genome shuffling and DNA amplification. Finally, the chapter emphasizes the importance of selection for coordinating different levels of heredity.

This chapter discusses issues raised in From Chance to Choice and “Justice and Nature” by Thomas Nagel; in “Wrongful Life, Procreative Responsibility, and the Significance of Harm” by Seana Shiffrin; and in “Shopping at the Generic Supermarket” by Peter Singer. Among the issues considered are whether and to what degree social justice requires genetic modification for purposes of treatment and/or enhancement; what duties parents have to control the genetic makeup of, and more generally to benefit and not harm their offspring; and how genetic modification would affect the disabled.

Humans crave new technology in communications, medicine, electronics, and transportation, but show reserve when new technology touches food. While the industrialized world enjoys the safest and most abundant food supply in human history, the same consumers voice concern about that same bounty. This problem is multi-faceted, with origins in a lack of corporate trust, appeals to nature, an internet filled with poor-quality information, and whims of affluent consumers that spend a small percentage of their income on food. Human history has been a perennial battle against food scarcity and under-nutrition. Crop domestication and the emergence of agriculture changed that. Today’s modern technologies, led by plant genetic improvement, have provided sustained food security. Some of these technologies implement recombinant DNA technology, commonly known as genetic engineering. These new genetic technologies allow farmers to produce record yields with fewer impacts on the environment. However, these same technologies are often maligned and misrepresented by a well-funded and deceptive movement that uses soft scientific claims, misrepresentation of the literature, manufactured risk, fear, and blatant misinformation to promote their cause. Here this contemporary food war is explained, an unfortunate fight playing out at the intersection of science and food, with impacts on farmers, the environment, consumers and the poverty stricken.

Understanding methods of vector control is essential to vector-borne disease (VBD) management. Vaccines or standard medical interventions for many VDBs do not exist or are poorly developed so disease control is focused on managing vector numbers and dynamics. This involves understanding not only the population dynamics but also the population genetics of vectors. Using mosquitoes as a case study, in this chapter, the modern genetics-based methods of vector control (self-limiting, self-sustaining) on mosquito population and disease suppression will be reviewed. These genetics-based methods highlight the importance of understanding the interplay between genetics and ecology to develop optimal, cost-effective solutions for control. The chapter focuses on how these genetics-based methods can be integrated with other interventions, and concludes with a summary of regulatory and policy perspectives about the use of these approaches in the management of VBDs.

On 10 May, 2004 Monsanto conceded to a coalition of organizations opposing the introduction of genetically modified Roundup Ready wheat in Canada and abandoned its application to introduce the crop in North America. This chapter examines how this producer-led coalition defeated RR wheat by challenging the prevailing neoliberal logic that the fate of RR wheat should be decided in the marketplace according to individual choice. Instead, the farmers at the center of the anti-RR wheat coalition insisted that their distinct and collective interests as producers of food should be reflected in Canadian biotech policy and argued that wheat should remain a crop that farmers could reproduce outside of markets through the practice of seed saving.

Food is a long-standing productive activity which carries a number of different production and consumption attributes. However, much of the recent literature focuses on a limited number of such attributes—namely, the transformation of the food chain and, more in general, of production sites. In particular, much attention has been paid to globalization, the growing power of transnational corporations and their relentless exploitation of nature. In this chapter we argue that this kind of focus is not alone sufficient to account for the growing complexity of contemporary agri-food geography. Growing concerns about food safety and nutrition are leading many consumers in advanced capitalist countries to demand quality products that are embedded in regional ecologies and cultures. This is creating an alternative geography of food, based on ecological food chains and on a new attention to places and natures, that, as we will see in Ch. 3, reveals a very different mosaic of productivity—one that contrasts in important respects with the dominant distribution of productive activities so apparent in the global food sector (Gilg and Battershill, 1998; Ilbery and Kneafsey, 1998). Our aim is to develop an analytical approach that can aid our understanding of this new agri-food geography and can introduce a greater appreciation of the complexity of the contemporary food sector. To this end, we begin by considering work on the globalization of the food sector and by showing that recent analyses have usefully uncovered some of the key motive forces driving this process—most notably the desire by industrial capitals both to ‘outflank’ the biological systems and to disembed food from a traditional regional cultural context of production and consumption. After considering the recent assertion of regionalized quality (which can be seen as a response to the outflanking manoeuvres inherent in industrialization), we examine approaches such as political economy, actor–network theory, and conventions theory that have made significant in-roads into agri-food studies and have revealed differing aspects of the modern food system.

This book seeks to understand how the concept of public interest is and might be used, and to consider whether it is possible and/or advisable to establish a meaningful construct of the public interest. It explores some of the competing claims put forward in the name of the public interest, and identifies the strengths and weaknesses of various approaches to it. It presents case studies of how the concept of public interest is currently used in the regulation of certain industries, both in Britain and the United States, which appear to be central to individual and collective expectations of modern life. Particular attention is paid to regulation of the food supply industry and recent controversies over genetic modification of foodstuffs, in which concerns of public health and safety have the clear potential to be in direct competition with the profit-making objectives of food producers and retailers. The book also looks at how the media industries, especially broadcasting, are regulated, in pursuit of public interest standards that are found either implicitly or explicitly.

This chapter concentrates on the introduction of genetically modified (GM) crops and foods into Britain. It describes how citizenship was reframed through the partial realignment of governance with respect to the science, technology, and innovation politics of genetic modification. This chapter shows that Unilever tried to cope with public controversy over GM technologies in the UK. It suggests that the GM experience highlights the complexity and open-endedness of public attitudes in relation to issues involving science and government. It indicates that UK discourse and practices appear to have generated some genuinely cosmopolitan initiatives while remaining deeply affected by what is characterized as despotic insecurities and forces.

Providing sufficient protein to a growing world population remains one of the most pressing global food challenges. The increased demand for protein has threatened the sustainability of fish resources due to ecosystem degradation, climate change, and overfishing. A new outlet has emerged to tackle the fish problem: genetic modification. This is a story about a technological response to the state of world fisheries. It is also a story of the struggles of an entrepreneur who set out to commercialize transgenic salmon. This chapter explores the challenges that entrepreneurs face when championing a platform technology that paves the way for a new field of innovation. It traces the technological, social, and political dynamics of two decades of efforts to seek government approval to commercialize what would be the first transgenic animal for food purposes. The intensity of the debate reflects many of the economic and psychological factors associated with other products.

This chapter is about how we think about states, natures, and the relationships between them. Despite this book’s assertion that an understanding of the relations between states and natures is vital for any interpretation of contemporary political life or ecological existence, it is important to recognize the growing sense of antipathy towards theories of the state within work on nature. This antipathy is based on two broad critiques of state theory—one epistemological and the other ontological. At an epistemological level, challenges to work on the state can perhaps best be understood in relation to the consistent tendency of certain strands of political theory to use the definite article when referring to ‘the’ state. Reference to ‘the’ state, however innocently deployed, implicitly suggests a clearly designated, singular entity of government. But it is precisely this view of states as sovereign, territorially autonomous containers of political life that has led to a concerted wave of theoretical criticism. The reification of a definitive vision of the state has tended to create a very narrow view of the state within certain strands of contemporary political theory. It is in this context that Rose and Miller (1992) argue that the state is nothing more than a ‘mythical abstraction’ (see Chapter 1), or an attempt to simplify the complex networks and practices through which governmental power is realized into narrowly conceived, centralized visions of authority. Consequently, to many writing within what could broadly be defined as a Foucauldian school (Hobbes 1996: 82) of political theory, notions of the state are anathema to the careful and systematic study of the governmental technologies, modes of calculation, and institutional procedures through which socio-political power is realized. At an ontological level, it is argued that even if vestiges of the mythical abstractions (or ‘fantastic topologies’) associated with state theory persist, the power of states to shape the political, economic, and social worlds has been seriously undermined. Much of the purported reduction in the state’s sovereign power has been associated with the rise of globalization and the associated socio-ecological relations and transactions that now routinely traverse national territories.