Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Table of EU legislation
- Table of international conventions
- Table of legislation
- Table of cases
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Part I Introduction: Law in Context
- 1 Environmental law in context
- 2 Genetically modified organisms: introducing a dilemma
- 3 Public participation in environmental decision making
- Part II The EU Context
- Part III The International Context
- Part IV Mechanisms of Regulation I: Pollution Control
- Part V Mechanisms of Regulation II: Controls Over Land Use and Development
- Index
2 - Genetically modified organisms: introducing a dilemma
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Table of EU legislation
- Table of international conventions
- Table of legislation
- Table of cases
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Part I Introduction: Law in Context
- 1 Environmental law in context
- 2 Genetically modified organisms: introducing a dilemma
- 3 Public participation in environmental decision making
- Part II The EU Context
- Part III The International Context
- Part IV Mechanisms of Regulation I: Pollution Control
- Part V Mechanisms of Regulation II: Controls Over Land Use and Development
- Index
Summary
Introduction
In the previous chapter we outlined a range of different approaches to environmental protection. The case of regulating agricultural biotechnology tends to highlight these contrasting approaches in a single policy context, in particular the potential for conflict between ‘scientific’ and ‘popular’ or non-expert forms of deliberation and decision making. We explore throughout this book the legal and policy dynamics of this area of regulation, beginning in this chapter with an introduction to the many ethical and practical dilemmas posed by genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
Biotechnology is variously perceived as the most frightening or most promising scientific development of the twentieth century; agricultural biotechnology has proved an extraordinarily fraught topic for environmental regulators over recent years.
Thomas Bernauer, Genes, Trade, and Regulation: The Seeds of Conflict in Food Biotechnology (Princeton University Press, 2003), pp. 22–3
WHAT IS AGRICULTURAL BIOTECHNOLOGY?
In the 19th century, an Augustinian monk from Central Europe, Gregor Mendel, claimed that the traits of living organisms were inherited. Only in the 1950s to 1970s, however, did scientists discover the chemical and physical properties of ‘genes’, the key elements in the process of inheritance. They found that a molecule called DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) contains the information that controls the synthesis of enzymes and other proteins, which in turn are responsible for the basic metabolic processes of all cells. DNA thus encodes genetic information in cells. […]
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- Environmental Protection, Law and PolicyText and Materials, pp. 61 - 84Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007