Ignored bioethics? On the role ethical concerns in GM food policies

J. Lassen

Ignored bioethics? On the role ethical concerns in GM food policies

In: Global food security: ethical and legal challenges

Author:

J. Lassen

J. Lassen Danish Centre for Bioethics, Department of Human Nutrition, Faculty of Life, University of Copenhagen, Rolighedsvej 30, 1958 Frederiksberg C, Denmark; jlas@life.ku.dk

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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 494–498

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.3920/9789086867103_083

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It is a well documented fact that European public concerns over agricultural biotechnology are based on arguments about health and environmental risks, usefulness, and what has been termed ‘ethical’, or, ‘wider moral’ concerns. These ‘wider moral’ concerns include worries about animal integrity, naturalness, justice, control, and fairness. The re-emergence of the GM food controversy in the mid 1990s can partly be explained by the failure to include public concerns over usefulness and wider moral concerns in the regulation of GM foods and agriculture. At both national and EU level, the political reaction to the re-emergent controversy involved, attempts to re-arrange existing regulation of GM foods and agriculture in response to this failure. The question, however, is this: To what extent have political discussions of GM foods and agriculture included issues beyond risk, and, thus, established a base for the development of regulation reflecting the width of public concerns? Drawing on a case study of debates in the Danish parliament, this paper examines and characterizes different storylines/ discourses about GM foods. Particular attention is paid to the inclusion and exclusion of arguments about ethics/‘wider moral concerns’ in what can be characterized as the cultural discourse. Drawing on the results of the case study, the paper will discuss the extent to which political discourses reflect public concerns, and, in view of this, the risk of a new re-emergence of social controversy over GM foods and agriculture.

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Global food security: ethical and legal challenges

E-Book ISBN:: 9789086867103

Publisher:: Wageningen Academic

Print Publication Date:: 30 Oct 2010

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- Life Sciences

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Ignored bioethics? On the role ethical concerns in GM food policies

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Global food security: ethical and legal challenges

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