IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v13y2021i14p7643-d590757.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Public Consultation on Proposed Revisions to Norway’s Gene Technology Act: An Analysis of the Consultation Framing, Stakeholder Concerns, and the Integration of Non-Safety Considerations

Author

Listed:
  • Sigfrid Kjeldaas

    (GenØk Centre for Biosafety, NO-9294 Tromsø, Norway
    Department of Culture and Literature, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, NO-9037 Tromsø, Norway)

  • Trine Antonsen

    (GenØk Centre for Biosafety, NO-9294 Tromsø, Norway
    Department of Philosophy, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, NO-9037 Tromsø, Norway)

  • Sarah Hartley

    (Department of Science, Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship, University of Exeter, Exeter EX4 4PU, UK)

  • Anne Ingeborg Myhr

    (GenØk Centre for Biosafety, NO-9294 Tromsø, Norway)

Abstract

In Norway, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are regulated through the Gene Technology Act of 1993, which has received international attention for its inclusion of non-safety considerations. In 2017, the Norwegian Biotechnology Advisory Board triggered a process to revise the Act that included a public consultation and resulted in the “Proposal for relaxation.” Using poststructuralist discourse analysis, we critically analyze the premises and processes through which the proposal for relaxation was developed—including the public consultation—to understand the range of stakeholder concerns and how these concerns shaped the final proposal. We find that the proposal does not include all concerns equally. The Norwegian Biotechnology Advisory Board’s privileging of technological matters and its preference for tier-based regulation skewed the proposal in a way that reduced broader societal concerns to technological definitions and marginalized discussion of the social, cultural, and ethical issues raised by new gene technologies. To prevent such narrowing of stakeholder concerns in the future, we propose Latour’s model for political economy as a tool to gauge the openness of consultations for biotechnology regulation.

Suggested Citation

  • Sigfrid Kjeldaas & Trine Antonsen & Sarah Hartley & Anne Ingeborg Myhr, 2021. "Public Consultation on Proposed Revisions to Norway’s Gene Technology Act: An Analysis of the Consultation Framing, Stakeholder Concerns, and the Integration of Non-Safety Considerations," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(14), pages 1-25, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:14:p:7643-:d:590757
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/14/7643/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/14/7643/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Menozzi, Davide & Kostov, Kaloyan & Sogari, Giovanni & Arpaia, Salvatore & Moyankova, Daniela & Cristina Mora, 2017. "A stakeholder engagement approach for identifying future research directions in the evaluation of current and emerging applications of GMOs," Bio-based and Applied Economics Journal, Italian Association of Agricultural and Applied Economics (AIEAA), vol. 6(1), May.
    2. Rosa Binimelis & Anne Ingeborg Myhr, 2016. "Inclusion and Implementation of Socio-Economic Considerations in GMO Regulations: Needs and Recommendations," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(1), pages 1-24, January.
    3. Richard Helliwell & Sarah Hartley & Warren Pearce, 2019. "NGO perspectives on the social and ethical dimensions of plant genome-editing," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 36(4), pages 779-791, December.
    4. Klara Fischer & Elisabeth Ekener-Petersen & Lotta Rydhmer & Karin Edvardsson Björnberg, 2015. "Social Impacts of GM Crops in Agriculture: A Systematic Literature Review," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 7(7), pages 1-23, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sigfrid Kjeldaas & Tim Dassler & Trine Antonsen & Odd-Gunnar Wikmark & Anne I. Myhr, 2023. "With great power comes great responsibility: why ‘safe enough’ is not good enough in debates on new gene technologies," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 40(2), pages 533-545, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sigfrid Kjeldaas & Tim Dassler & Trine Antonsen & Odd-Gunnar Wikmark & Anne I. Myhr, 2023. "With great power comes great responsibility: why ‘safe enough’ is not good enough in debates on new gene technologies," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 40(2), pages 533-545, June.
    2. Lonneke M. Poort & Jac. A. A. Swart & Ruth Mampuys & Arend J. Waarlo & Paul C. Struik & Lucien Hanssen, 2022. "Restore politics in societal debates on new genomic techniques," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 39(4), pages 1207-1216, December.
    3. Angela Bearth & Gulbanu Kaptan & Sabrina Heike Kessler, 2022. "Genome-edited versus genetically-modified tomatoes: an experiment on people’s perceptions and acceptance of food biotechnology in the UK and Switzerland," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 39(3), pages 1117-1131, September.
    4. Menozzi, Davide & Kostov, Kaloyan & Sogari, Giovanni & Arpaia, Salvatore & Moyankova, Daniela & Cristina Mora, 2017. "A stakeholder engagement approach for identifying future research directions in the evaluation of current and emerging applications of GMOs," Bio-based and Applied Economics Journal, Italian Association of Agricultural and Applied Economics (AIEAA), vol. 6(1), May.
    5. Amaranta Herrero & Fern Wickson & Rosa Binimelis, 2015. "Seeing GMOs from a Systems Perspective: The Need for Comparative Cartographies of Agri/Cultures for Sustainability Assessment," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 7(8), pages 1-24, August.
    6. Klara Fischer & Camilla Eriksson, 2016. "Social Science Studies on European and African Agriculture Compared: Bringing Together Different Strands of Academic Debate on GM Crops," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(9), pages 1-17, August.
    7. Jennifer Clapp & Sarah-Louise Ruder, 2020. "Precision Technologies for Agriculture: Digital Farming, Gene-EditedCrops, and the Politics of Sustainability," Global Environmental Politics, MIT Press, vol. 20(3), pages 49-69, August.
    8. Georgina Catacora-Vargas & Rosa Binimelis & Anne I. Myhr & Brian Wynne, 2018. "Socio-economic research on genetically modified crops: a study of the literature," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 35(2), pages 489-513, June.
    9. Van Acker, Rene & Cici, S. Zahra H. & Lohuis, Michael & Ryan, Camille & Sachs, Eric, 2015. "Gaining Societal Acceptance of Biotechnology: The Case for Societal Engagement," GMCC-15: Seventh GMCC, November 17-20, 2015, Amsterdam, the Netherlands 211639, International Conference on Coexistence between Genetically Modified (GM) and non-GM based Agricultural Supply Chains (GMCC).
    10. Christina-Ioanna Papadopoulou & Efstratios Loizou & Fotios Chatzitheodoridis, 2022. "Priorities in Bioeconomy Strategies: A Systematic Literature Review," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(19), pages 1-15, October.
    11. Beate Friedrich, 2019. "Pathways of Conflict: Lessons from the Cultivation of MON810 in Germany in 2005–2008 for Emerging Conflicts over New Breeding Techniques," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(1), pages 1-17, December.
    12. William Lacy, 2023. "Local food systems, citizen and public science, empowered communities, and democracy: hopes deserving to live," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 40(1), pages 1-17, March.
    13. Hartung, Frank & Krause, Dörthe & Sprink, Thorben & Wilhelm, Ralf, 2024. "Anwendungen der Grünen Gentechnik in der Landwirtschaft: Potenziale und Risiken," Studien zum deutschen Innovationssystem 5-2024, Expertenkommission Forschung und Innovation (EFI) - Commission of Experts for Research and Innovation, Berlin.
    14. Koen Beumer, 2019. "How to include socio-economic considerations in decision-making on agricultural biotechnology? Two models from Kenya and South Africa," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 36(4), pages 669-684, December.
    15. Rosa Binimelis & Anne Ingeborg Myhr, 2016. "Inclusion and Implementation of Socio-Economic Considerations in GMO Regulations: Needs and Recommendations," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(1), pages 1-24, January.
    16. Hidemichi Fujii & Kentaro Yoshida & Ken Sugimura, 2016. "Research and Development Strategy in Biological Technologies: A Patent Data Analysis of Japanese Manufacturing Firms," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(4), pages 1-15, April.
    17. Whittingham, Jennifer & Wynberg, Rachel, 2021. "Is the Feminist Ethics of Care framework a useful lens for GM crop risk appraisal in the global south?," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    18. Lillemets, Jüri & Fertő, Imre & Viira, Ants-Hannes, 2022. "The socioeconomic impacts of the CAP: Systematic literature review," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    19. Nihit Goyal & Michael Howlett & Araz Taeihagh, 2021. "Why and how does the regulation of emerging technologies occur? Explaining the adoption of the EU General Data Protection Regulation using the multiple streams framework," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 15(4), pages 1020-1034, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:14:p:7643-:d:590757. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.