Agri-food biotechnologies: public concerns, risk and regulation George Gaskell 11 March 2003 University of Bath.

Agri-food biotechnologies: public concerns, risk and regulation

George Gaskell11 March 2003

University of Bath

Contrasting technological fortunes

• Mobile phones: selling like hot cakes!health risks widely discussed, emerging

environmental risks.

• Biotechnology: de facto moratorium on GM crops notwithstanding 2001/18/ECFog of claims and counter claims on health

and environmental risks.

Setting the scene

• The development of rDNA technology• The Flavrsavr tomato• Survey shows Europeans are ambivalent• Monsanto and GM soya• The watershed years:1996-1999• Crisis of confidence in GM foods,

corporate science and governance.• Europe likely to be taken to the World

Trade Organisation

A sea of controversies

• Declining confidence in experts – BSE, dioxin, foot and mouth disease and contaminated blood.

• Globalisation, the WTO and the risk society• Complexities of policy making in Europe• The commercialisation of science• Agriculture, the CAP and the future of rural

communities• And Monsanto’s dismal risk management

strategy, whipping up the stormy seas.

Contrasting representations of risk

• For experts GM crops and foods are an innovation – progress writ large

• Public anxieties due to misperception of risksTechnophobia based on risk aversionBSE and other food scares

• Ergo ‘risk communication’ by trusted experts’ and now public consultation.

Risk in the social sciences

• Origins in gambling, economics, finance and engineering

• 1960s Behavioural decision theory - Edwards

• 1970s Risk perception, biases and heuristics – Slovic, Tversky and Kahneman

• 1980s The cultural matrix of risk - Douglas

Risk and policy

• Evidence based policy making: the “rational society”

• Codex Alimentarius: the establishment of international standards for risk assessment

• Predicated on a generalised communication medium a “currency of risk”

• But is this possible?• Yes, say those advocating “sound science”

Sound science, uncertainty and risk

• Natural science the paradigm; emerging consensus on the concept (representation) of risk

• Relevant and irrelevant dangers• Relevant = familiar to science, ‘objectified’ as ‘risks’• Relevant risks further ‘objectified’ in terms of the

familiar metric of probability• Irrelevant = subjective and immeasurable• New dangers – substantial equivalence ‘anchoring’• Uncertainty: only legitimate expertise is scientific• Sound science as judge (rules of evidence) and jury

(verdict)• Sed quis judicabet ipsos judices? Scientific peers!

In practice, values cannot be ignored.

• Safety in a rational society• Value per fatality VPFs, but• Adventure centres £5m• Gas main explosions £100m• Railways £100m• Roads £0.1m

• Values enter the equation: politics, reputations, interest groups, public responses

What do we know about public conceptions of

risks?• Prospect theory• Over-estimate likelihood of low probability

events.– Sensitivity to dangers- losses

• The availability heuristic– Estimates of probability based on ease of recall

• The affective heuristic - Slovic• Media amplification

News value of unusual and spectacular accidents

Prospect Theory:Weighing up gains and losses

a Utility

Value

Mapping Risk Perception

• Starr: risk acceptability as revealed preference

• Voluntary and involuntary risks

• Qualitative dimensions of risk

Qualitative dimensions of risk

Risk and Values

• Probabilist and contextualist conceptions of risk

• ‘Cultural Theory’ Mary Douglas Risks are defined within the cultural

matrix Competing ‘worldviews’ (cultures) in

modern societies

Ways of sense making

• Paradigmatic: sound science, the way scientific journals operate – abstract and universal, warranted by empirical evidence.

• Narrative: everyday thinking – concrete and particular; explanations in terms of actions and intentions. A good (believable) is the criterion of truth

• Scientists and politicians are as adept as the public in the telling of good stories.

Risks and benefits in everyday conversation: a qualitative analysis

• Risks qua the scientific definition seldom articulated in focus group discussions

• Opposition articulated in terms of– Uncertainty about longer term consequences– Lack of trust in key actors– Absence of perceived benefits and plausible

alternatives to GM applications: a strong current of opinion

How the public thinks about new hazards such as agri-biotechs

• Mainly in the narrative mode• A focus on the “challenging object”

rather than probabilities (Thompson)• Those that can be imagined or

visualised are more relevant.• The mere act of imagining a negative

outcome makes it possible• Credible stories and good images are

warrants of truth.

Agri-food biotechnology: problems

and critiques • Variety of problems identified by different groups• Blue: traditional and conservative rejection – a

Faustian pact with the devil, a non-contingent veto.

• Green: at the limits of science, unknown and unknowable consequences – Frankenstein revisited, a no vote until proved safe.

• Democratic: denial of choice an affront to rights• Pragmatic: can’t imagine the benefits, why is it

needed?

The European public segmented by risk and benefit perceptions

GM food poses risks for future generations Agree Disagree

Agree

18 (52)

14 (81)

GM food will bring benefits to many people

Disagree

62 (17)

6 (27)

(Europe: N = 4524; excluding DK and ‘neutral’ responses)

(Source: Eurobarometer 52.1)

The social construction of dangers

• In different cultures/milieus different representations of dangers

• Representations an emergent property of communication.

• As are definitions of benefits and costs• The toblerone model of representations

(Bauer and Gaskell, 1999)• Fancy a ‘real dog, hot dog?

Back to evidence based policy making

• Risk definition, assessment and management viewed as separate activities – division of labour between scientists and political managers

• Establishes a representation of risk and related policy by fiat – imposed top-down.

• Does this “single currency of risk” carry legitimacy?

Well, yes and no

• Legitimate in context of a familiar and proximal hazards, broad agreement on the currency – health and medicines

• But as a common currency across different categories of hazard, I doubt it because it runs counter to narrative thinking.

• Equally, in politics some risks are more symbolic than others

• For distal hazards people tend not to think in terms of probabilities. More likely to treat benefits as lexicographic or to act on trust.

• With new challenges the currency fails because there is no consensus on the danger.

Internationalising risk regulation

• For new challenges, representations of the scope of the problem, benefits and costs are likely to be disputed.

• Benefits and risks are not seen as independent• Since we cannot live in a risk free world, opens the

opportunity for groups to have different problem definitions, risk sensitivity and risk acceptability.

• In this sense one can see why it is hard enough to establish evidenced based policy making in one country, let alone international standards.

• Alan Randall (Codex) on international regulations:• “Sound science a good basis but not sufficient in and of

itself. Other legitimate factors need to be taken into account”

Hirschman: responses to institutional challenges

• Exit (leave), loyalty (accept) and voice (complain)

• ‘Exit’ is not an option for new for many new technologies.

• ‘Voice’ is limited by structural constraints.• The democratic deficit is, in part, a product of

scientism – sound science is the only truth• But choices about science and technology,

about what future we want are social choices• Hard science should be on tap in such choices

but not on top.

Back to mobile phones

• Why are the major telecoms companies in the UK, France and Germany in such financial trouble?

• Massive investments in 3G systems with as yet no payback.

• Like GM foods the 3G technology is not seen as beneficial.