Leonie A. Marks
University of Missouri-Columbia

Agricultural biotechnology is a fundamental technology platform that is promising to transform the world food system and bring about an abundance of healthier foods and improve the environment. Yet consumers in some parts of the world have not been as welcoming of the technology as others. Indeed, in Europe and elsewhere consumer opposition grew to such levels as to affect European Union regulation and spark a worldwide debate about the food and environmental safety of genetically modified (GM) crops. And although the debate about GM crops and foods has become more muted in recent months, agrobiotechnology is still making it onto the front page. Many stakeholders—the scientists who developed the technology, US and European firms who championed it, its early adopters (farmers), regulators, politicians, and policy makers—were clearly caught off guard by the European reaction. At the height of the controversy in 1999, Bob Shapiro, then CEO of Monsanto, openly admitted as much (Borger, 1999). Read more…