Transgenics in Dispute : Political Conflicts in the Commercial Liberation of GMOs in Brazil

This book analyses the conflict over the release of transgenic soybean in Brazil based on a narrative analysis of political conflict. At the end of the 1990s, the commercial release of Roundup Ready (RR) soybean triggered a heated debate over the introduction of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in Brazilian agriculture, which developed into an open political conflict opposing pro- and anti-GMOs groups in Brazilian society. This volume examines some of the structuring axes of this conflict by applying a narrative analysis of political conflict. In this approach, politics is perceived as a process of interpretive conflict in which participants in the political game seek to establish the lines that delimit the very definition of public issues under debate. The issue of GMOs is understood, from this perspective, as a public controversy whose dynamics are shaped by the discourses that emerge from the dispute itself. To analyze these controversies, the book focuses on threeaxes of narrative analyses: the conflict over distributives issues associated with the commercial release of RR soy; the conflict over scientific uncertainty associated with the environmental risks of GMOs; and the conflict over labeling policies. Transgenics in Dispute: Political Conflicts in the Commercial Liberation of GMOs in Brazil will be of interest to both social and environmental scientists concerned with the risks produced by the newest technologies that mediate our relationship with the environment and with the public debate that their use tends to provoke. This book is a translation of the original Portuguese edition “Transgênicos em disputa: Os conflitos políticos na liberação comercial dos OGMs no Brasil” by Cristiano Luis Lenzi, published in Brazil by Appris Editora in 2020. The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). The author has subsequently revised the text further in an endeavour to refine the work stylistically. Springer Nature works continuously to further the development of tools for the production of books and on the related technologies to support the authors. Acknowledgments Contents About the Author Chapter 1: Introduction References Chapter 2: Environmental Policy Process: From Linear to Discursive Model 2.1 Analysis of the Environmental Policy Process 2.2 The Language of Environmental Policy 2.3 Discourse, Frames, and Story Lines 2.4 Methodological Considerations References Chapter 3: Brave New World of Biotechnology 3.1 The Radical Nature of Biotechnology 3.2 The Risks of Biotechnology 3.3 The Ethics of GM Food 3.4 Agricultural Innovation and Distributives Issues 3.5 Public Participation for What? 3.6 Regulating GMOs 3.7 The Politicization of Science 3.8 The Labeling Conflict 3.9 The Commercial Release of RR Soybean in Brazil 3.10 Final Considerations References Chapter 4: A Territory Free of Transgenics: The Conflict over the Release of RR Soybean in Southern Brazil 4.1 The Concept of Environmental Justice 4.2 Distributive Impacts of Agricultural Biotechnology 4.3 GMOs and Environmental Justice in Brazil 4.4 Trade-Off: When Everybody Wins 4.5 GM Seeds and Land Reform 4.6 A Late Threat from the Green Revolution 4.7 Fiscalizing (Il)Legal GM Crops 4.8 Back to the Beginning 4.9 GM Soybean: A Friend of Agrarian Reform? 4.10 Final Considerations References Chapter 5: Science in Dispute: Sound Science and the Conflict over Risk Analysis 5.1 A World Where Everything Becomes Ideology 5.2 When Security Is Not Secure Enough 5.3 Universalism and Equivalence in Risk Analysis 5.4 Epistemological Uncertainty and the Precautionary Discourse 5.5 CTNBio, Regulation and Scientific Uncertainty 5.6 Does the Absence of Evidence Indicate the Absence of Risk? 5.7 Beyond Risk Analysis? 5.8 Final Considerations References Chapter 6: Labeling as Precaution: Substantial Equivalence and the Conflict over Labeling 6.1 Labeling Risks 6.2 Defending the Consumer’s Right in the Absence of Danger 6.3 Consumer Choice and Environmental Risk 6.4 The Ideological Conflict About Labeling 6.5 The Policy of Substantial Equivalence 6.6 Defending the Consumer from Himself 6.7 An Environmental Utopia 6.8 Final Considerations References Chapter 7: Regulation Made in the United States: Regulatory Polarization and the Brazilian Case 7.1 Regulatory Polarization 7.2 The European Case 7.3 The American Case 7.4 Brazil, Europe, and United States 7.5 Final Considerations References Chapter 8: Conclusion References Index This book analyses the conflict over the release of transgenic soybean in Brazil based on a narrative analysis of political conflict. At the end of the 1990s, the commercial release of Roundup Ready (RR) soybean triggered a heated debate over the introduction of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in Brazilian agriculture, which developed into an open political conflict opposing pro- and anti-GMOs groups in Brazilian society. This volume examines some of the structuring axes of this conflict by applying a narrative analysis of political conflict. In this approach, politics is perceived as a process of interpretive conflict in which participants in the political game seek to establish the lines that delimit the very definition of public issues under debate. The issue of GMOs is understood, from this perspective, as a public controversy whose dynamics are shaped by the discourses that emerge from the dispute itself. To analyze these controversies, the book focuses on three axes of narrative analyses: the conflict over distributives issues associated with the commercial release of RR soy; the conflict over scientific uncertainty associated with the environmental risks of GMOs; and the conflict over labeling policies. Transgenics in Dispute: Political Conflicts in the Commercial Liberation of GMOs in Brazil will be of interest to both social and environmental scientists concerned with the risks produced by the newest technologies that mediate our relationship with the environment and with the public debate that their use tends to provoke. This book is a translation of the original Portuguese edition "Transgãenicos em disputa: Os conflitos polâiticos na liberaðcäao comercial dos OGMs no Brasil by Cristiano Luis Lenzi, published in Brazil by Appris Editora in 2020. The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). The author has subsequently revised the text further in an endeavour to refine the work stylistically. Springer Nature works continuously to further the development of tools for the production of books and on the related technologies to support the authors