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Precaution, Responsible Innovation and Beyond – In Search of a Sustainable Agricultural Biotechnology Policy
The recent ruling by the European Court of Justice on gene edited plants highlighted regulatory inadequacy as well as a decades-old political problem, namely how to reconcile diverging expectations regarding agricultural biotechnology in Europe. Over time, regulators had tried out various tools to a...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Frontiers Media S.A.
2018
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6305544/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30619432 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2018.01884 |
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author | Bogner, Alexander Torgersen, Helge |
author_facet | Bogner, Alexander Torgersen, Helge |
author_sort | Bogner, Alexander |
collection | PubMed |
description | The recent ruling by the European Court of Justice on gene edited plants highlighted regulatory inadequacy as well as a decades-old political problem, namely how to reconcile diverging expectations regarding agricultural biotechnology in Europe. Over time, regulators had tried out various tools to address concerns and overcome implementation obstacles. While initially focussing on risk (with the Precautionary Principle), they later tried to better embed technology in society (e.g., through Responsible Research and Innovation). The PP got criticized early-on; meanwhile, it seems to have lost much of its salience. Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) is associated with problems of participation and political impact, often rendering it a public awareness tool only. We discuss problems with both approaches and conclude that also RRI falls short of facilitating technology implementation in the way regulators might have had in mind. Rather than leaving political decisions to technical risk assessment or ethics and public awareness, we argue for re-establishing a broad yet sober process of opinion formation and informed decision-making in agricultural policy. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6305544 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-63055442019-01-07 Precaution, Responsible Innovation and Beyond – In Search of a Sustainable Agricultural Biotechnology Policy Bogner, Alexander Torgersen, Helge Front Plant Sci Plant Science The recent ruling by the European Court of Justice on gene edited plants highlighted regulatory inadequacy as well as a decades-old political problem, namely how to reconcile diverging expectations regarding agricultural biotechnology in Europe. Over time, regulators had tried out various tools to address concerns and overcome implementation obstacles. While initially focussing on risk (with the Precautionary Principle), they later tried to better embed technology in society (e.g., through Responsible Research and Innovation). The PP got criticized early-on; meanwhile, it seems to have lost much of its salience. Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) is associated with problems of participation and political impact, often rendering it a public awareness tool only. We discuss problems with both approaches and conclude that also RRI falls short of facilitating technology implementation in the way regulators might have had in mind. Rather than leaving political decisions to technical risk assessment or ethics and public awareness, we argue for re-establishing a broad yet sober process of opinion formation and informed decision-making in agricultural policy. Frontiers Media S.A. 2018-12-18 /pmc/articles/PMC6305544/ /pubmed/30619432 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2018.01884 Text en Copyright © 2018 Bogner and Torgersen. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Plant Science Bogner, Alexander Torgersen, Helge Precaution, Responsible Innovation and Beyond – In Search of a Sustainable Agricultural Biotechnology Policy |
title | Precaution, Responsible Innovation and Beyond – In Search of a Sustainable Agricultural Biotechnology Policy |
title_full | Precaution, Responsible Innovation and Beyond – In Search of a Sustainable Agricultural Biotechnology Policy |
title_fullStr | Precaution, Responsible Innovation and Beyond – In Search of a Sustainable Agricultural Biotechnology Policy |
title_full_unstemmed | Precaution, Responsible Innovation and Beyond – In Search of a Sustainable Agricultural Biotechnology Policy |
title_short | Precaution, Responsible Innovation and Beyond – In Search of a Sustainable Agricultural Biotechnology Policy |
title_sort | precaution, responsible innovation and beyond – in search of a sustainable agricultural biotechnology policy |
topic | Plant Science |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6305544/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30619432 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2018.01884 |
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