When discussing technological change, innovation and globalization a decade ago, we tended to think of the communications revolution. Similarly, when discussing the related backlash to globalization and trade liberalization, we associated it then with the ongoing conflicts over such issues as NAFTA. All of these associations are valid, but only as fragments of a larger tapestry.
Some of the most momentous, and controversial developments, over the past decade have emerged in the quiet of laboratories throughout the world, specifically in the realm known commonly as "life sciences." In that broad area, perhaps the most contentious side-show in the globalization wars has been the decade-long, virulent debate about whether biotech food ought to be produced, sold, and consumed and, if so, should it bear what many activists would prefer be warning label. Transgenic food, simply, is the product of the use of recombinant DNA, or gene splicing. Food safety agencies, peer reviewed studies, experts, and scientific academies the world over believe that the products of this technology are safe, and even its opponents concede there are no proven health risks. With all that, half the world is considering mandatory labeling and even bans on biotech foods, and the other half has already made labeling so onerous that large food companies are eschewing its use altogether. This would not be a problem, were it not for the fact that more than three-quarters of the soybeans grown in the United States are transgenic, as is more than half the corn with plantings increasing year on year not only in the U.S., but throughout the world.
This presents more than a small problem for American (and Canadian, Argentinean and other grain manufacturers), since the products of their labor are virtually offlimits in Europe, Japan, Korea, and many other major global markets.
All of this is vaguely ironic, since many of the same governments that legislate the labeling of foods containing biotechnology invest billions in its future potential. The EU comes to mind--we have had banana wars, beef hormone disputes, now we have the biotech battle. While trade conflicts continue, and as the industry and consumer groups debate nuances in endless loops, poll after poll demonstrates that most consumers do not understand with any degree of precision what it is that is being debated.
Round One: Agricultural Biotechnology
What exactly is the controversy? In a nutshell, consumer groups claim that biotechnology is tantamount to tinkering with nature, or "playing God," as it is often stated, and that we do not know what environmental calamities might ensue if we take the word of industry and government that the technology is safe. These groups (and many governments) advocate the exercise of what is known as the "precautionary principle"--essentially giving countries the right to refuse imports of any product or technology until the last remote possibility that it will endanger health, environment or the social fabric, has been eliminated.
Some respond that such a framework could be justified to outlaw the use of fire, and a more logical extension of the rationale would treat current agricultural practices, such as hybrids, and modern medicine, in much the same manner, requiring that we allow the sick to fend for themselves, and the hungry to starve. Nor, they say, would we take any action that might tend to pre-empt the natural order from working its will. Famines in Africa and elsewhere would be sadly dismissed as inevitable, and interference would be deemed inappropriate intrusion into the logical course of events. For good measure, many will tell you that it provides an open door for an endless procession of non-science based trade barriers. They note the potential for this issue to cause substantial disruption in world trade; to threaten economic expansion and even stability, and to exacerbate the ongoing uncertainty related to the technological revolution.
To those who spend much of their time addressing the myriad of issues raised above, this is no longer theory. Theoretical trade disruptions are now commercial realities as manufacturers discover that, no matter what concessions they are prepared to make in the labeling arena, for example, others are demanded elsewhere. While the world mulls over whether agricultural biotechnology is safe, based on the constructs of sound science, those who oppose it are engaged in another discussion, one that has nothing to do with science. This discussion focuses on whether biotechnology and numerous other emerging technologies are necessary, desirable, or even moral, based on the precautionary principle and what they like to call other legitimate sociocultural factors.
Round Two: Old Wine in New Bottles?
Now, in a remarkable episode of déjà vu, we are reliving the biotechnology debate, even before it has been resolved. Enter nanotechnology, for want of better descriptors, the science of the really, really small. Although it has been with us for some years now, and the earlier horrors surrounding the advent of "gray goo," courtesy of Michael Crichton's novel, "Prey," and unfortunate comments from the Paleolithic and unabashedly Luddite gadfly known more popularly as Prince Charles, we are finally beginning to see concrete applications in, yes you guessed it, the food and cosmetics industries. There is nothing quite like inserting a new technology into things people eat or put on their faces to stir up an old fashioned barroom brawl (see above). Many have hastened to head off the battle at the pass, by warning quite properly of the dangers of introducing new technologies that sound, well, weird, without proper preparation of the public through good informational means, and through a sound regulatory regime, preferably in place before the fact. Most recently Terry Davies, lead author of a major study focused on nanotechnology published by the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC, observed that there is a danger that nanotechnology will lose public confidence, citing nuclear power and agricultural biotechnology as examples of the ruinous effects of such an event. "The existing structure is not providing effective oversight, although we already have more than 60 consumer products and several hundred commercial applications of nanotech out there," Mr. Davies noted.
Mr. Davies has much the right of it. After many years of trying to work through a regulatory regime that depended on the competence (far greater than both its critics and supporters seem willing to admit) of the industry and its healthy fear of the formidable American tort system, the biotech industry threw up its hands and asked for regulation, as a means of soothing a beast long past placating. In the case of nanotechnology, a golden opportunity exists, to take charge and define the issue before it is defined through the popular media. For any such reframing of the issue to occur, however, it must encompass the good offices and sincere efforts of all credible stakeholders. Note the use of the word credible. Neither industry nor government is required to invest valuable time and resources engaging fringe groups whose agenda involves inflaming this and other issues for media attention and attendant contributions. Industry and government can and should, however, engage those who have a legitimate stake and an understanding of the science, not only because the combination of effort and resources will lend credibility to the initiative, but for the simple reason that all involved may actually learn from each other.
Much of the dialogue surrounding globalization focuses on whether government will remain relevant in the new age. The answer is that it must remain relevant, for there surely is no other alternative. While all sides concede the power of the markets, at the end of the day it is neither the job of the multinational producer nor of the consumer organizations, to set standards. Both producers and consumers want and need clear, and reasonably predictable, regulatory standards.
The Role of Government
If there is in some quarters an impression that governments are irrelevant, it is in some measure because governments have fostered such an impression by abdicating responsibilities and deferring hard decisions, ceding authority--moral and political--to activists with far narrower agendas. Much of the confusion and uncertainty in the food and commodity industries today stems from the fact that citizens are thoroughly confused by the flak and noise they hear from all sides, about which foods are good or bad, with the story often changing from day to day. It is exceedingly difficult to gain an understanding about what consumers want, because consumers themselves often don't know. In our age of urgent e-mail and frantic sound bite, governments and international organizations, in perpetual reactive mode, have moved to placate the most effective and insistent advocates, instead of calling time-out and assuming the mantle of educators.
Since some well-meaning, and other not so well-meaning commentators have done such a brilliant job of scaring people witless about the imagined dangers of food biotechnology, governments are tripping all over each other to mandate the labeling of biotech foods with everything and anything short of a skull and crossbones.
This is not the sort of leadership that inspires confidence in government. What it does is quite the opposite. In the EU, the Mad Cow scare and the brilliant strategy to wage war on multinational industry via "Frankenfoods" together succeeded in eviscerating the credibility of both the food agencies in the EU and food producers. By going directly to consumers, these groups have seized the high ground in the name of "the right to know" and have refused to leave. In many countries, activists routinely test incoming grain for potential biotech content and badger governments to enact more stringent laws to govern products that have been deemed safe by food safety experts and scientific bodies all over the world. Meanwhile, we continue to have fatal E-Coli and Listeria outbreaks in one developed country after another.
As critical as it is to those directly affected, these issues (whether we are discussing agricultural biotechnology, nanotechnology or any emerging technology, for that matter) are mere sideshows. In the hands of the activist community, it has become a clever instrument for waging a much broader sociopolitical war, one designed to disrupt what they fear is all-consuming globalization, by hampering the free flow of goods and technologies between nations, and wherever there are complicit media partners, even the honest exchange of facts, information, and science. In another era, this would have been a strange variant of intellectual anarchy. Today, it is passionate activism. Whatever we choose to call it, we can be sure that the collateral damage of this broader battle will extend far beyond the multinational corporations (most recent to feel the sting of a targeted campaign is Coca-Cola) and international institutions that have become the poster children for an increasingly sterile monologue.
Unless governments are prepared to take an active leadership role, and to make hard choices, they will become worse than irrelevant. Indeed, they even risk unwittingly fueling more intractable trade disputes, with all of the attendant economic damage that will ensue. Many countries, paralyzed by the activists but equally petrified of being left behind, are trying to have it both ways, labeling and even banning certain biotechnology applications and demanding uninformative and downright frightening labels with one hand, while pouring billions into the technology with the other.
It is worrisome when governments abdicate their responsibility to ensure free trade based on principles of sound science out of fear of offending one party or another. It is profoundly worse when they seek to grab a competitive advantage, and justify it by promoting the conclusions of amateur scientists as public policy. It calls to mind President Kennedy's admonition (borrowed from an ancient Chinese proverb) that those who seek power by riding the back of the tiger, often end up inside.
While there is merit to the argument that government can best allow ingenuity and technological progress to flourish by getting out of the way, there is a danger in taking that notion too far. The regulatory and safety functions on which we depend are performed by governments, and by the people they employ. The integrity of the global trading network we have devised, in turn, depends on the proper and honest functioning of those regulatory systems, and the people who make them function. That is a monumental responsibility.
Since neither following nor getting out of the way are likely to work, governments and international institutions ought to take the only alternative left, that being to lead responsibly and decisively, with a clear eye out for the global implications of their actions.
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