France: broadening precautionary expertise?

Since 1997 France has had an intensified public controversy about the commercialization of GM crops. As new protagonists have entered the debate and raised new issues with the experts, the uncertainties (related to agronomic, environmental and human health consequences) have tended to increase and the previous standards of precaution have been challenged as inadequate. Public controversy has focused on the inability of the regulatory advisors to take into account scientific studies from disciplines other than molecular biology (such as ecology), as well as the agricultural model that underlies plant biotechnology. In response, the French government has begun to open up the regulatory process in order to involve citizens, NGOs and scientists within the official expert structures. Indeed, the French committee for biovigilance was set up in 1998 to provide a wide participation of the various stakeholders. Thus the French public controversy becomes a space where plant biotechnology is subjected to a social assessment.