Denmark: potential polarization or consensus?

Abstract

In Denmark the political debate about genetically modified products continued more forcefully when the first GM food reached the market in 1997. The focus of the political debate shifted to the commercial stage; more significant NGOs entered the debate; new forms of activism emerged. They challenged the adequacy of the Danish precautionary approach. This debate led to further conflicts – focusing on broad concerns about risk, sustainability, ethics and value judgements. These concerns lay beyond the regulatory expertise, which has treated risk in a more narrow biophysical sense. Consequently, a former national consensus has been weakened by a new polarization. In response, the Minister for Environment has taken initiatives beyond the safety regulation: industry accepted a voluntary agreement that only GM fodder beet would be grown on a large scale in Denmark in 1999. Danish retailers made an agreement to accept GM foods only if they were labelled according to the process-based criteria of the former Danish regulation. Thus the polarized public debate has not affected basic regulatory assumptions about risk, but it has influenced initiatives outside the formal regulatory space.