Abstract
Gene editing technologies allow users to make in vivo (live) changes to an organism’s DNA. Advances in the field of gene editing have made it arguably more precise, efficient, flexible, and cheaper compared to previous technologies. This has generated an upsurge of interest in gene editing and its governance, including in livestock applications. Although gene editing in livestock promises benefits, it also raises technical, ethical, and societal questions alongside the prospect of (radical) transformation. Since the technology is still to be developed into marketable products, it is the designs, visions, or what we term “sociotechnical imaginaries” that shape gene editing technologies and that represent an important site for sociological inquiry. In this article, based on an analysis of interviews with breeding company representatives and agricultural scientists in the Netherlands, we analyze the assumptions, values, and commitments that underpin their imaginaries. These imaginaries matter, since their negotiation will help structure how the technology develops and how it will subsequently transform livestock and human–animal relations. In our analysis, we analyze the discursive practices from the interview data distilling three sociotechnical imaginaries that shape and underpin how respondents discuss gene editing in livestock. Elaborating the sociotechnical imaginary concept to make it more amenable to the emerging dynamics of gene editing in livestock, we show how imaginaries need to be studied “in place” and in terms of “material practices.” Even though each of the imaginaries frame livestock gene editing as desirable and beneficial, they nevertheless have differential effects in how they structure industry, researcher, government, and consumer/citizen relations. We conclude by discussing how and why sociotechnical imaginaries on livestock gene editing matter and their implications for governance and research.
Highlights
Because the policy debate on gene editing in Europe has converged on plants, with an active plant sector that lobbies for soft or no regulations to serve its interests, it is less clear how the livestock sector and scientists anticipate the future of gene editing in livestock breeding and research
It is important to identify and scrutinize how livestock breeding companies and agricultural scientists, as key actors in the development of the technology, envision the future of gene editing in livestock breeding
In our analysis, we explored how livestock breeding companies and agricultural scientists envision the future of gene editing in livestock breeding in a Dutch-led international consortium that has the ambition to be “the worldleading center for research and innovation in livestock genetics” (Breed4Food, 2021)
Summary
Gene editing of livestock: Sociotechnical imaginaries of scientists and breeding companies in the Netherlands. In this article, based on an analysis of interviews with breeding company representatives and agricultural scientists in the Netherlands, we analyze the assumptions, values, and commitments that underpin their imaginaries. These imaginaries matter, since their negotiation will help structure how the technology develops and how it will subsequently transform livestock and human–animal relations. By not addressing the underlying questions and concerns of society, and of scientists and of breeding company representatives in policymaking, there remains considerable potential for future controversy in gene-edited livestock akin to the controversy pertaining to GM crops and foods in the late 1990s. Three sociotechnical imaginaries From a coding analysis of the interview data, we distilled three sociotechnical imaginaries, each of which appears to be circulating within breeding companies and agricultural
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