Abstract
Europe is often the center of origin of restrictions regarding technologies (e.g., biotechnologies: GMOs and, more recently, gene editing). The causes have already been analyzed in relation to European regulations, but not to its deeply embedded roots. This is what the present article attempts to do. It first depicts the broader historical background in Europe, the rise of a new ideology aiming to avoid repetition of the tragedies of the past, and the way these postmodern ideas have been transposed to science, with a focus on the issue of technological risk. In contrast to Europe, the United States has not enacted biotechnology-inhibiting laws, and the reasons for such a difference are discussed.
Highlights
To understand why Europe is restricting the use of some technologies, while the United States are not following the same path for the same technologies, plant biotechnology is a useful example
Despite the fact that many observers and even politicians are aware that Europe is trailing far behind the United States and behind China on plant biotechnology, the trend cannot be reverted
Europe’s position is enshrined in an ideology that, like all ideologies, draws an outside line between good and evil: decked out with its “Big Principles,” Europe is convinced it is on the side of great virtue
Summary
To understand why Europe is restricting the use of some technologies, while the United States are not following the same path for the same technologies, plant biotechnology is a useful example. A short-term reason can be sought in its Directive from 1990, which has created a judicial object called a “genetically modified organism.”. It was replaced by a new Directive in 2001 but kept its meaningless definition of a GMO (Tagliabue, 2016a). This regulatory approach focuses on an “organism in which the genetic material has been altered in a way that does not occur naturally,” giving the impression that GMOs are intrinsically different and risky, and created the possibility of rejection of transgenesis, a promising technology, by distrustful consumers in the wake of the “mad cow” crisis. The question that emerges is: Why did all these events happen in Europe? To understand we need to characterize the ideological context, and to do so to look at a broader historical perspective
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