Risks, responsibility and rights in transgenic plant technology governance: a transnational perspective

Oriola, Taiwo Ayodele ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6452-9996 2015. Risks, responsibility and rights in transgenic plant technology governance: a transnational perspective. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

Whilst the adoption of commercial transgenic plant agriculture continues to spread globally, it is not necessarily indicative of universal support, and would appear to belie the inherent existential tensions and conflicting rights between transgenic, organic, and conventional plant agricultural systems. These tensions are typically vented via the inevitable adventitious presence of transgenes in non-transgenic crops, and the competing, and often conflicting scientific and acrimonious claims and counter-claims on the merits and proprieties of transgenic plant agriculture for the environment and public health. Nevertheless, the virtual irreversibility of transgenic plant agriculture, the exigencies of feeding the growing world population amidst continuing global food security scares, and the continuing dependency of livestock farming on transgenic plant feedstuff, especially in Europe, underscore the imperatives for mutual co-existence of all three forms of plant agricultural systems. Drawing on the socio-legal theory that risks and responsibility are correlatives, it is argued in the thesis that our “technological society” is also a “risk society”, and as it is for comparable “technologies of risk” in the post-industrial era, the regulatory framework for the co-existence of transgenic and non-transgenic plant agriculture, must of necessity, invoke corresponding responsibility in law for any consequential economic loss and damage to the environment and public health, in order balance and moderate the conflicting rights in the coexistence paradigm for transgenic and non-transgenic plant agriculture. Whilst drawing on relevant and analogous case law and legislations from the United Kingdom, the European Union and North America, the thesis defines the boundaries of inherent risks, responsibility and rights in the current coexistence paradigm for transgenic and non-transgenic plant agriculture, and proposes a modality for an effective sui generis compensation regime, as an integral part of the broader coexistence policy, on the grounds that such a regime could moderate conflicting rights, increase public acceptance, and build public confidence in transgenic plant technology, rather than hinder its continuing global growth and promise.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Law
Subjects:	K Law > K Law (General) K Law > KF United States Federal Law K Law > KZ Law of Nations
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	30 March 2016
Last Modified:	31 Oct 2022 11:03
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/87238

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