Negotiating Information Visibility and Consumer Ignorance: The Digital Disclosure of GM Food in the US

• In Event: Risk Government: Putting Industries Back in the Analysis of Science-based Regulatory Tools - I

Abstract

In 2020, The National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard (NBFDS) will require manufacturers to disclose food made from genetically modified (GM) crops to US consumers. This bill has proved particularly controversial as it allows manufacturers to use a QR code, instead of an on-pack text or symbol, to inform the consumer. Drawing from a variety of materials – internal corporate documentation, stakeholders’ public comments, press review, interviews with industry and NGO representatives, and an in-store investigation –, we use this regulatory initiative on GM digital labeling to propose a twofold contribution to studies on the making of public policies involving science and markets. Firstly, we will contribute to studies on the social production of ignorance by describing how stakeholders, through disputes involving QR code disclosure, have negotiated the visibility of controversial information on the market stage and therefore the level of awareness consumers have about the GM properties of products, as well as the scientific assumptions, economic interests and consumer representations that lie behind their positions. Secondly, we will add to studies of business influences on regulation by showing how a fringe of the US industry has lobbied for the digital disclosure of GM food by designing and promoting a platform systematizing the provision of additional product information to the consumer through QR codes. In describing this story, we make the point that, paradoxically, narratives of transparency have been at the heart of industry’s work to avoid on-pack labeling.

Author

• Bastien Soutjis, Université Toulouse Jean-Jaurès - LISST-CERS