Division of Expert Advisory Labour in Biotech Governance: Regulating Cloned Food in the European Union

• In Event: Innovation Under Fire: Shifting Imaginaries of Science, Technology and Society Governance – I

Abstract

How do policymakers engage with technical and ethical expertise in the governance of emerging (bio)technologies? How are these different forms of expertise taken up by different policy actors? How are boundaries drawn in practice between issues amenable to scientific risk assessment, and those that require ethical consideration by dedicated experts? How are plural values taken into account in such processes?

My research attempts to address such questions by looking at the expert advisory process surrounding the regulation by the European Union of animal “cloning" (more specifically Somatic Nuclear Cell Transfer) for food purposes. When the issue first arose in 2007, the European Commission asked the European Food Safety Authority for a risk assessment as customary, alongside a consideration of the ethical and societal implication to the European Group on Ethics of Science and New Technologies (EGE). As recognised by Joly (2016), this represents an unusual approach, and indicates a uniquely European approach to biotechnology governance. The two resulting reports presented different framing of the issues at stake, and had different impact on various stakeholders in the policymaking process.

My research combines document analysis, interviews, and ethnographic methods, to explore the micro-dynamics and practices of expert advice surrounding ethically problematic emerging biotechnologies in EU policy-making. The aim is to produce an account of how different conceptions of expert advice, namely "scientific" risk assessment and (bio)ethical expertise, are balanced in practice in a plural society, and their impact on the democratic governance of technology.

Author

• Alessandro Allegra, UCL STS