ABSTRACT
Thus far, this book has explored the origins and politics of GM food, controversies surrounding science, the role of public opinion and the political economy of GM food trade. Attention is now turned to legal and regulatory structures that govern GM technologies, production and distribution. This analysis, in the first instance, necessitates turning back the clock to examine the ways in which politics and vested interests have been integrally entwined and embedded in the debates and subsequent controls of genetics and food production in the UK. Issues pertaining to genetics and plant breeding have a long history in the
UK. Non-transgenic breeding (that is, the cross pollination of plants within a single species or of two species within the same genus) has occurred among farmers and botanists for hundreds of years. It is not the intention here to rehearse those developments; instead this chapter commences by tracing some of the political and scientific developments throughout the twentieth century that shaped international debates and domestic policy around plant breeding and genetic manipulation of food production. In doing so, it seeks to understand and contextualise existing regulatory arrangements. Moreover, this chapter will critically examine the existing legal regimes (both domestic and international) that regulate the production of GM food using archival documents and those obtained under the Official Information Act.
