Searching for Achilles' Heel: The Anti-GE Movement and the Biotech Industry UW-Madison conference on GM Crops/Food: The Future of the World Agricultural Economy? April 15, 2005 Dr. Rachel Schurman Dept. of Sociology and Institute for Global Studies,

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Searching for Achilles' Heel The Anti-GE
Movement and the Biotech IndustryUW-Madison
conference on GM Crops/Food The Future of the
World Agricultural Economy?April 15, 2005Dr.
Rachel SchurmanDept. of Sociology and Institute
for Global Studies, University of Minnesota
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• Goal To explain the turnaround in the ag biotech
  industrys fortunes in the late 1990s, and in
  particular, its rejection in Europe
• Basic premise Organized activism was responsible
  for changing the industry's fortunes...
• Reasoning
• No major public health disasters with GMOs
• No corporate scandals
• The counterfactual (what would have happened
  w/o activism)

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Cover of Newsweek, 1999
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• Evidence of the problem
• ? June 1998 Monsanto invests 5 million in ad
  campaign to convince Europeans of GMOs benefits.
  
• ? Nov. 1999 7 large life sciences firms form
  new industry alliance to improve public image in
  the US (BIO)
• ? Early 2000 firms narrow RD to focus on 4
  major crops. Become less bullish toward
  technology.
• ? 1999-2002 Major industry restructuring.
  Three LS firms put ag divisions up for sale.
  Venture K flows dry up.

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• What happened?
• Argument Three factors conjointly explained the
  activists impact on the industry
• Activists strategic behavior,
• the structural vulnerabilities of the biotech
  industry, deriving from industry structures and
• the cultural and political context in Europe.

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Definition of industry structures (IS)

• The organization of an industry, the economic
  and institutional relationships that characterize
  it, and the normal or culturally resonant way
  of doing things within it
• Key idea IS provide political openings and
  closures to SMs, and render firms and industries
  more or less vulnerable to activist challenges

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Strategic Behavior
Public demonstrations
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Anti-GM gardening
"There are moments and issues in history where
parliament is inadequate and it falls to the
people themselves to act. With the case of
genetic engineering and the granting of patents
on life, I believe we have reached one of those
historic moments." -Alan Simpson MP for
Nottingham
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Supermarket campaigns
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Constructed alternative frames Frankenstein
foods, genetic contamination, GMOs as
unnatural products
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Seize the Day folk group targeting Monsanto
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• Activists also worked from the inside, to
  pressure particular EU governments to reject
  GMOs. Govts were more or less receptive
  depending on politics of the moment
• France and British governments became less
  willing to approve GMOs in the late 1990s)

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• These activist strategies interacted with
  industry structures and political cultural
  context to turn Europe against GMOs

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Several IS important

• 1) Relations along supply or commodity chain.
• Biotech industry dependent on processors and
  retailers for a market, but not vice versa.
• ? Allowed activists to divide the corporate
  community became too costly for retailers to
  support biotech industry, and they split...
• (Note difference with US, where such costs
  havent been imposed)

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Supply chain for the ag biotech industry
Ag biotech firms (seeds) Monsanto, Dupont
Elevators or traders (ADM, Cargill)
Farmers
Retailers (Safeway, Sainsburys, McDonalds)
Processors (Nestles, Nabisco, Gerber)
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2) Competitive behavior and asset structure of
firms were important

• Supermarket sector in Europe (esp. Britain) is a
  highly competitive oligopoly
• Activists played one firm off against another
• Brand names and firm reputations important - puts
  retailers on the defensive
• Iceland makes a strategic move

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3) Organizational culturesplayed a role

• Malcolm Walker, CEO of Iceland,
• uncomfortable with GMOs (personal values
• Process of institutional isomorphism occurs
  (copy cat behavior)

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MAJOR EUROPEAN SUPERMARKET CHAINS TO GO
"GMO-FREE" (partial list)
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Political-Cultural Context

• Cultural identities around food and agriculture
• Recent public health scares (Mad cow" disease,
  CJ disease)
• Anti-imperialist sensibilities

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Outcomes

• EU wide de facto moratorium (at least until
  recently)
• Heightened awareness of the issue (GMOs) and
  major shift in public opinion against GMOs
• Strict labeling laws for GM foods, allowing
  consumers to discriminate

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Current challenges (for anti-GE movement)

• Need to maintain public opposition - ongoing
  challenge
• Need a way to deal with the ending of the
  moratorium new environment
• Finding a way to work with EU farmers
• Need to counter global winds, which are blowing
  in the industrys favor again (Brazil, Monsantos
  first qtr earnings)

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Activist strategies

• Working on the co-existence issue trying to find
  loopholes and openings (co-existence rules,
  liability)
• Working from ground up (grassroots groups) to
  build a GMO-free regions movement
• Trying to strengthen labeling laws to include
  animal feed
• Seeking to maintain pressure on retailers thru
  report card approach (Greenpeace)

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Industry strategies

• Also seeking to influence national co-existence
  rules
• Trying to split farmers interests from
  activists (e.g, reducing farmer risk by offering
  to purchase contaminated crops)
• Simply outliving the movement and hubbub

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• Not clear how the conflict among these
  adversaries will play out, but it is clear that
  this is a new moment and new terrain
• Possible new sources of energy for movement
• 1) Pharming (plant pharmaceuticals)
• 2) Cloned and GE animals
• 3) Some other unexpected food, public health,
  environmental disaster