Recombinant Bovine Somatotropin (rbST) in the United States and the European Union

Abstract

This thesis seeks to answer why in the case of rbST did decision-making in Western liberal democratic states come to different conclusions regarding its use. It proposes two institutional reasons. First, the existence of overproduction combines with quotas and price stabilisers in the EU to make this new biotechnological development unattractive. Second, the type of decisionmakers has an impact. In the US, it was a bureaucratic organization, the Food and Drug Administration, which had a mandate to decide on the safety and efficacy of rbST. In comparison in the European Union, it is the Council which must ratify the decision of the European Committee for Veterinary and Medical Products. This body is more open to political pressures from farmers, processors, consumers, environmentalists and animal rights activists. In the EU there is also strong support for farmers and thus the public in general are watchful of the state’s treatment of this group. The methodology used consists of an historical examination and the treatment of policy-making as the outcome of a process of reconciliation of conflict between divergent individual and group interests, which in the long run are shaped mainly by economic forces. The evolution of the policies surrounding the introduction or prohibition of agricultural biotechnology, specifically bovine somatotropin, exemplifies this process. To understand how it works it is necessary to analyze the interplay of the various 'actors' in particular episodes of that evolution. In this study the analysis of the process is pursued along the following lines: identification of the major participants and of their institutional backgrounds, objectives and interests; consideration of the constraints which limit their freedom of action; review of the instruments and channels of influence which are available to them; and a comparative study of their behaviour during the stages of confrontation and reconciliation which characterize the process. Thus, the main part of the thesis is comparative in nature examining major industrialised states and is concerned with describing the actors and their relative weights in the action, and with attempting to explain the dynamics of the process by which they reach a settlement of their differences. This projects significance lies in the fact that the treatment of rbST (the first agricultural biotechnology to enter the market) will create a precedent for the introduction of future recombinant technologies in agriculture.