From Scientific Risk To Paysan Savoir-Faire: Peasant Expertise in the French and Global Debate over GM Crops

A memorable scene from the anti-WTO demonstrations in Seattle, November 1999: French sheep farmer José Bové standing on top of a van outside a McDonald’s, holding a gold foiled wheel of Papillon Roquefort cheese up over his head, speaking out to a crowd of thousands against genetically modiŽ ed organisms (GMOs). At this demonstration, Bové defended ‘French culture and food quality’ against junk-food culture, which Bové accuses the US of imposing on the world through an aggressive trade policy. This scene represents the culmination of a 3-year anti-GMO campaign led by the Confédération Paysanne (CP), a union of self-identiŽ ed peasant farmers, that helped reshape the debate over agricultural biotechnology at a global level. As the French debate illustrates, the struggle over agricultural biotechnology is not just about genetic technoscience or risk assessment. In this struggle, there is a collision between two framings and their forms of expertise. When initially framed as a ‘risk’ issue, the GMO debate invoked scientiŽ c expertise for evaluating the environmental and health hazards associated with the technology. When later deŽ ned as a ‘food quality’ issue, the debate shifted to paysan expertise. Based on ethnographic research on the GMO controversy in France during 1997–2000, this paper explores two key frames that actors have used to bolster their claims about GMOs in France. First I analyse how an objectivist risk frame prevailed in the Ž rst phase of the French debate. Then I analyse how the CP re-framed GMOs as a problem of food quality linked to productivist agriculture, cultural homogenization, and globalization.