Page 85 - Breeding and regulatory opportunities, Renaud

Seed Regulation in the US, EU and Mexico

Regulation is about determining priorities and avoiding undesired trade-ofs in

relation to the formulation, interpretation and enforcement of standards and

practices that balance public and private interests. Studies based on economic

models of the regulatory trade-ofs in self-organising markets tend to focus

on questions of eiciency, irm size or pricing, such as the work of Cuniberti

et al., (2000), while sociological studies tend to focus on analysis of the values

expressed by particular markets (e.g. Reynolds, 2000). Trade theorists, for their

part, are interested in issues such as science-informed risk management in

trade relations, the transaction costs of a regulatory practice, the discovery of

legitimate standards that are the least trade-distorting, and dispute settlement

(e.g. Josling et al., 2004). Such models have not yet been related to the ield of

international organic seed trade. However, the concerns of this study are more

pragmatic: to reveal and analyse the processes that create or remove obstacles

to harmonization in organic seed use in, and trade relations among, the three

jurisdictions treated in this chapter, through empirical observation of evolving

regulatory standards and interpretations.

May and Finch (2009) explain such processes of ‘implementing, embedding

and integration’ of policy regulation in terms of ‘normalization process theory’

that emphasizes the contingent and normative factors that promote or inhibit

enactment of complex interventions in a ield of practice. This study provides

the opportunity to contrast the ‘normalization’ experiences of the organic

seed sector in the US, EU and Mexico and to identify where the diferences

are creating new barriers to international trade in organic seed. To deepen the

understanding of the indings, the chapter examines the interactions between

the ethical principles espoused by the organic sector, and the norms that in

practice are shaping and steering the regulatory process, through the lens

of meta-governance. The discussion continues in the light of the academic

literature on governance (e.g. Peters and Pierre, 1998, Meuleman, 2008, Bell

and Hindmoor, 2009) that outlines the role of self-organizing networks in

meta-governance. Whether such networks compete with or are independent

of the state, and whether there are contexts in which the state might seek to

impose or manage governance networks or to work collaboratively with them

by deploying appropriate policy instruments, is discussed. Lessons are drawn

from the analysis and discussion that may advance the interests of the organic

sector as a whole.

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