Informational Requirements and the Regulatory Process of Agricultural Biotechnology
This paper investigates the reinforcing and balancing regulatory pressures that are impinging on the performance of agricultural and food biotechnology-based activity in Canada. Regulatory agencies are in the process of adjusting their procedures to take into account disruptive innovations in biogenetics, proteomics, pharmacogenomics, and bioinformatics (Burrill and Company 2000; Christensen 1997; The Economist 2000).1 This adjustment has become necessary because governments need to balance emerging tensions between the informational needs of consumers and investors. Information requirements of the regulatory agencies are changing. Part ofthe outcome of the regulatory process is to satisfy the informational needs of consumers and investors concerning the technology. Regulators need information on health and safety of new biogenetics-based products (transgenic crops, feeds, and foods), consumers demand information about product characteristics, and investors are in need of information on intellectual property rights (lPR) and administrative process. The objective of this paper is to identify endogenous pressures, and their time delays, that are responsible for regulatory change in the plant agricultural biotechnologyarea. An influence diagram, the initial step ofthe system dynamics (SD) method, makes explicit the role of information flows as a limiting factor for use by the various parties, and as a means of controlling strategic transactions that influence efficiency and the distribution of wealth. This method is employed to clarify informational