Michael Roberts, “International Legal Issues Concerning Animal Cloning and Nanotechnology—More of the Same or Are ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’?,” National AgLaw Center, November 2008

Roll International Corp. Senior Counsel and former Agricultural Law Professor at the University of Arkansas School of Law, Michael Roberts
discusses how disputes over the use of synthetic hormones in animal husbandry and food produced from genetically modified organisms are handled from the perspective of international trade law and international agreements addressing health, safety and environmental issues. Thus, he sets the stage to speculate how international disputes over cloned animals and nanotechnologies used in the human food chain may be addressed in the future.

Among the legal issues the author sees arising from cloning and nanotechnology are (i) what international institutions and instruments will regulate these emerging technologies; (ii) whether religious, scientific, moral, and ethical concerns implicated in these technologies will change the international regulations pertaining to food safety and labeling, (iii) what role private standard-setting will take in the international regulation of cloning and nanotechnology, and (iv) how private standards should be viewed within the context of existing
international trade agreements. Roberts cautions that extending the lessons learned from the synthetic hormone and biotech controversies to emerging technologies “belies a clean analytical framework. Adding to the complexities of factors is the growing practice of food companies in the global food supply chain that adopt private standards . . . As a result, a privatized sustainability governance scheme has emerged in a food supply world that has traditionally been regulated by state and international standard-setting public institutions.”