The focus on trade regulation

Regulation of genetic engineering or biotechnology mainly pertains to domestic law. It is here that the processes of democracy and judicial assessment of fundamental rights and principles produce regulatory frameworks, commensurate with basic attitudes in society. Inherently, regulations vary from country to country. To what extent is there a need to involve international law and treaty-making? To what extent is there a need to achieve common and shared perceptions, and to regulate the interfacing of different regulations? These questions address the proper role of international law, and answers are far from clear, as the growing literature on the subject indicates.

In international trade regulation, all these questions translate into demands for market access and fair conditions of competition for competing biotechnological or genetically engineered products, on the one hand, and to demands for trade restrictions on the other hand. It is not a coincidence that trade law is the prime area where such divergences are truly felt in international law, and serious conflicts are emerging. It is submitted that a need to coordinate and integrate widely diverging attitudes and regulations primarily shows in this field of international law. Again, it is here that a necessary process of coordination and eventually of integration of different regulatory traditions and attitudes to biotechnology emerges.

Trade regulation essentially deals with the interfacing of different national legal orders and the different and diverging ways products and processes are dealt with. Commonly accepted products are traded widely, and mutually used.