Abstract
This chapter addresses the shift of discursive power from supporters to opponents of GMOs over the past three decades from a social psychology as well as a political economy perspective. In this context, the view that opponents of GMOs are driven by ethical concerns is challenged. Opportunistic behaviour by professional anti-GMO factions is illustrated through two specific political debates on GMOs in the Swiss and the EU Parliaments. The two cases reveal how the public narrative against the case of GMOs allows opponents to conceal their private agendas behind a 'common weal rhetoric', which portrays them as selfless representatives of the common or public interest. However, the credibility of this common weal rhetoric stands and falls with the credibility of the term 'GMO', which has developed a life of its own, very much detached from the technology itself.