Risk under construction: The German discourse on the ban of MON810

Abstract

Food crises ranging from BSE to EHEC have time and again demonstrated that uncertain
risks in the area of food safety constitute one of the main societal challenges we are
currently facing. Their nature as “possible, new, imaginable hazards, with which society
has no or limited experience” (van Asselt and Vos, 2008) leads to situations in which
traditional means of science prove to be inadequate for drawing suitable conclusions
informing how the uncertain risk is to be handled. This challenge is particularly visible in
the regulation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs): they have been characterized
as an uncertain risk and pose questions related to socio- political, economic and cultural
considerations (Ansell and Vogel, 2006; van Asselt and Vos, 2008).