Novel Foods and Risk Assessment in Europe: Separating Science from Society

In the 2015 revision of the EU Novel Foods Regulation, risk assessment processes remain separated from those of risk management in the regulation of novel foods. This chapter examines why this structure has emerged in Europe, and shows how both legal and political constraints ruled out a more integrated model. Although the European Commission has been strongly supportive of the science information model that emerges under the European Food Safety Authority, the chapter argues that ‘ring fencing’ questions of scientific risk assessment has proved problematic, as has excluding from that assessment wider factors that might inform it. This chapter then reviews the resultant difficulties across three areas of technology, the food products of which are regarded as novel under the Regulation: cloning, genetic modification, and nanotechnology.