Impact of the Precautionary Principle on Feeding Current and Future Generations - CAST

"The precautionary principle forbids genetic modification of food because it gives rise to risk, but the precautionary principle also forbids forbidding of genetic engineering of food because forbidding genetic engineering of food gives rise to risk” (Sunstein 2006)

June 2013...Council for Agricultural Science and Technology, Ames, Iowa. After a research-based analysis and peer-reviewed process, the authors of this CAST Issue Paper make it clear: "The precautionary principle may well be the most innovative, pervasive, and significant new concept in environmental policy over the past quarter century. It may also be the most reckless, arbitrary, and ill-advised."

The paper looks at the history of the precautionary principle (PP) and examines problems of ambiguity, arbitrary application, and bias against new technologies. Because the publication is especially focused on the need to feed a growing population, the case studies center on agricultural issues such as pesticide use, genetically modified foods, and food irradiation.

The authors state that the PP has played an important part in bringing attention to appropriate risk management. If it is applied in its more stringent formulations, however, the PP will suppress innovation, to the detriment of both the economy and human health. In this paper, the authors

• give examples of the PP's failure to offer a credible and reasoned framework for the application of risk management;
• describe inconsistencies and suggest that the PP will be increasingly controversial, marginalized, and ignored in the future; and  
• acknowledge the importance of safety and give credit to the general concept that sparked the PP but indicate it has become unworkable and counterproductive.

Commonsense safety practices are necessary, and the paper does not advocate reckless abandon. But the findings indicate that, in many respects, the PP does more harm than good. As the authors say, "The future involves a mission to feed a population of 9.1 billion by 2050. The PP has failed as an overall risk management strategy, and it is time to move past it."

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Task Force Authors:

Gary Marchant (Chair), Arizona State University

Linda Abbott, United States Department of Agriculture

Allan Felsot, Washington State University

Robert L. Griffin, United States Department of Agriculture

CAST Issue Paper 52 is available online at the CAST website, www.cast-science.org, along with many of CAST's other scientific publications. All CAST Issue Papers and Commentaries are FREE.

CAST is an international consortium of scientific and professional societies, companies, and nonprofit organizations. It assembles, interprets, and communicates credible science-based information regionally, nationally, and internationally to legislators, regulators, policymakers, the media, the private sector, and the public.

Chair: Gary Marchant, Arizona State University. IP52, June 2013, 20 pp. FREE. Available online and in print (fee for shipping/handling).

Free access @ Impact of the Precautionary Principle on Feeding Current and Future Generations - CAST:

See also:
BEYOND THE PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE
CASS R. SUNSTEIN (2003)

The precautionary principle has been highly influential in legal systems all over the world.  In its strongest and most distinctive forms, the principle imposes a burden of proof on those who create potential risks, and it requires regulation of activities even if it cannot be shown that those activities are likely to produce significant harms.  Taken in this strong form, the precautionary principle should be rejected, not because it leads in bad directions, but because it leads in no direction at all.  The principle is literally paralyzing—forbidding inaction, stringent regulation, and everything in between.  The reason is that in the relevant cases, every step, including inaction, creates a risk to health, the environment, or both.  This point raises a further puzzle:  Why is the precautionary principle widely seen to offer real guidance?  The answer lies in identifiable cognitive mechanisms emphasized by behavioral economists.  In many cases, loss aversion plays a large role, accompanied by a false belief that nature is benign.  Sometimes the availability heuristic is at work.  Probability neglect plays a role as well.  Most often, those who use the precautionary principle fall victim to what might be called “system neglect,” which involves a failure to attend to the systemic effects of regulation.  Examples are given from numerous areas, involving arsenic regulation, global warming and the Kyoto Protocol, nuclear power, pharmaceutical regulation, cloning, pesticide regulation, and genetic modification of food.  The salutary moral and political goals of the precautionary principle should be promoted through other, more effective methods.

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