Food Safety, Quality, and Ethics - A Post-normal Perspective
Author(s)
Ravetz, Jerome R.
Abstract
I argue that the issues of food quality, in the most general sense including purity, safety, and ethics, can no longer be resolved through “normal” science and regulation. The reliance on reductionist science as the basis for policy and implementation has shown itself to be inadequate. I use several borderline examples between drugs and foods, particularly coffee and sucrose, to show that “quality” is now a complex attribute. For in those cases the substance is either a pure drug, or a bad food with drug-like properties; both are marketed as if they were foods. An example of the inadequacy of old ways of thinking is obesity, whose causes are as yet outside the purview of medicine, while its effects constitute an epidemic disease. The new drug/food syndrome needs a new sort of science, what we call “post-normal.” This is inquiry at the contested interfaces of science and policy; typically it deals with issues where facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high, and decisions urgent. With the perspective of post-normal science, we can better understand some key issues. We see that “safety” is different from “risk,” being pragmatic, moral, and recursive. Also, we understand that an appropriate foundation for regulation and ethics is not so much “objectivity” as “awareness.” In an age when “consumers” are becoming concerned “citizens,” the relevant science must become post-normal.
