Food risk analysis: towards new practices

Until recently, expert appraisal bodies in developed countries carried out their food health risk analysis work according to a "standard" model, developed for the analysis of other technological risks, and whose characteristics and main options we will first review.

Since the early 1980s, the observation of a number of malfunctions in the food chain has led to growing public scepticism in several countries about the value of this model. The precautionary principle has therefore been proposed as a new guideline for improving food risk analysis. We begin by outlining the implications for risk management, based on the "proportionate" definition of the precautionary principle currently emerging in Europe.

We then go back to the level of risk assessment, to show how managers' new demands for proper application of the precautionary principle have important consequences for the assessment process itself.

Finally, we will question the "standard" vision of risk communication, conceived as the last phase of the risk analysis process. We will show how the active contribution of civil society representatives in the assessment and management phases can improve both the quality and acceptability of risk analysis.

Applying the precautionary principle therefore has consequences not just for one, but for all three phases of risk analysis. Taken together, these changes make it possible to propose an alternative, "constructivist" model which, in the case of food risk, can contribute to greater social acceptability of the rare but inevitable malfunctions in the production of our food.