Safety Assurance of Foods: Risk Management Depends on Good Science but it is not a Scientific Activity

We make many decisions in our lives and we weigh the benefits against the drawbacks. Our decisions are based on what benefits are most important to us and what drawbacks we are willing to accept. Decisions about what we eat are made in the same way; but when it comes to safety, our decisions are usually made more carefully. Food contains natural chemicals and it can come into contact with many natural and artificial substances during harvest, production, processing, and preparation. They include microorganisms,chemicals, either naturally present or produced by cooking, environmental contaminants, and pesticides. Since the chance of being harmed by these potential hazards is called risk, risk analysis might be better termed as the science of safety, because risk management is an essential part of it. It would, however, be difficult and shortsighted to maintain that questions about risk and safety can have no moral dimension. Risk and safety become matters of moral concern when they raise further questions about responsibility, accountability,and justifiability. The question of risk cannot be ignored in any ethical investigation of genetic engineering, novel foods, animal welfare, and individual choices. However, food is more than metabolic fuel. It has physiological, psychological, social, cultural,and aesthetic associations that merge to form a gestalt that people endanger and maintain. The contribution of any food towards an individual's well being is as complex as the individual himself. In this context, the benefits of consuming food that contains hazards may outweigh the risk. © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers.