Europeanising advisory expertise: the role of ‘independent, objective, and transparent’ scientific advice in agri-biotech regulation
Since various crises concerning food safety in the European Union (EU), institutional reforms have been designed to regain public confidence in regulatory decisions and their expert basis. By Europeanising advisory expertise, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) was also intended to help harmonise ‘science-based regulation’ and thus facilitate EU decisions. In evaluating agri-biotech products during 2003 – 05, however, the EFSA procedure extended previous expert disagreements rather than overcome them. The EFSA was designed to demonstrate that expert advice would be ‘independent, objective, and transparent’; yet tensions arose between expert experience versus independence, between transparency versus objectivity, and between harmonisation versus precaution. These conflicts have been shaped by the dominant problem diagnosis, which favours a narrow expert consensus within a specific policy view. Alternative problem diagnoses suggest that expertise should instead be pluralised, so that norms and uncertainties become more explicit. Pressure for EU reform manifests tensions between the dominant and alternative problem diagnoses.
Year of publication: |
2007
|
---|---|
Authors: | Levidow, Les ; Carr, Susan |
Published in: |
Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy. - Pion Ltd, London, ISSN 1472-3425. - Vol. 25.2007, 6, p. 880-895
|
Publisher: |
Pion Ltd, London |
Saved in:
freely available
Saved in favorites
Similar items by person
-
Regulating biotechnological risk, straining Britain's consultative style
Levidow, Les, (1999)
-
GM crops on trial: technological development as a real-world experiment
Levidow, Les, (2007)
-
How biotechnology regulation sets a risk/ethics boundary
Levidow, Les, (1997)
- More ...