Risk, consent and public debate: some preliminary considerations for the ethics of food safety

Abstract

Abstract Two conceptual frameworks for understanding ethical responsibility with respect to risk impinge on food safety. On the one hand, optimization or public health frameworks define responsibility in terms of outcomes – benefits and harms – that are the result of choosing a particular action or policy. Statistics and probability theory provide a way for advocates of this approach to cope with imperfect or indeterminate knowledge of future outcomes. Informed consent criteria, on the other hand, demand that riskbearers be provided with all available information about the risks to which they are being exposed, and that they have a viable option of nonparticipation – of withholding consent to being placed at risk. Both approaches have relevance to food safety. In application, the optimization approach has relied on scientific assessment of outcomes associated with food-borne pathogens, while the informed consent approach has sanctioned the view that each individual has a right to apply their own definitions and values with respect to which foods are safe. Thus, in practice, ‘science’ has prescribed a particular theory of moral action – one that promotes optimization, rather than informed consent. By common agreement, science should be neutral with respect to moral claims. Scientists should, thus, find a narrower basis on which to state their factual claims about food safety risk.