If No Risk Is Proven, Is There a Risk? Some Reflections on Risk, Science and Environmental Regulation in Ireland after Watson v EPA and Monsanto

Abstract

There are few areas where risk, science and politics collide that are more controversial than genetically modified organisms. This paper places the findings of the Watson v EPA case heard in the High Court in Dublin in 1998 within the context of change wrought upon international institutional politics, where modern conservatism has challenged the state's responsibility for defining what is an acceptable level of risk. A neo-liberal agenda transpires in which science no longer underscores the regulation of the market through the state (the realm of the political/legal), but participates in the reconstruction of individual citizens as consumers of both products and their attendant risks (the economic/legal). In the event of catastrophe, the function of science is to participate in assigning negligence or culpability to market failure. More crucially, its role is not to prevent development on the grounds that it may be risky (because in all walks of life we encounter risk), but to define more clearly where a risk can be proven. And, if no risk can be proven, state intervention, or regulation that impinges upon a free market, cannot be justified.