Abstract
Food nanotechnologies pose a number of difficulties in risk assessment and risk man- agement, such as data collection, definition, and classification of materials. There is no clear con- sensus as to what is to be regulated and who would be involved in the area of food nanotech. In this paper, I have described how stakeholders respond to various uncertainties related to food nanotechnologies, and tried to elucidate the dynamic nature of uncertainties and societal stakes that occurred during negotiations among various stakeholders in the case of food nanotechnolo- gies in Japan. Three ways taken by stakeholders to respond to these situations were analyzed based on the experiences of participatory research. These are: (1) trying to reconstruct uncertainty while the stakes are regarded as given, (2) trying to reconstruct stakes while the uncertainty is regarded as given, and (3) trying to reconstruct uncertainty and stake at the same time. I conclude with a discussion of some ethical implications for stakeholder identification and dealing with uncertainty.
Highlights
Since the turn of the century, nanotechnology has been one of the most important areas of innovation, and the frontier of application is expanding from computers to life sciences
As the technology employed in this area is so broad, it is more common to use the word ‘nanotechnologies’ rather than ‘nanotechnology.’ In this paper, food nanotechnologies is defined as a group of technologies applied to food-related products that use nanotechnology
In this paper, using a case study of food nanotech in Japan, I discussed how emerging technology entails different kinds of uncertainties and how various stakeholders respond to these uncertainties
Summary
Since the turn of the century, nanotechnology has been one of the most important areas of innovation, and the frontier of application is expanding from computers to life sciences. While there are some nano-claimed food items in the Japanese marketplace, there have been no salient discussions on regulatory issues regarding food nanotech in Japan. This situation contrasts with other industrial countries such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the European Union, and the United States (Pelley & Saner 2009, Gergely et al 2010). Speaking, emerging technologies (Yamagichi & Hibino 2009) give rise to various uncertainties in scientific and regulatory terms, and because of this, greater societal stakes are often discussed in terms of their applications. A change in this uncertainty would greatly affect the nature of the stake in society and the types of stakeholders involved It is worthwhile pursuing the dynamism of these relationships. I conclude with a discussion of some ethical implications for stakeholder identification and dealing with uncertainty
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