ABSTRACT
In late 2004, the President of the French Commission responsible for the risk assessment of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) posed a vital question:1 why he asked, should GMOs still be the cause of such deep controversy within France, when they were early subject to a battery of the most stringent legal regulations, requiring in each and every case full assessment of risks posed to public health and the environment? Undoubtedly, the unprecedented political and legal conflicts which GMOs give rise to, as well as continuing doubts about the appropriate legal framework for their regulation, are not issues confined to France. Nonetheless, conflict within France is so intense that the peculiarities of the French case deserve particular attention as an exemplary indication of the problems that GMO regulation (as well as risk regulation in general) pose.
