ABSTRACT
An important question about safety regulation is how different regulatory systems shape the relationship between law and science, and how they influence the public confidence in science-based decision making. Different process rules might impose different constraints on scientists, and different substantive rules will pose different questions to scientific researchers. What is needed for comparative work in this area of law is a conceptual model that is generic enough to analyse the relationship between risk assessment and risk management in multiple jurisdictions. This chapter introduces such a model, and uses it to analyse the regulation of food safety in the United States. The first part of the chapter describes the functional elements of a default-logic model for factfinding. The second part applies the model to food safety regulation in the United States, with particular attention to the distinction between risk assessment and risk management. The last part summarises a number of major conclusions from that analysis, with particular attention to issues that might arise across jurisdictions.
