ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the precautionary principle and the efficacy of its role as a particular framing of scientific uncertainty and the quality of its participation to the debate over the advances, advantages, and liabilities of the genetic engineering of crops and foods and corresponding international trade obligations. The chapter aims to isolate the factors that advance and frustrate the decision making process and offer suggestions as to how it can be enhanced. The public controversy over the determination of the safety of agricultural biotechnology pits issues and protocols of sound science against cultural interpretations of risk. As an issue of international law, the regulatory debate does not pertain to the legitimacy of the precautionary principle per se since it is already included in sound standards of risk assessment; rather, it is its degree of autonomy and applicability within regulatory frameworks that is in question.
