ABSTRACT
Distrust of expertise, and rejection of the authority of experts, are often presented as symptoms of rising ‘populism’, a reflection of ominous irrationality in public discourse. But the area of food safety has long been marked by tensions between public perception of risk and citizens’ demands for risk control, on the one hand, and expert judgment and authority, on the other. At the level of global governance, the World Trade Organization has been front and centre in these battles. The post-war arrangement for multilateral trade, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, protected regulatory diversity. This chapter considers the food safety dimension of the risk crisis arising from the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan. In the context of Fukushima, as with Chernobyl, revelations of gross irresponsibility and widespread deceit by government officials and by those responsible for the nuclear power plant operation, doubtless compounded distrust of government-proffered expertise regarding the safety of the food supply, including seafood.
