ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the risk contest over food safety in international organisations for trade and environment. It is concerned with the degree to which the discourse contest over risk and uncertainty has created opportunities for public participation in the decision-making process, or restricted participation to experts. The chapter examines the institutional field of inter-state and inter-issue negotiations created in the 1990s after introducing theories of risk and discourse. It turns to the three key terms in discourse contests over the meaning of precaution for trade and environment: 'precaution', 'sound science', and 'substantial equivalence'. The chapter considers the implications of the contest thus far, for the future of public participation in decisions about food safety. Civil society organisations of both kinds work internationally. These non-state actors complicate definitions of national interests and inter-state alliances, as they participate in contests over the framing of regulations, inside and outside of international organisations.
