Risk under construction: The German discourse on the ban of MON810

Food crises ranging from BSE to EHEC have time and again demonstrated that uncertain risks in the area of food safety constitute one of the main societal challenges we are currently facing. Their nature as “possible, new, imaginable hazards, with which society has no or limited experience” (van Asselt and Vos, 2008) leads to situations in which traditional means of science prove to be inadequate for drawing suitable conclusions informing how the uncertain risk is to be handled. This challenge is particularly visible in the regulation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs): they have been characterized as an uncertain risk and pose questions related to socio- political, economic and cultural considerations (Ansell and Vogel, 2006; van Asselt and Vos, 2008).