Food Safety Issues From The Perspective Of Science Studies

Food safety problem is one of the most prominent contemporary risk issues today.Beck shows that science and politics are the two main factors generating risk in Risk society.In the scientism time,science is the judge and has an absolute right to speak.Scientific argument and political explanation make risks obscured.Social constructivism deconstructs the credibility of science.Studies from Bruno Latour,Steve Woolgar,Steven Shapin,Simon Schaffer,Pierre Bourdieu,John Ziman et al have revealed dimensions of authority and rhetoric in science.It forces science to reflect itself,which results in the emergence of public dimension rejected by scientific hegemony once.Public participation in science becomes an important issue in the field of STS now.During the analysis of food safety problems,public participation has two models,one is the elite model,the other is public model.Positivists adhere to the scientific concept of the elite.Science is manipulated by qualified scientists,and scientific standards are determined by science community.Persons outside the community are just the recipients during the science dissemination,leading to some risk problems.In public model,with a diversity of actants,a variety of heterogeneous elements participate equally.Skills employment and public engagement makes the problem open and transparent,breaking black box.And the power and rhetorical dimensions in risk analysis and processing are deconstructed.Obstacles become distinct in public participation and expertises of public participation are presented.Some scientists and government managers think ignorant is the barrier of public participation.Therefore we approach to "ignorance" concept and tease out its development path that is from lacking of professional the knowledge to "civil epistemology" to "Agnotology",namely,"we do not know" to "we know that we do not know" to "we do not know that we do not know," combining works of Sheila Jasanoff,Brian Wynne,Harry Collins,Londa Schiebinger and Robert Proctor.So it is not established that regards "public ignorance "as an excuse to prevent public participation.Political system and social factors embedded in scientific culture are the roadblocks of public participation.Jasanoff and Wynne have pointed out the shortcomings of public participation,but they failed to put forward feasibility that the public can actually participate in.Collins guides the public to participate in by SEE.He thinks public with expertises is not lay,but experience-based experts.Relevant expertise accumulation in the periodic table of expertises makes public participation have legitimacy and feasibility.Accordingly,public participation experiences three phases,from "science communication audiences" to "participate as a slogan" to "effective participation".This process is vividly demonstrated in some cases.Persons,including Cumberland pastoralists,farmers whose gene is collected and children involved in Golden Rice experiments,do not have the required expertise,and can not understand science language,but only passively receive information.So,scientists are the only actors.Public that was plagued by BSE crisis did not play decision-making role very well though they having the democracy right,because government scientists chose economic interests at the expense of public health.In order to highlight the status of the public,FSA meeting was held.But it damaged interests of other groups and had no practical effect to government's decision.However,the various interest groups and lay public can participate equally in consensus conference of transgenic technology.Public can express own views by virtue of expertises and propose reasonable advice for decision-making.Consequently,it affects government decision-making in certain extent and maximizes democracy.Case studies in public participation process provide methodological reference to solve food safety problems in China.To more and more food safety issues and loopholes of legal and regulatory,public participation is an important dimension of solutions.Four measures need be taken to solve food safety problems in china,a variety of contributory expertise accumulation to experts,translating interactional expertise to sociologists,related discrimination expertise to consumer and government's macro-control.The risk is realistic and constructed.The debate of science and democracy in food safety reflects demarcation issues in philosophy of science.Contrastive analysis between consensus conference home and abroad and Chinese hearing provides practical reference for mainland democracy.Today,democracy is not a simple game,but involves a variety of heterogeneous elements,such as science,business,politics,skills,public,technology,globalization,so democracy results from many factors to achieve joint action.But we should hold the tension between democracy and government's macro-control,between scientists and the public when we learn the lessons from Western democracy in the public participation process.In the context of globalization,the development of biotechnology arouses new problems,such as biopiracy and biopolitics.