Last week, I was fortunate to be asked to speak at the European Food Safety Authority about independence and scientific decision-making – and how we’ve used this to build trust in food safety in the UK. Just being given the opportunity to talk about this subject is a nod to the success that we have had here.
One of the points I wanted to emphasise to others in Europe and in the Commission was that science can be key to building trust, but the science itself needs to be robust and trusted. One of the fundamental reasons that science is such a solid foundation for basing our trust in risk assessment, is openness. Scientists who expose their methodology and conclusions to challenge through peer-review, allow public scrutiny over whether these views are accepted as valid.
So while we cannot all understand the complex science behind, for example, the risks of dioxin contaminants in food, the fact that the methodology is open to scrutiny by those who do understand it, gives us reassurance.
However, it’s important to recognise, that science is not an absolute; we cannot say that anything is 100% safe and science cannot ever prove safety. But we can use it to assess and estimate risks – and importantly, acknowledge uncertainties and divergent opinions. And as you will have seen through my previous blogs – I welcome this.
While so much effort is put into building trust in science we should not shy away from this evidence for political or economic reasons by citing scientific uncertainties (unless the reasons are made clear). For example, the decision to ban the use of Bisphenol A in certain products was not justified on scientific grounds alone. There are always uncertainties, but decisions need to be made through a risk-based approach. Using any other approach puts us in danger of undermining trust in the scientific process as a whole.
