Kilka uwag o „ryzyku rozwoju” w regulacjach żywności zmodyfikowanej genetycznie (GMO), nowej żywności i suplementu diety

Regulations concerning products such as genetically modified foods, new food products or dietary supplements all have in common the one thing, namely: significant difficulties (if not impossibility) in describing the safety of their use once marketed. The EU legislator in each of these products has “created” a singular “legislative safety standard” – considering the absence of any reliable factual standard of safety. The domain of law and science touches both on substantive as well as procedural law; the latter can significantly serve to precise the level of risk connected with introducing a product on to the market and its monitoring. This absence of a reliable factual safety standard results from a serious gap in scientific knowledge or vague areas of the product qualification, which is a consequence of the defective law. In many instances it is impossible for the producer to cite the “development risk”. The legislative standard of safety, within which there is no identification of factual risk, nor even any attempt towards doing so – brings forth the question on the boundaries of legislative experimenting. Discretion in such situations may prove to be a legislator’s virtue, according to the old principle of primum non nocere.