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RED BLOODED CAPITALISM is the root of the US cost-benefit approach to managing risk; that economic good trumps all others (within reason), and is a proud US value that joins rugged individualism and less government oversight of private capital. Given its due it has made the USA a world power in a very short period of time. View in LinkedIn

POLITICIZATION OF SCIENCE in the aid of trade agreements. "Disputes over food safety suggest the outline of a new stage or scale of politicization," and the enormous increase in the stakes involved in the institutionalizations of science and risk assessment. http://lnkd.in/dtDvEdx View in LinkedIn

"COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS enjoys a special status in U.S. law and policy. With few exceptions, statutory law, common law and government regulations all presume that economic growth provides net benefits (more benefits than costs) to society until an explicit cost-benefit analysis can show otherwise." http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/mm2009/032009/interview-montague.html View in LinkedIn

RISK MANAGEMENT. "Business groups contrast the precautionary principle to "a science-based approach to risk management." The presumptions built into our current legal decision-structure are profoundly unscientific. The basic assumption is that the planet has an infinite capacity to absorb harm from human economic activities." http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/mm2009/032009/interview-montague.html View in LinkedIn

COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS ASKS, "Is this harm justified by related benefits?" If the answer is yes, or even if the answer is unknown, the harm is allowed to continue. The precautionary principal asks, "Is this harm avoidable?" http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/mm2009/032009/interview-montague.html View in LinkedIn

UNSCIENTIFIC? "U.S. industry representatives see the EU regulations as a pure trade obstacle and criticize the European arguments as unscientific. They claim there is no proof that the amounts of chlorine used to sanitize chicken meat harms the consumer. They point out that 120 other countries around the world accept the U.S. practice." http://lnkd.in/dDwxBBi View in LinkedIn

THE ROOT CAUSE of the enormous divide between the U.S.and EC food safety regulators and which us behind the enormous gulf in TTIP food harmonization talks: the Precautionary Principle which charges governments to safeguard the people and Cost-Benefit or risk based analysis that assumes that economic good trumps all other goods. View in LinkedIn

CRITIC OF PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE. "Attempts to apply this concept to "proof of safety" for new food ingredients or products has led to the impossible demand of establishing the "absence of harm," with a level of evidence that avoids uncertainty. Any requirement to establish safety with no uncertainty will increase costs unnecessarily, and will prove futile." http://www.agbioforum.org/v3n4/v3n4a13-hathcock.htm View in LinkedIn

PETER MONTAGUE will be extensively quoted in the next sections because of his clear-sighted analysis of the issues at stake, and the consequences, when we are guided by the Precautionary Principle versus Risk-Benefit analysis in regulation of potentially harmful products. View in LinkedIn

GREAT SPOKESPERSON. "Peter Montague is director of the Environmental Research Foundation ... longtime editor of Rachel’s Environment and Health News ... He has co-authored two books on toxic heavy metals in the natural environment and is presently writing a book about the precautionary principle." http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/mm2009/032009/interview-montague.html View in LinkedIn