How Epistemic Policies in Food Regulation Shape Public Health

• In Event: Governing Food - I

Abstract

It is a well-established assumption that non-epistemic values ought not to directly influence the justification of scientific hypotheses. This assumption is held not only within science, but also in other, non-scientific fields. However, what if the influence of such values were legitimate, or even inevitable? As many social epistemologists and STS specialists have pointed out, the latter tends to be common in all those contexts in which policy and decisions are based on scientific knowledge (Regulatory Science). The aim of our paper is to analyze one of those particular contexts: health claims regulation.
We will show that the generation of scientific data for determining health benefits in foods is inevitably bound up with certain "epistemic policies", in particular the methodological decisions with respect to valid procedures of obtaining scientific evidence. We will identify various such epistemic policies and show how they are based on interests and practices of different stakeholders (scientists, industry, regulatory agencies, etc.). Our analysis makes clear how the adoption of one or the other epistemic policy can have direct effects not only for consumers and the food industry, but also for public health.
This case study contributes, e.g., to works in the STS field on "epistemic cultures" in different scientific disciplines (Knorr-Cetina, 1999); on "political cultures" involved in the public management of science and technology (Elzinga and Jamison, 1995); and on “civic epistemologies" that underlie each national style of science regulatory policy (Jasanoff, 2005).

Authors

• Noemi Sanz Merino, University of Balearic Islands

• Oliver Todt, University of Balearic Islands

• José Luis Luján, University of Balearic Islands