The Precautionary Principle Applied to Food Safety – Lessons from EC Courts

Known in the early 1990s by a few specialists in environmental law, the precautionary principle has within a decade established itself as a new general principle of Community law. In particular, Community case law has not only managed to extend the scope of application of the precautionary principle to all policies involving scientific uncertainty, but has also introduced extremely useful clarifications of the conditions under which the precautionary principle can be applied, in particular in the domains of public health and food safety.