Jurados ciudadanos y organismos genéticamente modificados

Abstract

Apolitical sociology of food must look into the processes whereby regulatory decisions on food are made, and also into the democratic potential of their alternatives. Five "experiments in democracy" are described, in which a promising deliberative device has been used: citizens' juries. Indian and Brazilian peasants, on the one hand, and British consumers in the other took part in them, and they focused on Genetically Modified Organisms. These processes, whose defining trait is granting jurors access to expert witnesses presented by all stakeholders in the controversy, show the impressive ability of ordinary citizens to articulate their analysis of complex issues, a reassessment of risks, and a recontextualization of the use of GMOs. At any rate, deliberative democracy is not a magic bullet for the epistemic and political crisis that underlies food crisis; instead, it points at a paradigm change towards an experimental democratic polity in which the instances of representation of the public and publics are multiplied.