Abstract

With the aftermath of COVID-19, China restarted the safety assessment of GM crops. However, the precautionary principle which has guided the environmental legislation in China remains controversy and ambiguous, which has led to the stagnation of GMO industrialization in China. The problem could not be solved without a theoretical and empirical study on the logic operation of the precautionary principle in GMO industrialization. Theoretically, it is found that the precautionary principle, precautionary approach and precautionary measure constitute an organic whole of abstractness and specificness, goal and means; Meanwhile, “Substantial equivalence” should be brought into the system of the precautionary principle Empirically, the rules adopted in GMO industrialization, such as case by case, are exactly the application and expansion of precautionary principle. Based on this, the logic evolution for operation mechanism of precautionary principle can be drawn up: on one side, the precautionary approaches are to be observed by taking advantage of the scientific discovery; on the other side, the technical means shall be adopted as precautionary measures through the legislative proceedings as against scientific uncertainty.

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