Greenpeace, the Science and Environmental Health Network, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, Consumers’ Union, and most of the usual nanny suspects are renewing their call for world governments to invoke the “precautionary principle,” especially when dealing with genetically engineered foods. As the Wall Street Journal recently put it, “The precautionary ‘principle’ is an environmentalist neologism, invoked to trump scientific evidence and move directly to banning things they don’t like.”
