What's the Beef? The Contested Governance of European Food Safety. Edited by Christopher Ansell and David Vogel. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006. 389p. $67.00 cloth, $27.00 paper.

Designs on Nature: Science and Democracy in Europe and the United States. By Sheila Jasanoff. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. 374p. $49.50 cloth, $18.95 paper.

In 1999, a truck dumped four tons of genetically modified soybeans on the doorstep of British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Operated by Greenpeace UK, the truck carried a banner that read, “Tony, don't swallow Bill's seed.” The action occurred amidst a rising chorus of voices critical of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Ultimately, the public's wholesale rejection of GMOs prompted Britain's major food retailers to remove all GMO products from their shelves and forced the British government to restructure its food safety apparatus completely.