What Counts as Uncertainty? Insect Welfare, Epistemic Closure and the Structural Limits of EU Novel Food Risk Assessment

The authorisation of insect-based novel foods under Regulation (EU) 2015/2283 proceeds without welfare assessment of the species involved, an absence this article explains through the concept of jurisdictional epistemic closure: the mechanism by which formal legal mandates simultaneously allocate regulatory competence and determine which forms of scientific uncertainty can be constituted as regulatory objects. Unlike existing accounts of co-production or boundary work, this concept foregrounds the ultra vires doctrine as the mechanism that makes epistemic boundaries legally enforceable rather than merely institutional. Applying the framework to EFSA’s novel food opinions, the article shows that insect welfare considerations are not assessed and dismissed but rendered inadmissible by the prior definition of EFSA’s mandate as limited to human health risk. Drawing on veterinary science’s clinical distinction between nociception and sentience, the analysis demonstrates that regulatory systems are capable of accommodating welfare uncertainty operationally, and that the obstacle is jurisdictional rather than methodological. The precautionary principle cannot resolve this problem because it presupposes the epistemic framework that jurisdictional closure renders incomplete; the normative argument is grounded in Article 13 TFEU, which imposes on the Commission a legally operative obligation of welfare regard when exercising risk management discretion under the Novel Food Regulation.