In a Monograph released today by the Washington Legal Foundation (WLF), an international business and trade expert documents the rise in Europe of the so-called 'precautionary principle' and its proponents' plans to export this risk-free regulatory agenda to the U.S. and our trading partners. This principle eschews science-based evaluation of the benefits and costs of regulation in favor of environmental, health, and safety rules which seek to eliminate every possible risk from economic conduct. The Monograph first defines the precautionary principle and then explains how international bureaucrats and influential activist groups are using it as a vehicle to diminish America's competitive position in the world economy and advance special interest agendas hostile to free enterprise and technology. Next, Mr. Kogan briefly reviews some areas where precaution has become institutionalized in Europe, such as government oversight of biotechnology, chemicals, and waste disposal, as well as the larger issue of 'greenhouse gases.' The costs of pursuing a risk-free regulatory environment are profound, Mr. Kogan argues - a point he advances effectively in two substantial sections of the Monograph. The financial impact is first explored by looking at how regulatory precaution would increase costs in areas such as tort liability, intellectual property and insurance. The paper then examines how certain industries in Europe have suffered under a precautionary regulatory regime. The most important and compelling sections of the Monograph address how precaution proponents are successfully advancing their regulatory principles here in the U.S., and the serious impact their success will have on free enterprise. Activists have made their deepest inroads in areas such as genetically enhanced foods and climate change, and Mr. Kogan provides an extensive analysis to those efforts, including a discussion of state and regional programs. He also examines less obvious, but equally troubling, efforts to inject the precautionary principle into federal accounting rules, SEC disclosure regulations, and environmental and food and drug regulations. The Monograph concludes with an insightful philosophical discussion of the precautionary principle's broader international legal, political, and economic impact. It highlights the growing rift between Europe's social welfare approach to regulating the economy and America's continued focus on encouraging risk-taking in the free market. It also warns that one of pro-precaution activists' larger goals - institutionalizing their views through the international law-making process - is well within reach and should be vigorously opposed in all its forms.