Approaches to food risk management which do not take account of the views of the public and other stakeholders have been shown to be deficient in a number of high profile cases. However, including non-expert views in the risk management process present a number of problems. Methods from risk communication, such as mental models, and work on participatory processes offer possibilities for overcoming some of these problems but there are still many challenges in developing these methods and in more fully integrating the insights from natural and social sciences into an overall framework for effective risk management.