This paper describes three cases of government-led efforts in France and the United States to bring stakeholders into the regulatory process for genetically-modified food. We analyze how government regulators, scientists, and members of the public interacted in these three different settings, and conclude that public participation is not linked with a regulatory outcome; in other words, for various reasons which we consider, public participation did not have a substantive impact on government policies in this area. We consider how these processes could be improved, by drawing on two distinct literatures — social studies of science and organization theory. A more conscious crossfertilization of the two literatures would shed some insights broadly on science and public organizations, and particularly on the problem of regulating a complex and uncertain area of technology.