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The Evolution of Food Safety Policy–making Institutions in the UK, EU and Codex Alimentarius
Author(s) -
Millstone Erik,
Van Zwanenberg Patrick
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
social policy and administration
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.972
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1467-9515
pISSN - 0144-5596
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9515.t01-1-00306
Subject(s) - commission , government (linguistics) , food safety , politics , political science , business , public administration , public policy , public relations , law , medicine , philosophy , linguistics , pathology
After the British government announced in March 1996 that a novel fatal human disease (now called variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease) had emerged and was almost certainly caused by consuming BSE–contaminated food, national and international authorities have been struggling to deal with the consequences of a serious loss of public confidence in the safety of foods and in food safety policy–making institutions. One of the main ways in which governments and officials have responded to those challenges has been by initiating a broad range of structural and procedural reforms to the ways in which public policies are decided, legitimated and communicated. This paper outlines some of the more important respects in which national and international authorities have changed the ways in which they assess and manage the risks to human consumers of food–borne hazards. The focus is on developments in the UK, the EU and, at the global level, the Codex Alimentarius Commission; the period covered runs from the late 1960s until summer 2002. The discussion focuses on the case for separating the responsibilities for regulating and sponsoring the agricultural and food industries, for conducting risk appraisals and decision–making in open and democratically accountable ways and for drawing on experts representing a wide range of interests and expertise rather than on a narrow industry–based group. The paper concludes by indicating some key structural and procedural conditions for effectively differentiating the scientific from the political aspects of risk appraisal and decision–making, and then for coupling them together in ways that would provide both scientific and democratic legitimacy.