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When experimentalist governance meets science‐based regulations; the case of food safety regulations
Author(s) -
Wengle Susanne
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
regulation and governance
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.417
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1748-5991
pISSN - 1748-5983
DOI - 10.1111/rego.12067
Subject(s) - deliberation , flexibility (engineering) , corporate governance , food safety , democracy , demise , politics , business , law and economics , public administration , political science , economics , law , management , finance , medicine , pathology
This paper examines a central regulatory mechanism that shapes food economies. Food safety regulations in the U nited S tates rely on a science‐based transnational regulatory system known as H azard A nalysis and C ritical C ontrol P oint ( HACCP) , which bears central features of what S abel and Z eitlin identified as experimentalist governance: a new form of regulation that is flexible, responsive, and involves stakeholders in iterative and direct democratic deliberation. The core theoretical question the paper examines is what the reliance on science means for the promise of an experimentalist policy regime to enable a new form of democratic politics. Based on a case study of the HACCP system implemented by the US D epartment of A griculture's F ood S afety and I nspection S ervice since the late 1990s, HACCP 's reliance on food science has acted as an effective divider between producers who were able to take advantage of the system's flexibility and others for whom this was challenging. There is clear evidence that HACCP posed a disproportionate burden on small processors and that some of them were unable to adapt to the requirements of the regulatory system. In so far as the HACCP ‐based food safety regulations delineated the kind of producer that thrived in the system and contributed to the demise of another set of producers, the regulatory system shaped market outcomes.