IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/erp/eiopxx/p0072.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Politics versus Science in the Making of a New Regulatory Regime for Food in Europe

Author

Listed:
  • Buonanno, Laurie
  • Zablotney, Sharon
  • Keefer, Richard

Abstract

The European Union's new food regulatory regime can be understood as a political, rather than science-based solution to the problem of recurrent food crises that have threatened the foundations of the single market. The failure of first, mutual trust and subsequently, its remedy, comitology, led to calls for an agency solution. The question of whether to invest an agency with the three powers of risk assessment, communication, and management can be understood as a struggle to define the role of the scientist in the management of regulatory policy. Scientists base their recommendations on probabilities; politicians are accountable to a public that expects government to guarantee zero risk. The outcome, a European Food Authority (EFA), preserves the management function and the Rapid Alert System within the Commission. EFA's success will rest on the harmonization of food law in Member States and the creation of a network between the EFA and Member State food agencies. Satisfaction of these goals, in turn, depends upon transparency, open communication, and willingness to cooperate. An unintended consequence of the new regulatory regime for food may be to strengthen corporate food producers and accelerate food homogeneity within Europe. These processes carry their own set of problems regarding interest group behavior, unconventional political behavior, and voter mobilization. We close the paper with recommendations for future research.

Suggested Citation

  • Buonanno, Laurie & Zablotney, Sharon & Keefer, Richard, 2001. "Politics versus Science in the Making of a New Regulatory Regime for Food in Europe," European Integration online Papers (EIoP), European Community Studies Association Austria (ECSA-A), vol. 5, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:erp:eiopxx:p0072
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eiop.or.at/eiop/texte/2001-012a.htm
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: http://eiop.or.at/eiop/texte/2001-012.htm
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: http://eiop.or.at/eiop/pdf/2001-012.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Christoph Strünck, 2005. "Mix-Up: Models of Governance and Framing Opportunities in U.S. and EU Consumer Policy," Journal of Consumer Policy, Springer, vol. 28(2), pages 203-230, June.
    2. Gregory Shaffer & Mark Pollack, 2004. "Regulating Between National Fears and Global Disciplines:Agricultural Biotechnology in the EU," Jean Monnet Working Papers 10, Jean Monnet Chair.
    3. Struenck, Christoph, 2001. "Why is there No Mad Cow Disease in the United States? Comparing the Politics of Food Safety in Europe and the U.S," Institute of European Studies, Working Paper Series qt4z6868qv, Institute of European Studies, UC Berkeley.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:erp:eiopxx:p0072. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Editorial Assistant (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ecsaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.