Food agencies and food standards: the future regulatory mechanism for the food trade?

Abstract

Until very recently, a US reader might be forgiven for wondering why in Europe there is such a furor over how best to achieve the effective management of food standards and safety; surely it is just a matter of putting in place a structure analogous to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)? This ostensibly independent organization has an excellent reputation with US consumers because it appears to operate in the public interest and has wideranging powers for rectifying a problem. FDA officials are proud of the competence, rigor, range, and effectiveness of their operation. As a result of the widely admired US freedom of access to information, the FDA is so open to public scrutiny that the safeguards seem bound to operate in the public interest. FDA officials are also privately scathing about food safety arrangements elsewhere and describe the debate on a possible European FDA as verging on the primitive because the political agreements within Europe are analogous to those in place in the United States at the time of the signing of the US Constitution! The purpose of this article is to highlight the scientific and policy issues that have led to such a furor about food and which now threaten to start a trade war between the EU and US. The competence and validity of the Codex Alimentarius System, which is run by the World Health Organization (WHO) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to cope with trade disputes, is also being questioned as the recent crises in Britain and Europe has led to a mushrooming of national food agencies. After the many food-related scares— bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), E. coli O157, antibiotic resistance, hormone use in the dairy industry and in cattle husbandry, and genetically modified organisms (GMOs)—fundamental food and health policy issues have arisen that turn on the basic science of nutrition and food safety. Complex issues of molecular biology, infective processes, modern endocrinology, and new concepts of nutritional needs all challenge our current Western approach to the free market. Infor