Tetty Havinga, Frans van Waarden, Donal Casey (Eds.): The changing landscape of food governance: Public and private encounters

Abstract

The Changing Landscape of Food Governance: Public and Private Encounters is an interdisciplinary book, edited by three scholars with expertise in law examining the recent transformation of food governance. Food and agricultural policy and regulation were traditionally dominated by the state. Although in recent decades, private corporate actors and civil society organizations have become involved, creating private and hybrid public–private food governance arrangements. This volume is a good survey of the current food governance landscape. Editors Havinga, van Waarden, and Casey have divided the book into four sections examining broad issues in regulatory governance. Section 1 introduces current changes in food governance and regulation, setting the stage for the remainder of the volume. The first chapter identifies reasons for the transition from traditional food governance to transnational, global governance involving both private and hybrid structures. In Chapter 2, Havinga argues that scholars must acknowledge the complexity of current governance structures, or risk oversimplifying and overlooking relationships between state and non-state actors and new patterns in power. The state continues to be an active player in food regulation despite the rise in private actor involvement. Thus, the second part of the book explores public responses to food safety challenges. In Chapter 3, Abels and Kobusch examine institutional food safety differences among Austria, Sweden, and Hungary. These differences are based on the integration of risk assessment and risk management within a country’s policy institutions, influenced by the European Union (EU) and national historical traditions. Enticott and Lee proceed with exploring diseased animal compensation policies in the UK, finding inconsistently applied frameworks that continue to create confusion, and undermine policy goals for a safer food system. The next two chapters discuss China’s new food safety regime by looking at state actors. Collins and Gottwald examine the transition of the regime in recent years, finding contention between national and local authorities in charge of food safety, which is problematic due to reliance on local authorities for enforcement. As such in Chapter 6, Burns, Li, and Wang focus on local quality control officers. The authors find that under current policies, local authorities are incentivized to encourage high economic growth for a reward of promotion, opposing their task of ensuring compliance with safety standards often seen as slowing economic growth. Part 3 examines new forms of private food governance. Oosterveer begins by discussing changes in legitimacy and authority as a result of private food governance. Using two theories, Sassen’s assemblages and Rosenau’s bifurcation, he shows how authority and legitimacy are changing from shifts in food governance under two global standards (GlobalGAP and the Marine Stewardship Council). In order to achieve legitimacy and authority, governance must be effective as discussed by Kalfagianni and Fuchs in Chapter 9. In the area of sustainability, private standards must be stringent in order to be effective. This depends on many internal factors such as the structure of the group designing standards as well as external pressures like NGOs. The next two chapters discuss specific private standards. Casarosa and Gobbato analyze different networks of wine producers and the development of food quality standards in the wine industry. The dynamics of & Margaret Bancerz mbancerz@ryerson.ca