‘The Appliance of Science’: The Politics of European Food Regulation and Reform

Abstract

Amid increasing political anxiety generated by the BSE crisis, the European Union (EU) has sought to replace a confusing medley of food laws with a Food Safety Agency (EFSA) responsible for regulation from the farm to the fork’. Presented as an alluring cocktail of science and administrative change, the agency's remit will extend to redefining the relationship between risk assessment, its management and communication. In this context, this article advances three principle arguments. First, that any reform undertaken has been required to acknowledge the international agreements between the EU and the USA which have extended further the role of the free market in food trade. The agency's institutional architecture has therefore been framed by the imperative to construct an authority capable of restoring market confidence without threatening the habitat of those multi-national companies which occupy this arena. A second, related argument suggests that the role of risk (and science) in food regulation has altered. Rather than perform the task of sustaining order through responsible government, science now participates in (re)constituting order through the market. The role of science is now about creating and sustaining the view that ‘risks’ are an attendant feature of day to day life, and what matters is how we, as individuals, make judgments about those risks. Its role is to establish definitively whether a product or process will be detrimental to public health, thereby establishing negligence or culpability. Finally, the article suggests that the EU's attempt at reform has been influenced considerably by policy learning between member states, particularly that of Ireland.