The Contested Governance of European Food Safety 1
نویسنده
چکیده
It is now a decade and half since the UK’s Conservative Minister of Agriculture, John Gummer, ceremoniously fed his four-year old daughter Cordelia a hamburger to demonstrate the safety of British Beef. Since then 137 British citizens have died from a variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), presumably from eating beef infected with bovine spongiform encepholapathy (BSE)—popularly known as “mad cow disease.” The event has become emblematic of a public policy public relations fiasco. More importantly, it signifies the kinds of dilemmas in the relations between science and regulation, market promotion and consumer protection, public authority and public opinion that riddle contemporary governance. A few years later, an equally provocative symbolic action occurred across the Channel. In the town of Millau in southwest France, an emerging farm and antiglobalization movement, led by a sheep farmer named Jose Bové, used tractors to destroy a McDonalds then under construction. The action of Confédération paysanne was prompted by the imposition of American import duties on French foods like roquefort cheese, mustard, truffles, and foie gras in retaliation for a European Union ban on American hormone-treated beef. Again, the action symbolized the political and social tensions surrounding the public regulation of food. Banned by the European Union (EU) as a potential health risk, the U.S. and Canada claimed that the EU ban on hormonetreated was merely disguised trade protectionism. Although the World Trade
منابع مشابه
Accident rates in Poland’s foodstuff industry from the perspective of occupational safety management in the European Union
The issue of accidents at work and accident prevention have a significant impact regarding safety, health protection and work environment management for the European Union. Work conditions need to be improved in Poland. Solving this collective issue caused by humanitarian as well as economic considerations is a primary mission in businesses. Creating more quality jobs is one of the main goals o...
متن کاملGovernance Must Dive Into Organizations to Make a Real Difference; Comment on “Governance, Government, and the Search for New Provider Models”
In their 2016 article, Saltman and Duran provide a thoughtful examination of the governance challenges involved in different care delivery models adopted in primary care and hospitals in two European countries. This commentary examines the limited potential of structural changes to achieve real reform and considers that, unless governance arrangements actually succeed in penetrating organizatio...
متن کاملReaching Outside the Comfort Zone: Realising the FCTC’s Potential for Public Health Governance and Regulation in the European Union; Comment on “The Legal Strength of International Health Instruments – What It Brings to Global Health Governance?”
In their paper, Nikogosian and Kickbusch show how the effects of the adoption by the World Health Organization (WHO) of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) and its first Protocol extend beyond tobacco control and contribute to public health governance more broadly, by revealing new processes, institutions and instruments. While there are certainly good reasons to be optimisti...
متن کاملWhat Food is to be Kept Safe and for Whom? Food-Safety Governance in an Unsafe Food System
This paper argues that discussion of new food-safety governance should be framed by the realization that the dominant food system within which food-safety governance is designed to makes food safe is itself a structural and systemic sources of food un-safety, poor health and a future of food insecurity for many. For some, an appropriate policy response lies in addressing the connections between...
متن کاملذخیره در منابع من
با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید
عنوان ژورنال:
دوره شماره
صفحات -
تاریخ انتشار 2005