Risk Assessment in the European Food Safety Regulation: Who is to Decide Whose Science is Better?Commission v. Franceand Beyond…

Abstract

The outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (hereinafter BSE) in Europe has brought about serious tensions and fears – not only among consumers, but also among the national and European authorities responsible for risk management. Faced with the incapacity of the existing system to control the situation, on the one hand, and the need to restore consumers’ confidence on the other, the EU and national regulators felt obliged to repair the weaknesses as soon as possible. However, remedial actions undertaken at the time of the BSE crisis were not always the product of thorough consultations and they were often not well coordinated. Thus, they became a source of disagreement among the various actors in play. The case Commission v. France, which I will examine more closely in this paper, illustrates such a conflict among the national and European scientific authorities. The judgment was delivered in 2001, but the problem of the successful integration of science into the regulatory decision-making process of the EU still remains unsettled. In this paper I will present suggestions as to how the situation could be influenced by the outcomes of recent reforms of European food safety law and the establishment of the European Food Safety Authority.

Thalidomide, BSE and the single market: An historical‐institutionalist approach to regulatory regimes in the European Union

“…As a consequence of the BSE scandal, the EU's regulatory regime for foodstuffs was reformed and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), which follows to a large extent the example of the EMEA, was established in 2002. However, because of the weakness of the new agency, there are strong doubts whether it will achieve a similar position in the food sector as the EMEA has in the pharmaceutical sector (Chalmers 2003; Krapohl 2004; Szawlowska 2004).…”

The End of the French Model for Animal Health? A Sociological Analysis of the Bluetongue Vaccination Campaign (2007–2009)

“…In that sense, we believe that the health tripod partitioning has never worked itself in an ideal manner (as shown by the difficulties in the 1950s with regard to tuberculosis and foot and mouth). We therefore consider that when the BT broke out, the veterinary services tied themselves up in knots in a post‐BSE interpretation of the health tripod (Vos ; Szawlowska ), emphasising it to the point of forgetting that it only exists as an idealised model. According to Law's statement that ‘system perfection is not only impossible but, more strongly, may be self‐ defeating’ (Law ), we are making the claim that the BSE configuration was perhaps inadvertently taken to be the rule rather than the exception.…”

Conflicting Notifications in the EU's Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF): ‘Destabilization’ in Food Risk Communication?

“…The drafters of the General Food Law were sufficiently pragmatic to realise that difference would undoubtedly emerge between risk assessments undertaken by different Member States and the EU. 22 Part of EFSA's role has been to ease these tensions through networking, dialogue and stakeholder involvement. 23 In addition, the General Food Law explicitly creates a mechanism for settling 'diverging scientific opinions' in the EU on a bilateral basis 24 .…”