Traditionally, food safety management has largely been the province of the state. Nations have established agencies responsible for various aspects of food safety, with the primary goal of protecting public health. International bodies concerned with various aspects of food safety - in particular the Codex Alimentarius Commission - help member countries make decisions about a range of policy matters. While they receive advice from many sources, including the private sector, their central aims have been to protect public health and to promote fair practices in the market for foods. Codex standards can also facilitate international trade in foods by promoting harmonized national regulation.
In the last several years, the private sector has taken on a greater role in the management of food safety, especially in the developed world. Several factors may explain why this has occurred.
1. Partly as a result of fiscal constraints, states are reassessing their roles in ensuring the safety of food supplies. The emphasis is on achieving more effective food safety management while increasingly delegating the responsibility for ensuring food safety to the various stakeholders in the food supply chain. According to this approach to food safety management, industry is responsible for implementing proactive food quality and safety assurance programmes aimed at preventing food safety problems at any stage of the food supply chain (as is seen with the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point [HACCP] system). There is wide consensus that regulatory food safety requirements should facilitate industry innovation by being less prescriptive and more focused on public health outcomes. This trend is exemplified by ongoing discussions at international level on the establishment of food safety objectives.
2. The World Trade Organization facilitates international food trade through the reduction of tariffs and quotas and the establishment of common approaches to food quality and safety regulation in the international arena. Large retail chains have taken advantage of this by globally sourcing food products and expanding into multiple nations. In particular, the developing regions of Latin America, Asia and, to a lesser extent, Africa, have seen significant increases in the number of international supermarket chains in their countries.
3. Among all food enterprises, the large food retailers, eager to portray their industry as trustworthy, are tending to take on greater responsibility for the safety of the foods they sell. In some instances, food retailers require all their suppliers to adhere to stringent in-house or industry standards in addition to government food safety regulations. To enforce their proprietary standards, these food retailers may require suppliers to obtain third party certification of compliance. This may lead to certification being extended beyond food safety to other product characteristics such as environmental protection, labour relations and animal welfare. Larger food retailers may feel obligated to engage in such activities, among other things, as a means of differentiating and protecting their brand.
4. Food retailers are bypassing traditional supply chains in favour of direct contracting with farmers and processors for particular products, delivered at particular times, according to particular specifications. By this means, high levels of product loss in the traditional supply chain are avoided, as are low or variable levels of product food safety.
5. More and more, consumers in industrial nations desire fresh and minimally processed products on the shelf 12 months of the year. Food retailers have encouraged this as such products attract a price premium. By their very nature, however, these products may pose more food safety problems, which retailers address through their own food safety management systems.
6. Urbanization in virtually all nations requires longer supply chains, as food consumption occurs further from the site of production. Larger food retailers have taken advantage of this phenomenon to displace smaller vendors as a trade-off for offering a higher level of food safety assurance.
The shift of food safety management systems from government to the food industry has not been entirely positive for food safety, and it raises problems of equity across social and economic boundaries. While some farmers have benefited from contract production at higher prices, many others have found themselves unable to participate in these lucrative markets because of a lack of skills or capital. Similarly, many smaller food retailers have found their markets shrinking rapidly.
In countries where the government's response to fiscal restraints has been to withdraw from comprehensive food safety management rather than to reassess and reorganize its role - with, for example, reduced emphasis on costly state inspections and increased emphasis on audit of industry quality and safety assurance programmes - the effectiveness of control has lessened. The same outcome may result where government engagement is constant or is indeed increasing but is outstripped by demand in an expanding global food marketplace. In these cases, a two-tier food safety system may develop in which producers targeting international markets operate according to one set of standards and producers targeting local markets operate by lower standards.
The dynamic environment of food safety governance systems may affect consumers in a range of ways. For example, a negative impact may result where the development of a plural system of consumer protection allows affluent consumers access to higher levels of safety than poorer consumers. This situation clearly conflicts with the aim of state food safety systems - namely, equal protection from food hazards for all. Similarly, consumer confidence in a government's ability to assure the safety of the food supply might also be compromised. Moreover, producers might lose access to international markets because of the lower safety levels of domestic products. Key positive outcomes of the successful reassessment and reorganization of government food safety management systems should also be recognized. One positive impact is the more effective and efficient use of available resources in assuring public health protection from food-borne disease. Another important achievement in some cases has been the institution or strengthening of procedures and mechanisms within national food control systems that promote transparency and accountability. This provides a sound basis for building stakeholder confidence in food safety governance.
