Food safety regulation and the conflict of interest:: The case of meat safety and E-coli O157

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) aims to remove the longstanding conflict of interest between producers and consumers which is thought to lie at the heart of the rising number of food safety problems of recent years, to restore consumer confidence, and to protect public health. This paper sets out firstly to understand what the conflicts are, how they arise and their implications for food safety, and secondly to provide some means of evaluating the proposals for the Food Standards Agency. It does this by examining the current food safety regulatory regime as it relates to e. coli O157, one of the problems that gave rise to the FSA and an exemplar of the problems of meat safety, and places it in its wider economic context. The results show that the financial pressures on the food industry were such that food hygiene was largely dependent upon external regulation and enforcement. But the deficiencies in the conception, design and implementation of the Food Safety Act, which was fundamentally deregulatory and privileged producer interests, permitted the food safety problems to grow. The case also, by illustrating how the interests of big business predominate in the formulation of public policy at the expense of the public, reveals how the class nature of the state affects public policy and social relations. Without addressing these issues, the problems they give rise to will remain. While the case is based on experiences in Britain, the problem of food safety and the issues raised have an international significance.