Food safety regulation and the conflict of interest: The case of meat safety and E-coli 0157

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) aims to remove the longstanding conflict of interest between producers and consumers which is thought to lie at the he art of the rising number of food safety problems of recent years, to restor e consumer confidence, and to protect public health. This paper sets out fi rstly to understand what the conflicts are, how they arise and their implic ations for food safety, and secondly to provide some means of evaluating th e proposals for the Food Standards Agency. It does this by examining the cu rrent food safety regulatory regime as it relates to e. coli 0157, one of t he problems that gave rise to the FSA and an exemplar of the problems of me at safety, and places it in its wider economic context. The results show that the financial pressures on the food industry were suc h that food hygiene was largely dependent upon external regulation and enfo rcement. 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 a lso, by illustrating how the interests of big business predominate in the f ormulation of public policy at the expense of the public, reveals how the c lass nature of the state affects public policy and social relations. Withou t addressing these issues, the problems they give rise to will remain. Whil e the case is based on experiences in Britain, the problem of food safety a nd the issues raised have an international significance.