van der Meulen, Bernd M.J. --- "Responsibility in EU food law" [2017] ELECD 635; in Verbruggen, Paul; Havinga, Tetty (eds), "Hybridization of Food Governance" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017) 121

Book Title: Hybridization of Food Governance

Editor(s): Verbruggen, Paul; Havinga, Tetty

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781785361692

Section: Chapter 6

Section Title: Responsibility in EU food law

Author(s): van der Meulen, Bernd M.J.

Number of pages: 16

Abstract/Description:

This chapter focuses on hybrid arrangements in EU food hygiene law. In the European Union ‘food hygiene’ is legally defined as: ‘the measures and conditions necessary to control hazards and to ensure fitness for human consumption of a foodstuff taking into account its intended use’. Hygiene is that part of food safety law that focusses on what businesses producing, handling or selling food have to do to meet food safety objectives. EU food hygiene legislation imposes upon food business operators the obligation to self-regulate their business processes using the principles of Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP). By imposing legal obligations to design systems based on HACCP, the EU legislature sets the agenda as regards the objectives of food safety legislation and defines broad-brush principles of food safety. The implementation of these objectives and principles in detailed rules and procedures, however, is left to the food industry, either the individual food business operators or their representative organizations. Thus while for private food safety standards the rule making is done by private actors, the impact of EU legislation in this process is unmistakable. The increasing trend of regulating food chains through private standards has been described and analysed in an ever-growing body of literature. The emergence of dominant retail standards often has been assigned a starting year of 1997 and a frontrunner position to the British Retail Consortium (BRC). The introduction in food law of responsibility of food business operators has been identified as a catalyst to this trend. This responsibility in turn is said to have inspired a need among businesses to protect themselves from liability by organising due diligence. The concept of responsibility is included in Regulation (EC) 178/2002 (here after: the ‘General Food Law’ or ‘GFL’). Its drafters had on their desk as example the 1990 UK Food Safety Act. For this reason it is not beyond plausibility that both the need for due diligence and the form it took in private standards originated in the United Kingdom and have been exported into the General Food Law and into the European Union.