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Food Safety 00 prels 4/7/01 3:54 PM Page i Food Safety and International Competitiveness: the Case of Beef JOHN SPRIGGS School of Agriculture Charles Sturt University Wagga Wagga Australia and GRANT ISAAC College of Commerce University of Saskatchewan Saskatoon Canada CABI Publishing Food Safety 00 prels 4/7/01 3:54 PM Page ii CABI Publishing is a division of CAB International CABI Publishing CABI Publishing CAB International 10 E 40th Street Wallingford Suite 3203 Oxon OX10 8DE New York, NY 10016 UK USA Tel: +44 (0)1491 832111 Tel: +1 212 481 7018 Fax: +44 (0)1491 833508 Fax: +1 212 686 7993 Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected] Web site: http://www.cabi.org © CAB International 2001. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronically, mechanically, by photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library, London, UK. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Spriggs, John. Food safety and international competitiveness : the case of beef / John Spriggs and Grant Isaac. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-85199-518-7 (alk. paper) 1. Food adulteration and inspection. 2. Food industry and trade--Safety measures. 3. Competition, International. 4. Beef industry--Safety measures. I. Isaac, Grant. II. Title. TX531 .S67 2001 363.19Ј26--dc21 2001018451 ISBN 0 85199 518 7 Typeset in 10/12pt Photina by Columns Design Ltd, Reading. Printed and bound in the UK by Cromwell Press, Trowbridge. Food Safety 00 prels 4/7/01 3:54 PM Page iii Contents Preface v Acknowledgements vii List of Abbreviations viii 1. Introduction 1 Whose Role is it Anyway? 1 Institutional Arrangements for Food Safety 4 Objectives of the Study 12 2. International Institutional Arrangements 15 International Drivers 15 International Institutional Arrangements 17 Analysis of International Institutional Arrangements 24 3. The United States of America 27 Introduction 27 Drivers for Change 27 Institutional Arrangements 32 Implications of these Developments 52 4. Canada 55 Introduction 55 Drivers for Change 55 Institutional Arrangements 58 Implications of these Developments 81 5. The United Kingdom 83 Introduction 83 Drivers for Change 83 Institutional Arrangements 93 Implications of these Developments 105 iii Food Safety 00 prels 4/7/01 3:54 PM Page iv iv Contents 6. Australia 107 Introduction 107 Drivers for Change 108 Institutional Arrangements 114 Implications of these Developments 142 7. Towards an Optimal Food Safety System 145 Introduction 145 Strengthening the Drivers for Change 145 Strengthening the Food Safety Meta-rules 151 Improving the Institutional Arrangements for Food Safety 158 Conclusions 166 8. How are they Doing? 167 Introduction 167 Harnessing the Drivers of Change 167 Choosing the Right Meta-rules 171 Developing the Institutional Arrangements 174 Conclusion 178 9. Epilogue 179 Bibliography/References 183 Index 191 Food Safety 00 prels 4/7/01 3:54 PM Page v Preface Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) is a fatal bovine disease thought to cause a similar fatal disease in humans. Recent headlines screamed ‘BSE Panic Spreads Across Europe’ (The Guardian, 27 November 2000). It is clear from such statements the acute concerns of BSE have spread well beyond the shores of the UK and have now engulfed most of Europe. But BSE is more than just a concern in Europe. It, along with Escherichia coli and a few other microbiological nasties, have helped generate a more broadly based concern about food safety that has now engulfed most of the developed world. Not only that, they have been a lightning conductor for change around the world in the attitudes of government, industry and consumers towards food safety. The initial impetus for this book was to explore the nature of this change. A food safety dynamic has been around for a long time. Upton Sinclair was one of the early influential writers on food safety. His most famous book, The Jungle (1906), detailed the unsanitary conditions of the Chicago meat plants and was a powerful driver for the implementation of the US Pure Food and Drug Act (1906). However, the onset of the BSE crisis in the late 1980s signalled a new era of change. What is particularly special about this new era is that, running alongside this food safety dynamic, has been an unprecedented interest in the globaliza- tion of trade. The advent of the computer age and the information age, along with the growth of new arrangements to facilitate international trade have led to a drive by countries to be internationally competitive. It is only natural that food safety would become an important dimension of this drive for inter- national competitiveness. Thus, even countries that had no strong domestic reason to improve their food safety, had an international imperative to do so – if they wanted to gain and maintain access to international markets. It is drawing out the link between food safety and international competitiveness that underlies this book. Very early on, we decided to focus on beef. This was a natural because beef has been at the centre of a number of highly publicized food contamina- tion crises, including of course BSE, and it has been at the centre of attempts v Food Safety 00 prels 4/7/01 3:54 PM Page vi vi Preface to improve food safety systems. We chose four countries for study that have been caught up in one way or another in the drive to improve beef food safety. They are the USA, Canada, the UK and Australia. Our approach was to examine the institutional arrangements for food safety in each of these four countries. Institutional arrangements are the rules (broadly defined) that constrain individual behaviour. We thought this approach would offer the best prospect of drawing out the link we wanted to explore between food safety and international competitiveness. We were par- ticularly interested to see if there were significant differences between these countries in their institutional arrangements and to see if some institutional arrangements might be better than others. Our intended goal was to provide a framework for improving the institutional arrangements for food safety. Following an introductory chapter, Chapters 2–6 describe what we saw in our tour of the four countries under study. Then, in Chapter 7, we present our framework for improvement, which consists of three elements: 1. Harnessing the drivers for change; 2. Choosing the right public and private decision-making systems (or what we call the meta-rules); and 3. Developing good institutional arrangements. In Chapter 8 we examine how the four countries have fared with respect to these three elements. Our conclusion is that, overall Australia has probably progressed the furthest. However, the USA remains a very important anchor on progress, particularly in Canada and Australia. We do not expect you will agree with everything, or even most things, we have said in this book. But, we do hope you will find the material and ideas presented in this book stimulating and useful in your own thinking about food safety. To this end, we have tried to write it in a way that is as widely accessible as possible. John Spriggs Wagga Wagga, New South Wales Australia Grant Isaac Saskatoon, Saskatchewan Canada 14 December 2000 Food Safety 00 prels 4/7/01 3:54 PM Page vii Acknowledgements This study emerged from a research project, sponsored by the Donner Canadian Foundation, on The Role of Government in Food Inspection. We are grateful for the support and understanding of the Donner Canadian Foundation during this research. The country chapters benefited enormously from the insights of many individuals who gave very generously of their time. It is impossible to name all those who contributed to our understanding, but we would like to single out a few. They are: David Addis, Julie Caswell, Philip Corrigan, Les Fearn, Andrew Fearne, Bob Ford, Spencer Henson, Frank Herd, Jill Hobbs, Neil Hooker, Linda Horton, David Hughes, Dennis Laycraft, Christine Majewski, Steve McCutcheon, Neil Maxwell, Gardner Murray, James Northen, C.M. Palmer, David Palmer, Peter Pauker, Vic Prow, Paul Ryan, Richard Roth, Andrew Simpson and Mike Wildman. Accompanying this study was a conference held in April 1999 in Banff, Canada. We would like to acknowledge the financial and marketing support provided by the Alberta Value Added Corporation and in particular Dan Fullerton, as well as the invaluable administrative assistance provided by Iris Meck and Pauline Molder in organizing the conference. And, of course, we would like to acknowledge the significant contributions of all conference par- ticipants. We would also like to acknowledge the administrative assistance provided by the University of Saskatchewan – both the Department of Agricultural Economics and the College of Commerce – as well the School of Agriculture, Charles Sturt University during this research. Special mention also must go to Tim Hardwick and CABI Publishing for generously accommodating our need for ‘just a little more time’ to ensure this study is as up to date as it could be. We wish to dedicate this book to our wives, Barbara Chambers and Shannon Isaac. Their support, encouragement and patience during the writ- ing of this book has been invaluable. vii Food Safety 00 prels 4/7/01 3:54 PM Page viii List of Abbreviations AAFC Agriculture and AgriFood Canada ABM Assured British Meat AFFA Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry – Australia AIRS Automated