Food Safety, Market Power and Private Standards. An Analysis of the Emerging Strategies of Food Operators

The European Union has developed a regulatory framework on food safety with the European Regulation 178/2002. Simultaneously growing consumers’ exigencies on food safety can be perceived. The European Regulation 178/2002 sets rules and procedures in the matter of food safety that, in many aspects, are novelties. The operators’ responsibilities and the mandatory traceability set by this regulation and put into practice since January 2005 are good examples of these regulatory innovations. These dispositions have important implications on the practices developed to ascertain food safety. The ‘traditional’ procedures indeed have been judged insufficient in front of the new regulatory exigencies.