The European Union and the Regulation of Food Traceability: From Risk Management to Informed Choice?

In this chapter, we review the EU’s approaches to the regulation of food traceability, which embrace a range of priorities covering risk management, provenance of food by its place and nature of production, and the enabling of consumer choice. In particular, the focus is on the reforms to food safety regulation and food law since 1997, and the way traceability has emerged as a risk management tool from this reform period. The reforms to food safety regulation are placed in the wider context of the EU’s review of its own governance arrangements and procedures. The role of traceability as a risk management tool for food safety and public health recall is critically assessed. Two main consequences are elaborated as a result of this appraisal. Firstly, it is argued that the nature of EU governance has not changed to any notable extent in the case of the food safety regulatory reforms. Indeed, despite the reforms to food safety governance, the essentially technocratic approach to governance by the EU and the European Commission remains in place with regard to food. Within the food safety regulatory reforms, the introduction and definition of traceability as a general principle of EU food law (Regulation 178/2002) is essentially a precautionary and procedural instrument for food safety and risk management that is based on a model of liberal governance whose main purpose is the regulation and unification of the European market. Secondly, it is argued that food traceability in a European context needs to be considered in a different way. That is, traceability should also be employed as a means to facilitate and promote informed food choice. Informed food choice allows consumers to take a more active role, and a more central place, in determining the nature and type of information provided by traceability about our food. In this way trust may be re-embedded in the European food system in a more substantial fashion.