From punishment to prevention: A French case study of the introduction of co-regulation in enforcing food safety

Elodie Rouvière (1) , Julie A. Caswell (2)

1 UMR G-EAU - Gestion de l'Eau, Acteurs, Usages
2 Dept of Resource Economics

In the last decade, the concept of co-regulation has been developed and increasingly promoted as an important instrument of regulation. In the context of food safety, we examine co-regulation programs from the point of view of an enforcement agency. We develop a conceptual framework of enforcement of food safety regulation for use in assessing the degree of shift toward co-regulation from traditional approaches and apply it to a case study of the French import market for produce at Perpignan. We find that co-regulation in the enforcement of pesticide residue limits resulted in a change of practices for the regulatory agency from punishment to prevention based on incentives and information programs.

Keywords: Food Safety; Co-regulation; Enforcement; Import Safety

Domains: Humanities and Social Sciences; Economics and Finance; Humanities and Social Sciences; Law

Elodie Rouvière, Julie A. Caswell. From punishment to prevention: A French case study of the introduction of co-regulation in enforcing food safety. Food Policy, 2012, 37 (3), pp.246-254. ⟨10.1016/j.foodpol.2012.02.009⟩. ⟨hal-01323176⟩