Global Governance of Food and Agriculture Industries
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omestible food commodities and delicacies imported from overseas bring exotic flavours and nutriments for consumers worldwide, enhancing the enjoyment of food consumption and, consequently, driving an increasingly globalised economy. Food is necessary not only for human survival; it provides an emotional appeal in almost every human culture and lubricates the enjoyable social aspects of everyday living. Food (domestic as well as imported) can also be a source of danger, harbouring pathogens, toxins, allergens, or aesthetically unappetising contaminants such as insect parts or rodent faecal pellets. Finally, food in global trade also serves as a useful pawn in the international trading games where one nation seeks an advantage over the other in various forms of domestic industry protectionism – ‘You should buy my excess food, but I don’t want any of your (inferior/hazardous/ unpalatable) comestibles’. Food is, then, far more than simply a fuel to feed the human animal, and far more than merely another pedestrian commodity in international trade. These varied aspects of what might be a simple exchange of edible goods between global trading partners transform the exercise into complex negotiations juggling food safety, international trade advantages, often perishable commodities, market opportunities and consumer demand (or otherwise), compounded by the covert agenda of protectionism all too often hiding under the © 2007 PALGRAVE MACMILLAN LTD 1462-8732 $30.00
spurious cloak of food safety or environmental sustainability. Not surprising, then, that regulation of food in international trade is a complex maze of often conflicting, sometimes even incompatible, governing policies and procedures. Attempting to understand global governance of food and agriculture industries is not for the fainthearted. A handbook to help chart those rapidly changing seas would be a welcome addition to the library of interested parties everywhere. Reba Carruth endeavours to navigate these waters with a collection of chapters arranged into four topic groupings: Global governance and regulation of food safety; Transatlantic food safety regulation and the governance of global agri-food industries; Regional and global regulatory harmonization and governance of food safety and Related competition in global food and agriculture industries. For any but the most die-hardened economic and trade policy wonk, these section titles alone are a sure cure for insomnia; don’t expect to see this book on Oprah. While the chapters are strong on descriptive economic and regulatory policy information, they are (generally) weak on critical policy analysis and the science. Few chapter authors have a scientific training, and it shows. I cringed, for example, reading on page 83 that Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE, ‘mad cow’ disease) was caused by ‘pirons’. Was this simply a typo compounded by sloppy proofreading? Nope,
J O U RNA L O F C O M M E RC I A L B I OTE C H NO L O G Y. VOL 13. NO 4. 311–312 AUGUST 2007
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