POLITICS VERSUS SCIENCE: APPORTIONING ... - Buffalo State

their products.” A European Food and Public Health Authority would provide the
accountability the current system lacked, where “national ministers, the Commission and
European Parliament all seem to be involved, but where responsibility for specific issues
or crisis management is hard to discern.”
In sum, they proposed the regulatory option (Table 1, Column 4). Indeed, early
in the debate and at the height of the BSE crisis and companion EP hearings, calls for a
regulatory authority along the lines of that envisaged in Figure 3 generated support
among many corporations and trade associations and most consumer interests (Lanze,
L.Buonanno, Zablotney, and Keefer 2001) and the EP (Buonanno and Nugent 2002).
Parliament had seemingly wished for an independent regulatory agency (European
Parliament, 1997: 14): “A coordinated policy would have been possible were there a
body similar to the Food and Drug Administration in the US or the health administrations
in some Member States, or even had a European Health Agency been created.”
Three months after the publication of the James, Kemper, and Pascal report, the
Commission (2000c) published its White Paper on Food Safety, calling for the
establishment of an independent agency, the European Food Authority, with the
following areas of competence:
• Risk assessment
• Risk communication (including a Rapid Alert System)
• Developing a coherent and transparent set of food safety rules
The White Paper adamantly rejected the transfer of risk management (15) from the
Commission (the Food and Veterinary Office), citing the following reasons:
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