Risk Communication and Food Safety Policies: Conflicting Claims About Bisphenol A

In this paper, we will analyze a case about food governance, in the lens of the “risk governance model” as it was theorized by Renn (Dreyer and Renn, 2009). This model completes the “transparent model” (Millstone, 2004) by adding a new emphasis on risk assessment and risk communication between the actors. Within this model, communication becomes the central element at every stage of the risk analysis process. This process provides a mutual and iterative learning between actors, marking the difference between simple information, unilateral in nature and communication, which allows enrichment loops, opening the possibility for stakeholders to create a common repository shared by all actors in the process. Communication is a central concept in the evaluation of public policies (Muller, 2005), which considers policy as the result of interactions between many players facing their worldviews and their approaches to action, to define modes of action and the representation of reality that will guide the choices and actions to solve common known problems. Muller (2005) calls this social construction “global policy referential”. The referential results from a joint construction of public policy tools, which are likely to gain support from each actor. This referential, once applied to the risk governance, lays the foundation for a security referential (Brunet, 2007) resulting in the structuration of the individual and social perception of risk. As an illustration, we will focus on the conflicting claims between the EFSA and the EC through the case of bisphenol A, one of the “hot topics” for the European Agency for Food Safety (EFSA) in 2010 which eventually led – after a struggle involving various stakeholders and public opinion – to the adoption of the Directive 2011/8/EU by the European Commission (EC), restricting the use of bisphenol A in plastic baby bottles, against the findings of the EFSA.