Fit for the future: how does the F2F strategy deal with emergent food risks?

In its F2F strategy the European Commission acknowledges that ensuring food safety encompasses more than a focus on the chain of food production, food distribution, and food consumption. The commission argues that given ‘the complexity and number of actors involved in the food value chain, crises affect it in different ways’. The Commission further argues that it ‘will step up its coordination of a common European response to crises affecting food systems’. In 2019 the Dutch Safety Board (DSB) investigated the Dutch food safety system focusing on whether and to what extent this system is fit to deal with emerging food safety risks. Instead of looking at the crises response in case of outbreaks and other food safety issues the DSB report addresses how food safety systems can better prevent crises and act before a food outbreak or other food risks become a crisis. If food safety systems are well equipped to deal with emerging food risks there will be less need for crisis response. The investigation yielded some valuable lessons for the Dutch system. It also introduced an analytical framework to test the robustness of whether and to what extent food safety systems in general can deal with emerging food risks. In our paper we will outline this framework and use it to assess whether the European food safety system and the F2F strategy are fit for emerging food safety risks. The better any food safety system deals with emerging food risks the less there is a need for large scale crisis response. Our investigation also showed the importance of government and food companies (the food safety system) looking ahead and acting on uncertainty at an early stage. This competence is also crucial in tackling the broader challenges facing the food system, as addressed in the F2F strategy. Our paper starts with the analytical framework the DSB developed for emerging food risks. This framework both includes the different types of emerging food safety risks and the necessary legal and institutional provisions to deal with these risks. The framework also includes mechanisms in food safety systems that withhold these systems from effectively dealing with emerging food risks. After elaborating the framework we will describe and analyze the F2F strategy in connection with the current European food safety system. This analysis will then be used to draw some lessons for the European Commission and the European regulatory framework for food safety.