Co-regulating Food Safety Through Public Private Partnerships: a Road to Success?

Abstract: Increases in the incidence of food-borne illness together with the steadily occurrence of high-profile outbreaks linked to food in a number of countries have created both political and economic demands for more effective food safety controls. Over the last decade, co-regulation has been progressively used as an instrument to implement and monitor food safety regulations and traceability system in many countries. Although increasingly used, our knowledge on the drivers, success and drawbacks of co-regulation in a food safety context is still limited, especially co-regulation programs involving both private and public agents, which take the form of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs). In this article, we examine the nature and governance of these emerging PPPs for food safety. We develop a typology of PPPs in food safety using insights from the co-regulation and the PPPs’ literatures. We provide a new framework where public-private partnerships (PPP) represent another model of co-regulation for food safety where the current literature most often considers two models of co-regulation, creating an analytical dichotomy that may not be suitable to study such hybrid arrangements. Relying on these two strands of literature, we identify related benefits, drawbacks and conditions of success of PPPs considering food safety specificities. We complement our current knowledge with two case studies of hybrid PPPs: the industry-wide cattle traceability system in Québec (Canada) and the co-regulated food safety enforcement regime in the French import industry of fresh produce.