Food Safety Meta-Controls in the Netherlands

Both public and private actors are involved in the monitoring and enforcement of compliance with public food safety norms. Public authorities in countries such as the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Canada have recently started to develop forms of coordination and collaboration with private food safety control systems. Such policies bring with them the risk of regulatory capture, loss of transparency and fuzzy accountability relationships. Here we analyse how the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (de Nederlandse Voedselen Warenautoriteit – NVWA) assesses and monitors the functioning of private food safety control systems (meta-control) so it can use these private systems in its own enforcement activities. We do so by discussing two national private systems that have been formally accepted by the NVWA: Bureau de Wit and RiskPlaza. The paper examines the safeguards that the public enforcement agency deploys while coordinating its own activities with private food safety controls, the advantages and risks involved in this strategy, and the extent to which this policy can be improved. The study is based on the analysis of policy documents, public and private regulation and open-ended interviews with representatives of the public and private sector in the Netherlands.