Food safety issues: From Enlightened Elitism towards Deliberative Democracy? An overview of EFSA's “Public Consultation” instrument

Following the BSE crisis, the importance of reassuring European consumers and involving them in debate about food safety management issues is generally recognised. Indeed, consulting stakeholders is one of the European Food Safety Authority's (EFSA) main duties, as stated in its founding regulation (art. 42, whereas 56), where EFSA must have “effective contacts with consumer representatives, producer representatives, processors and any other interested parties”. Even if not clearly obliged to, EFSA has also opted to consider lay citizens' opinion (under an interpretation of art. 42, wh. 40 of the 178 Reg.) in order to enhance “trust” in food safety. Beyond having formally established meetings with restricted access for participants - like the Stakeholders' Consultative Platform and the Annual Colloquium, - EFSA engages in its “Public Consultation” web-based Window (PCW). It allows listening to anybody who wishes to submit comments on technical issues.An intriguing question is whether this constitutes a step towards “direct democracy” on food safety issues; under which assumptions EFSA adopted this tool; and under which (internal and external) pressures it updated its functioning in 2008.Using evaluation criteria from the academic literature, we assess the qualities of this mechanism. We conclude that the mechanism does have some merits, even though - as stated by Douglas (1982) “… creating practical participatory mechanisms for the public is increasingly difficult in a decision-making environment heavily dominated by technical expertise”.

► The paper provide an assessment of EFSA's Public Consultation tool against a set of indicators. ► Public Consultation is checked before and after internal EFSA's new policy on PC (2008). ► The results show a trend towards a progressive inclusion and transparency of EFSA in this respect. ► However, grey areas still remain which require further investigation.