Abstract

One of the great American misconceptions is that U.S. government agencies have the authority to guarantee food safety and to enforce accountability standards upon food producers, processors, and distributors. However, this is not the case. The U.S. food safety regulatory regime has remained stagnant for more than a century, embedded in the notions of adulteration that framed the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the 1906 Federal Meat Inspection Act and that predate modern understandings of food chemistry, microbiology, and sanitation. As a consequence, the U.S. food safety regulatory regime is statutorily obligated to guarantee food purity and wholesomeness and, in that context, the safety of food additives, but lacks the necessary legislative mandate to regulate physical, chemical, and microbiological food safety. Efforts by regulatory institutions to address food safety challenges beyond the scope of food purity test the boundaries of their statutory mandates, often rendering the regulatory regime inefficient, ineffective, and reactive to food safety threats, crises, or risks. This paper examines the history of U.S. food safety regulation from the perspectives of international political economy, accountability frameworks, and regulatory governance. It includes an analysis of the impact and influence of food producing, processing, and distributing firms upon the policy process, examining when, why, and how large agri-food corporations support or oppose changes to the food safety regulatory regime and accountability framework, and centers upon a history of food safety crises as a catalyst for political change. It concludes with an analysis of the Food Safety Modernization Act, the first transformative food safety legislation to gain traction in the U.S. Congress in more than a century, and its journey through the policy process.