Industry Quiet Power: Shaping WHO/FAO Food Additives and Contaminants Expert Committees' Work in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s

• In Event: Risk Government: Putting Industries Back in the Analysis of Science-based Regulatory Tools - I

Abstract

The paper argues that understanding the ability of industries to influence science-based regulatory work requires to develop long term perspectives in order to be able to analyze how industries contribute to shape this work in the long run. The paper focuses on the WHO/FAO Expert committees on food additives and contaminants from their creation in the mid- 1950s until the mid-1970s. It analyzes how food and chemical industries built and exerted a quiet power by developping a diffuse but effective presence within these committee. This presence shaped the ideology behind the expertise, the so-called "machinery" of expertise (the protocols used to set up agenda, recruit experts, produce reports), the positions of external experts and WHO/FAO so-called "scientists" and "technologists", the characteristics of the tools developped as well the standards produced. The paper also shows that this presence generated tensions within the expert committees and between committees. It discusses how these tensions may have influenced the production of some of the tools and standards. The paper finally insist on the fact even though these expert committes became references, they did not have any decision power and their production did not enter regulation as such. Their production was a basis which could undergo many transformations - in which industries could also intervene - before integrating regulation -whether soft/private (Codex alimentarius) or "hard"/public (European Economic Commuty’ or national regulations for instance).

Author

• Nathalie Jas, French National Institute for Agronomical Research (INRA)