Is it just about trust ? The partial reform of French food safety regulation

Food safety has been a state prerogative in France inthe beginning of the twentieth century. Yet it became amajor political issue only recently, gaining top priorityon the political agenda in the wake of the BSE crisis of1996. Two reasons account for this. First, the BSE crisisrevealed important dysfuntions in both beef industrypractices and their supervision by the state, echoingsimilar dysfuntions in the UK and later Germany, andundermining public trust toward food products.Second, the blood transfusion scandal of the mid-1980s, with its political and administrativerepercussions, promoted health safety as a priority onthe political agenda along with issues of politicalaccountability. To most observers, BSE seemed toreproduce the same mecanisms as the bloodtransfusion scandal, albeit in a different sector, buttypical of a snow-balling of crises (see chapter 1, thisvolume). Food safety became a sub-category of themore general theme of health safety. [first paragraph