ABSTRACT
The governance of food in Britain and Europe has been in a state of fl ux in recent years (see Chapter 4). In Britain, for over a decade, from the mid 1980s to the late 1990s, the then Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) found itself mired in a series of food controversies. Eventually, partly overwhelmed by its inability to reassure consumers or the food industry on the safety of food in Britain the Ministry was replaced by the Food Standards Agency (FSA). Meanwhile, British food controversies exposed weaknesses in the management of food at the European level and stimulated a similar bout of institutional reform, culminating in DGXXIV and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).
