ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Before commencing with this thesis, I would like to thank everyone for their contributions to the research.
First and foremost, I would like to thank professor Zeitlin for the guidance and the sharing of his extensive knowledge during the duration of the seminar and during both the initial brainstorm and the following establishment of my thesis. I would also like to thank professor Heemskerk for taking the time to be the second reader and helping with the evaluation of this research. Third, this thesis would have been
impossible without the information provided by the interview respondents, so I would also like to sincerely thank them for their time and their valuable contributions. Finally, I would also like to thank my seminar classmates, friends, and family for the support.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 2
CHAPTER 1. TOPIC INTRODUCTION 6
1.1 DUTCH FOOD SAFETY & THE NVWA 6
1.2 RESEARCH QUESTIONS 8 1.3 RELEVANCE OF THIS RESEARCH 9 CHAPTER 2. THEORETICAL APPROACHES 10 2.1 GOVERNANCE 10 2.1.1 HIERARCHICAL GOVERNANCE 11 2.1.2 EXPERIMENTALIST GOVERNANCE 12 2.1.3 DESTABILIZATION REGIMES AND HIERARCHICAL FEATURES 14 2.2 SUPERVISION 15 2.2.1 RISK-BASED SUPERVISION 16 2.2.2 SYSTEM-BASED REGULATION 16 2.3 EMPIRICAL GAP 18 CHAPTER 3. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS 19 3.1 CASE SELECTION 19 3.2 METHODS 20 3.3 DATA SELECTION 21 3.3.1 DOCUMENTARY RESEARCH 21 3.3.2 INTERVIEWS 22 3.3.3 WEBSITES 24 CHAPTER 4. RELEVANT ACTORS AND SYSTEMS 25 4.1 THE PUBLIC SECTOR 25 4.1.1 THE NVWA 25 4.1.2 GOVERNMENT MINISTRIES 26 4.2 THE EU LEVEL 27 4.2.1 LEGISLATIVE FRAMEWORK 27
4.2.2 DIRECTORATE F 29 4.2.3 EFSA 29 4.2.4 HACCP PLANS 30 4.2.5 RASFF 31 4.3 THE PRIVATE SECTOR 31 4.3.1 THE MEAT SECTOR 31 4.3.2 PRIVATE SUPERVISION 32 4.4 CIVIL SOCIETY 33 CHAPTER 5. NEW PROBLEMS FOR THE DUTCH FOOD SECTOR 34 5.1. THE HISTORY: FROM REGULATOR TO DELEGATOR 34 5.1.1 NEW ROLES IN SOCIETY 34 5.1.2 LESS GOVERNMENT, MORE EFFICIENT SUPERVISION 35
5.1.3 THE NVWA AS A PUBLIC HYBRID 37
5.2 PRIVATE RESPONSIBILITY & FRAUD 39
5.2.1 LACK OF INTERCONNECTEDNESS IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR 40
5.2.2 CONFLICT OF INTEREST FOR PRIVATE SUPERVISION 41
5.3 KNOWLEDGE OF THE SYSTEM 42
5.3.1 LACK OF LOCAL KNOWLEDGE 42
5.3.2 IMPEDED KNOWLEDGE AT THE NVWA LEVEL 43
5.4 INVISIBLE RISKS 43 5.4.1 THE SAMPLING OF RISK 44 5.4.2 THE MEASUREMENT OF RISK 45 5.5 THE INSPECTOR’S TRADE 46 5.5.1 INSPECTION AS A REFOCUSED PRACTICE 47 5.5.2 A DUAL PRACTICE 48 5.6 IMPLICATIONS FOR EXPERIMENTALIST GOVERNANCE 49
5.6.1 JOINTLY ESTABLISHED FRAMEWORK GOALS & METRICS 50
5.6.2 LOCAL DISCRETION FOR POLICY IMPLEMENTATION 52
5.6.3 PEER REVIEW 55
5.6.4 PERIODIC REVISION OF FRAMEWORK GOALS 57
CHAPTER 6. INTERACTIONS WITH THE EUROPEAN UNION 61 6.1 TOWARDS AN EXPERIMENTALIST ARCHITECTURE 61 6.1.1 1960S-1980S: CREATION OF A EUROPEAN FOOD SAFETY AGENDA 61 6.1.2 1990S: TROUBLE IN PARADISE 62 6.1.3 2000S REFORMS: FORMATION OF THE EXPERIMENTALIST FRAMEWORK 64 6.2 RISK ASSESSMENT 64 6.2.1 LOCAL DISCRETION FOR POLICY IMPLEMENTATION 64
6.2.2 MONITORING & PEER REVIEW 67
6.2.3 RECURSIVE LEARNING 68
6.2.4 HIERARCHICAL GOVERNANCE & DESTABILIZING REGIMES 69
6.3 RISK MANAGEMENT 70
6.3.1 LOCAL DISCRETION FOR POLICY IMPLEMENTATION 70
6.3.2 MONITORING AND PEER REVIEW 71
6.3.3 REVISION OF FRAMEWORK GOALS 76
6.3.4 HIERARCHICAL GOVERNANCE & DESTABILIZING REGIMES 76
CHAPTER 7. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS 78 7.1 CONCLUSIONS 78 7.2 FUTURE DIRECTIONS 79 REFERENCES 82 LITERATURE 82 INTERVIEW RESPONDENTS 92 Disclaimer:
The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the interviewees.
CHAPTER 1.
Topic introduction
1.1 Dutch food safety & the NVWA
In the Netherlands, supervision by the Nederlandse Voedsel- en Warenauthoriteit (NVWA) has come under increased fire during the last decade. Some have questioned its capacity to successfully act as the central ‘sturdy regulator‘ of the Dutch food safety policy sector. The problem is said to have been notably caused by the so-called
‘regulatory paradox’: “the tendency for policy makers and the general public to focus on reducing the costs and burdens of regulation when things are going smoothly in a particular field, but to shift abruptly towards a stricter and more interventionist approach as soon as a major incident of regulatory failure occurs that spurs public outcry” (Zeitlin 2013, 10). Particular events have exemplified these stern and sometimes harsh forms of citizens’ discontent. Regulatory inconsistencies and managerial errors have caused serious events of public rupture in controversies surrounding, for
example, fraud with horsemeat supplements (Havinga and Verbruggen 2014, 32), salmonella in salmon transport (ibid.), and the outbreak of anthrax in foreign bovine meat (De Klerk and Wijkhuijs 2015). These and other factors have caused decreased levels of trust within Dutch society and have raised questions on whether the NVWA has the capacity to successfully regulate the food safety sector1.
To battle these allegations, the NVWA has seen a decade of far-reaching organizational reforms, resulting in a decision by the Dutch government in 2013 to initiate an ‘improvement plan’ to get better results in supervision in the food safety sector (Ministerie van Economische Zaken and Ministerie van Volksgezondheid Welzijn en Sport 2013). Lower budgets and smaller staff have caused the NVWA to look further than their original top-down approach as a governmental regulatory agency, resulting in several experiments that try to include both civil society and the
1
Van Nierop, Leonie. 2015. “Te veel in eigen vlees gesneden”. NRC.nl, 5 December.
http://www.nrc.nl/handelsblad/2015/12/05/irritatie-over-een-gehavende-organisatie-1540245 (accessed 22 August 2016).
private sector into the regulatory framework. Private companies are given discretion to lighten the NVWA’s load on supervision checks in the food safety sector. These newer forms of ‘meta-governance’ are still very much in its infancy, however (Havinga and Verbruggen 2014, 30). It is unclear what plans the NVWA has to expand this cooperation in the future.
Dutch regulation on food safety is heavily influenced by supranational
regulations coming from the EU. Here, the comparison is striking in the sense that EU policy on food safety has also seen its share of controversies as results from
mismanagement (Bernauer and Caduff 2006, 81–82). Meanwhile, standards set by the EU are regularly seen as intrusive and unproductive, causing ‘administrative red tape’ (Aelen and Wingerde 2014, 3). For the EU food safety sector, the prospects of
‘experimentalist governance’ have showed itself to be productive for the enhancement of public trust in EU food safety agencies. It helps them to connect the entire food process ‘from farm to fork’ and encourage recursive and iterative deliberation between all interested parties, including the food safety authorities of Member States. This new form of multi-level networked governance has helped the EU food safety sector to become “’a sophisticated politics of hazard’, involving ‘meaningful systems of multiple accountability and mutual veto, and a highly reflexive market place of ideas’” (Sabel and Zeitlin 2008, 293).
Meanwhile, the NVWA’s experiments with new forms of regulatory governance have not gone in the exact same direction. Increased budget cuts have pressured the NVWA to redirect their focus on ‘effective intervention’ to establish “more with less” (Havinga and Van Waarden 2013, 82). This has caused an emphasis on differentiating between high- and low-risk sectors (risk-based regulation) (p. 84), while increasing value gets attributed to the results of private risk regulators (Havinga and Verbruggen 2014, 8). These factors contribute to a focus of the NVWA on fixed rules and regulation instead of long-term advice of trust and efficiency building (ibid.). This raises
questions on “how reliably regulators can distinguish ex ante between high and low risks in an interdependent, volatile, and uncertain world” (Zeitlin 2013, 12).
1.2 Research questions
Regulation shifts have had a significant impact on the Dutch food safety sector. These problems are likely influenced by emphases on risk- and system-based governance. The processes that these new emphases cause, could be analyzed by using
‘experimentalist governance’: a new, networked form of governance which focusses on local autonomy, diagnostic monitoring, learning and periodic revision of goals.
Furthermore, the Dutch issues are very likely influenced by the EU’s structure that relies on this networked form of experimentalist governance. These differences often result in interactions between the EU and the NVWA regarding the (private)
regulation of the food sector (Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid 2013a, 171). This is not to say that EU regulation in the sector has perfectly adapted to
experimentalist governance standards – this is not the analysis of this research – but there are some differences here where both parties could learn from. This thesis
intends to explore the problems that are caused within the Dutch food safety sector by the NVWA’s regulatory approach and how this approach interacts with the EU
regulations, first by looking at the Dutch problems in the sector and thereafter looking at EU interactions. Experimentalist governance will serve as a procedural form of networked governance for these analyses. The thesis will be concluded with a short set of future implications.
This suggests the following main research question for this thesis:
• What are the problems posed by the renewed regulatory focus of the NVWA in the Dutch food safety sector and how do these interact with EU regulations?
A range of sub-questions will be analyzed to answer this question:
• What is the regulatory approach of the Dutch food safety authority? • What kinds of problems has this approach led to in that sector?
• How has the EU’s food safety sector progressed towards an experimentalist architecture?
• What are the differences between the Dutch and the EU’s regulatory approaches in the food safety sector and how do they interact?
• What are the future implications for the NVWA and the EU’s food safety regulations towards Dutch food safety issues?
1.3 Relevance of this research
This research will have both academic and social relevance. First of all, it will supply an empirical evaluation of different regulatory approaches in the food safety sector and of experimentalist governance regarding supervision of a specific governmental agency in the food safety sector, in this case the NVWA. This way, the usefulness of specific regulatory approaches combined with experimentalist governance as a theoretical concept of networked governance can be evaluated within a context of supervision tasks. Second, it can create a basis for the NVWA and the Dutch
government on how to improve the success of its supervision for, in this case, in the food safety sector, but perhaps later also in other contexts. The data collected could later be relevant as a source of information for policy analysis, which could improve the effectiveness of the NVWA as a regulatory agency, EU regulation, or the
CHAPTER 2.
Theoretical approaches
To analyze the research questions discussed in this thesis, a range of theoretical
backgrounds are necessary with the aim of explaining and predicting certain situations within the case. This research will look at the adaptation of experimental governance in the field of food safety supervision. Therefore, first of all, analysis of ‘governance’ as a means to approach policy has to be explained as theoretical basis, after which the specifications of ‘experimental governance’ can be scrutinized. Since traditional governance varies from the experimentalist approach on means of applying
enforcement of network cooperation, these differences will also be explained. In the second part, modern application of supervision will be compared to the conventional method, also linking this historical progression to the new approaches of governance. In short, these are the fields of theoretical subjects that have been used in this
research:
(1) Governance
i. Traditional, Weberian government ii. Experimentalist governance
- Destabilization regimes and hierarchical features (2) Supervision
i. The conventional method ii. Risk-based supervision iii. System-based supervision
- Meta-governance
2.1 Governance
‘Governance’ as a term in political science has many conflicting definitions. In the past, the term was used almost synonymously to ‘government’, using the word simply as a summary of everything related to governmental opinions, institutional apparatus, laws, and other governmental practices. Since the 1970s, however, the term has seen a definitional shift caused by dissatisfaction with conventionally demarcated approaches
in the social sciences which did not take heed of “new problems” within modern society (Jessop 1995, 3). Bevir remarks that these conventional approaches defined the state too much as a static and motionless institute: “The concept of governance evokes a more pluralistic pattern of rule than does government: governance is less focused on state institutions, and more focused on the processes and interactions that tie the state to civil society” (Bevir 2010, 1). Therefore, approaches within new or democratic governance have focused more on new forms of policy production that also look at this interaction of the public sector with other levels of society and their involvement with policy debates and implementation (ibid., 17-18). In his well-known article, Rhodes speaks about the governance outside of government, or ‘new governance’, as “self-organizing inter-organizational [policy] networks” (Rhodes 1996, 666). To exemplify this paradigm shift within governance to use in this research, one such mode of new governance, ‘experimentalist governance’, will be contrasted with the conventional, more hierarchical mode of traditional governance.
2.1.1 Hierarchical governance
The conventional, hierarchical forms of governmental rule is sometimes referred to as ‘the Weberian perspective’, where political accountability is ensued by a strict divide between political leadership, party, and bureaucracy (Held 2006, 136). It derives from the original concept of hierarchical government, where “[t]he classic national
government model assumes that demands from citizens, voters, consumers and taxpayers are transferred and aggregated by the political system and then generate a policy response, the implementation of which is the task of the public administration“ (Bartolini 2011, 7). This traditional style is defined by a unidimensional, top-down ‘command-and-control’ kind of approach which emphasizes the use of public experts to “control access, information, and knowledge in their defined area of responsibility” (Stoker 2006, 45). This, in turn, was meant to increase the organizational effectiveness and efficiency of government itself.
2.1.2 Experimentalist governance
Recently, much attention has been given to a new, non-hierarchical, polyarchic, and iterative form of policy deliberation, called ‘experimentalist governance’.
Experimentalist governance is a relatively new concept, directly contradicting
traditional forms of hierarchical governance in the manner of how new governance is explained above. While experimentalist governance is a new concept that is yet to be evaluated in a more varied set of areas, most articles covering the theory confine themselves to the four defining characteristics described by Sabel and Zeitlin (2012, 1):
- Common set of policy goals - Discretion for local actors
- Regular performance reporting and monitoring - Periodic goal revision
Common set of policy goals
First, provisional goals are set by all relevant actors in a given policy sector, both central and local, establishing agreed measurement tactics to create a framework that provides continuity for the project (Sabel and Zeitlin 2012, 1). These goals need to be clear but also flexible for application in a variety of local implementation areas. In the case of this research, valid framework topics could for example look at ‘safe food’ or ‘effective supervision’.
Discretion for local actors
Second, local actors are given a lot of autonomy to implement these goals to their own discretion (ibid.). This is also the reason why the goals have to be flexible. This way, the goals can be adjusted to the task at hand. This gives experimentalist governance its multi-level distinction, since “it connects national administrations with each other and the EU without establishing a hierarchy between them” (Sabel and Zeitlin 2008, 273). Within the food safety subject, the NVWA or the EU could be regarded as ‘central’ actors, while the inspectors, private inspection, and private organizations could be seen as ‘local’.
Regular performance reporting
As compensation for their local autonomy, local actors are expected to give regular reports on their functioning in the field towards their superiors. The central actors monitor these results for compliance towards the common set of policy goals, complemented by the use of audits in the field. These local reports can be evaluated through comparison between them by use of peer reviews, whereafter the local
implementation goals that are based on the experimentalist framework can be revised and updated (ibid., 274).
Periodic goal revision
Sabel and Zeitlin (2011, 1) describe experimentalist governance as “a recursive process of provisional goal-setting and revision based on learning from the comparison of alternative approaches to advancing them in different contexts”. The revision of plans is an important step in experimentalist governance setups, since plan revision can make sure that every actor involved has the possibility to iteratively improve the achievement of their own goals by each recursive revision and as such achieve successful collaboration (Bos et al. 2002, 13–14). This revisionary setup increases the reflective role of experimentalist governance to increase the quality of policy output and gives supervision agencies the opportunity to revise rules and practices in accordance with implementation experiences of good practices based on local, peer-reviewed practices (Zeitlin 2013, 13).
The adoption of this experimentalist framework has been exemplified in various areas. Many of these are applied from within the EU, in for example the food safety sector, public health, border security, and others. Although successful adoption in the Netherlands has yet to be done, studies have been performed to speculate on the expected success of experimentalist governance in the healthcare policy sector (Stoopendaal et al. 2014), the food safety sector (Zeitlin 2013), and the meat industry (Kind 2014). Furthermore, experimentalist governance has also been analyzed in other countries’ policy sectors, also in food safety sectors, for example in the USA (Wengle 2015).
2.1.3 Destabilization regimes and hierarchical features
Destabilization regimes
In some situations, experimentalist rulemaking can result in impasses that are caused by unsuccessful attempts of cooperation. ‘Destabilization regimes’, as Sabel and Zeitlin call them, function as solution mechanisms in these situations, and “do as much to wean actors from previously unquestioned commitments by suggesting plausible and superior alternatives as by in effect terrorizing them into undertaking a search for novel solutions” (2010, 13). They are not necessarily punitive by nature, but are meant to move actors in a certain direction towards cooperation instead of stalemate (ibid.). Sabel and Zeitlin (2010) differentiate between three mechanisms:
1. Local actors can set up a joint document that explains their disagreements to the central actor(s), as means for “requirement to provide public
justification for disagreements” (Sabel and Zeitlin 2012, 6). The idea here is that actors will try to avoid this situation, since continuing deliberation amongst themselves is a more productive outcome than reverting to authority at a central level;
2. Central actors have ‘the right to challenge and the duty to explain’, where they can revert local supervision authority to the central agency and take responsibility themselves, so long as they have approval of all the other actors involved in the experimentalist framework (ibid.);
3. The ‘penalty default’ is a form of persuasion where desertion of network cooperation would be made highly unattractive by, for example, threatening with costly consequential measures by the other network partners, central intervention in plan-making, or anything else that would be deemed
unattractive, simply to make network actors choose for the ‘lesser evil’ that is continued deliberation (Sabel and Zeitlin 2008, 306).
Hierarchical features
In the same way, experimentalist governance can also interact with more hierarchical features to underpin cooperation. Local actors can act under the ‘shadow of hierarchy’, “whereby delegated, private or public–private deliberation or bargaining takes place in the shadow of unilateral public regulation” (Eberlein 2010, 75). The idea here is that
should cooperation between a set of locally appointed implementers of policy fail, then the higher authority still has the capability to impose regulatory measures or revert authority to ensure compliance towards specific goals (Héritier and Lehmkuhl 2008, 7). It is not the actual implementation of this form of power, however, but the speculative possibility of authority recentralization that gives the shadow of hierarchy its power towards compliance; other actors will lose their own discretion if they don’t find a way of solving a specific issue themselves (Eberlein 2010, 75–76). This will encourage them to work together and deliberate, since the hierarchical solution will throw them back towards the older, less efficient style of hierarchical policy and regulation (ibid.).
Second, the central actor also has the option to use image and reputation as a form of hierarchical enforcement method. ‘Naming and shaming’ is a strategy where poor cooperation performers are listed and publicly disapproved of to get these outliers back in line with framework goals (Sabel and Zeitlin 2008, 275). Here, potential damage to the reputation of one specific actor or of the entire group also helps to get the network to cooperate and ensure compliance.
2.2 Supervision
In the same trend that governance has long been seen as congruent with government, so has supervision been seen as an effect of governmental regulation. Therefore, supervision is no longer defined from an institutional perspective, but in a more procedural manner. Looking at the definition given by the Dutch Nationale
Rekenkamer, supervision is “the collection of information relevant to the question of whether or not a certain act or circumstance complies to a certain set of predefined requirements, to judge whether or not intervention is necessary” (Ambtelijke Commissie Toezicht 2000, 20). By use of this definition in the Dutch governmental context, more actors than the government alone could lawfully be delegated to enact supervision in a sector (Biezeveld and Stoové 2011, 17).
In the past, supervisors, who at that time were usually appointed to one specific sector, were able to do this job as governmental subordinates without much ado (Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid 2013b, 69). Discussion about
implementation of supervision mainly focused on democratic debates and how ministerial responsibility should function in certain governmental independent bodies; a typical debate within hierarchically focused governance (Van Montfort 2010, 1). Risk analysis of food safety was based on an equal amounts of audits per private actor, but was also based on the personal intuition of the supervisor who often had a personal connection with his sector (Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het
Regeringsbeleid 2013b, 47). Just like with hierarchical governance, more complex interactions with modern society created desires for more interactive forms of
supervision. While the historic buildup in the case of the NVWA will be discussed in chapter four, the two most important supervision frameworks of this thesis should be clarified.
2.2.1 Risk-based supervision
According to Baldwin and Black, “[i]n its idealized form, risk-based regulation offers an evidence-based means of targeting the use of resources and of prioritizing attention to the highest risks in accordance with a transparent, systematic, and defensible
framework” (2008, 181). This evidence is usually gathered from experience and hard data from the past, based on individual organizations, private sectors, and food chains (Havinga and Van Waarden 2013, 50). To analyze which sectors should be deemed more risky than others, a calculation is made using this data by multiplying chance of occurrence of an incident by its possible impact (Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid 2013b, 47). Companies that have shown to be more regular violators will henceforth be audited more often than those that have shown to be more trustworthy practitioners. These trusted companies will have reduced moments of supervision. There are problems with the reliability of this calculation based on past data. These will be discussed in chapter five.
2.2.2 System-based regulation
A system-based form of food safety regulation ensures that public supervision by the government explicitly matches to and makes use of management techniques and forms of compliance that the private sector autonomously has created (Aelen and
Wingerde 2014, 5). Organizations are allowed to create and manage systems of
supervision to their own discretion. Emphasis is put especially on trust, responsibility, and accountability within this form of self-supervision (Stoopendaal et al. 2014, 27). The use of audits is the tool implemented by government supervisors to compare the operation and results of these self-supervising systems to public regulation in food safety standards (Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid 2013b, 49). Systems known to function well can thereafter gain official recognition from public agencies after which the sector could benefit from a reduced number of governmental audits.
Meta-governance
To specifically emphasize the difference between use of system-based supervision and the use of privatized supervisors, Verbruggen and Havinga suggest to differentiate between system-based and meta-governance. Meta-governance concerns the (currently still experimental) use of public supervision agencies like the NVWA by private companies who do delegated supervision tasks for them (Havinga and Verbruggen 2014, 12). These private organizations can focus on the provision of information about safety standards and regulations to their private clients, but sometimes also function as a fully packed surrogate auditing entity, enlisted by a public agency (Havinga and Van Waarden 2013, 68).
One could debate that the use of system-based supervision is merely the
separation of responsibilities between the public and private sector, defining this form of supervision as working parallel, but not necessarily as working together. However, not describing it as collaboration would negate the functions of the local delegation of powers, deliberation, peer review, and rule revision as they are underpinned by
experimentalist governance. Therefore, to adhere to the fundamentals of both Zeitlin & Sabel’s ideas on experimentalist governance and Verbruggen & Havinga’s reportings on meta-governance, this thesis will regard forms of system-based supervision as examples of cooperation and collaboration.
2.3 Empirical gap
There is a shortcoming of a case that combines this new form of experimentalist governance with an examination of its impacts on the new styles of supervision in regard to a specific agency’s interactions within the sector. Most literature focuses on one specific sector where experimentalist governance is applied, or only looks at how new forms of regulations are implemented. In this thesis, experimental governance will be used as the main theoretical approach that explains processes within new governance to explain problems and solutions in the food safety sector as they are implemented by the NVWA. This can serve as a measurement on whether or not experimentalist governance is actually compatible with these recent changes. This research shows how the application of these theories determines how the regulatory apparatus of one specified agency, as the main source of regulatory power for the government, can influence supervision efficiency and effectiveness in a specific sector.
CHAPTER 3.
Research design and methods
For this research, the use of a case-oriented design was chosen, meaning that the NVWA and the Dutch food safety sector were analyzed as one specific case, as focus for this research. A variable-oriented approach, which focuses on multi-case variables, would have been too difficult and time-consuming. It would have been close to
impossible to analyze different threads of the food safety sector, convert them into variables, and try to compare the different policy factors that are in many ways too abstract and unclear to generalize. The case-oriented focus on the NVWA also decided the within-case subjects that were chosen as objects of analyses, to get a sense of the empirical reality.
3.1 Case selection
The research focused on one specific case, namely the NVWA in the Dutch food safety policy network. Within this case, the importance of different sectors was analyzed: the public sector, the private sector, EU regulation, and the civil society. The specific variables that were extracted from the theoretical background that are described in chapter two have made this research an example of ‘thick’ analysis: a broad and thorough analysis of this specific case (Gerring 2007, 136). In a thick analysis, theoretical models can effectively be compared to an empirical context which was needed for the recommendations that form the last part of this thesis.
The choice for the Dutch food safety sector is justified for the reason that this topic serves as a form of a theoretical critical case (Flyvbjerg 2011, 307). The
controversies surrounding the public outcries and the subsequent reforms define the NVWA in the food safety sector as a critically conceived archetype for the rest of supervision sectors in the Dutch public sector in literature. Outcomes of the current reform plans of the NVWA and other experiences in the near future will serve as a critical example of the implementation of combined risk- and system-based supervision, and its connection to experimentalist governance in future analyses.
The within-case analysis is based on a strategically selected sample that is information-oriented. These sub-cases were strategically selected in accordance with their importance either in the field, so they can be empirically evaluated, or because of their importance within academic or governmental literature where certain sub-cases have been used for analyses in past research, for use of the generalization of this case study (p. 306). The results of these past research were often used as means of
comparison or as an addendum to this research’ own empirical data. The samples were also selected on an information-oriented basis as opposed to random sampling, since they were selected by specific expectations of their informational content towards the case (p. 307).
3.2 Methods
The research has utilized qualitative methods, which means that an attempt was made to gain a broad sense of the ‘totality’ of the case to better understand the
phenomenon. The why and how has been analyzed, which is congruent to the choice of doing a case-study. The qualitative analysis serves as an empirical investigation, creating a broad framework of the “complexity of human perceptions, preferences and motivations” and treating them as empirical questions rather than pre-set values (Vennesson 2008, 233).
Process tracing has consequently served as the ideal method to evaluate causal mechanisms posited by a given theory in this specific case and gives a causal
explanation for the current circumstances surrounding the case. Process tracing has been used to explain the “particular historical outcomes” of the case, serving as a mechanism to identify explanations of how certain empirical realities have formed (Beach and Pedersen 2013, 12). Process tracing has helped this research by delineating the historical build-up of both the Dutch and the EU food safety sector, whereafter policy results have been analyzed in accordance to these fundamental shifts in policies.
Subsequently, triangulation was a useful method to analyze the gathered data and compare the results to the theoretical background. By comparing multiple within-case sources as reference to each other, “problems of representativeness are less
worrisome” (Gerring 2007, 147). By making these comparisons, patterns and inconsistencies were detected that were henceforth connected to the research
questions and were used as indications towards how certain problems can be tackled.
3.3 Data selection
For this research, multiple sources of data were gathered as empirical evidence. All gathered data centered on the scope of the Dutch policy context of food safety, specifically pointing at the current state of the NVWA and its interactions with both the sector and with EU policies.
3.3.1 Documentary research
The analysis of literature has supported this research in two different ways. First of all, the search for academic material supplied suitable material to build the theoretical framework necessary as application of the research questions that define this research. Documents of this type were collected via the university’s digital library, and via
Google Scholar search. A Dutch journal on supervision, Tijdschrift voor Toezicht2, also proved useful as a source of theoretical backgrounds on the supervision context in the Netherlands. The same productive results were found in different reports of the
Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid, an advisory college for the Dutch government’s policies3.
Second, government reports and parliamentary debates have supplied empirical data on the current situation of the food safety sector and the attempts of the
government to improve the efficiency of the NVWA and its supervision. These reports could usually be found on the Dutch government’s website4 or in the NVWA’s
2
Tijdschrift voor Toezicht. Boom juridisch tijdschriften.
http://www.bjutijdschriften.nl/tijdschrift/tijdschrifttoezicht/detail (accessed 22 August 2016). 3
Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid. http://www.wrr.nl/home/ (accessed 22 August 2016).
4
Nederlandse Rijksoverheid: Documenten. https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/documenten/ (accessed 22 August 2016).
databases5. The websites of the EU’s Directorate F6 and the European Food Safety Authority7, both of which will be described in the next chapter, were also looked into as a source of reports on risk analyses, efficiency and modes of compliance of Member States, including the Netherlands. Furthermore, the European Commission supplied many documents describing food safety regulations8 and other EU law9.
Third, news sources were a valuable source of information for empirical
verification of stated theories and for expert and public opinions on a given topic. Government efficiency is usually a typical news subject, creating useful sources for fact checking. The search engines used for news documents are Google News Search and LexisNexis. All document sources were selected on a basis of purposive sampling, which is a selection method where “the study’s purpose and the researcher’s knowledge of the population guide the [selection] process”, in accordance to their relevance towards the case or the theoretical background, using “good judgement and an appropriate strategy” (Tansey 2007, 770).
3.3.2 Interviews
Interviews were conducted with experts, political authorities, NGOs and lobbyists to create a relevant empirical background to combine the theory with the case, using insider information and subjective opinions. People who are considered possessors of knowledge in a specific field were targeted. These interviews were conducted using a semi-structured framework: questions were devised based on relevance to the research
5
Nederlandse Voedsel- en Warenauthoriteit: Documenten NVWA. https://www.nvwa.nl/documenten-nvwa/ (accessed 22 August 2016). 6
Directorate F. http://ec.europa.eu/food/audits_analysis/index_en.htm (accessed 22 August 2016).
7
The European Food Safety Authority: Scientific Publications.
http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/publications (accessed 22 August 2016). 8
European Commission: Publications. https://ec.europa.eu/info/publications_en (accessed 22 August 2016).
9
EUR-Lex. Access to European Union Law. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/homepage.html (accessed 22 August 2016).
topic before the interview commenced, but the actual course of the conversation was kept flexible to keep the door open for the respondent to provide information that was not originally expected but was relevant for the case. This way, theory could be linked to the respondents’ information without explaining the entire theoretical background of the case beforehand, keeping the respondent’s responses real and authentic. Like the documentary research, interview respondents were purposively selected in accordance with their relevance to the theory or the case.
Respondents within the NVWA were selected because of the agency’s importance for this research. The Ministry for Economic Affairs provided information especially about specific governmental policy backgrounds and the economy. On the EU level, Directorate F of DG SANTE was interviewed to assess the interactions between both agencies. Unfortunately, EFSA was not able to provide a respondent who was
specifically knowledgeable about the Dutch-EU case, causing the agency to be dropped from the interview list.
Some respondents were selected based on their previous relevance in a certain piece of academic literature. For example, in the private sector, forms of meta-governance have been experimented with by the NVWA in cooperation with two corporations, Bureau De Wit and RiskPlaza, which have also been analyzed in past research (Havinga and Verbruggen 2014). RiskPlaza was fortunately able to assist with this research. Secondly, in the distribution and retail field of Dutch food safety, the food sector has been criticized for not complying to safety rules, which has also been discussed in past literature (Onderzoeksraad voor Veiligheid 2014). Implementation of the theoretical background of this research has also been analyzed within this sector (Kind 2014). The Centrale Organisatie voor de Vleessector (COV) proved a useful source for relevant information for this case from the private meat sector, giving the researcher the possibility to use previous information from stated past literature. The COV’s director and interviewee of this thesis, Jos Goebbels, thus serves as
representative for the meat sector in this analysis.
Unfortunately, no interviews were possible with organizations that represent the interests of civil sector. To compensate for this gap, the websites of de
Consumentenbond and FoodWatch, both representatives of civil interests, were more particularly scrutinized for relevant information. Findings of these searches were
thereupon used in the other interviews to make sure that these opinions were not left out.
3.3.3 Websites
Websites provided on the internet are also a useful source for factual information on certain organizations. These were used to look up the responsibilities and background information on the functions of organizations relevant to the case, which will be further discussed in the next chapter.
CHAPTER 4.
Relevant actors and systems
In this chapter, the actors that make up the food safety sector in the Netherlands will be described, many times also serving as examples of the novel private supervision features mentioned in chapter two. For the sake of clarity, this chapter will be divided into society’s sub-sectors: the public level, the supra-national level (EU), the private sector and the ‘civil society’. This division will also improve comparability in later chapters.
4.1 The public sector
The public sector contains every organization that is officially related to the Dutch government, ranging from ministries to independent governmental organizations.
4.1.1 The NVWA
The Nederlandse Voedsel- en Warenautoriteit (or the Netherlands Food and Products Authority, NVWA) is the Dutch agency that serves as the main supervisor for the government: not only for food safety, but also for animal health, plant health, exotics and product safety. The NVWA is a fusion of three past agencies, the Algemene Inspectie Dienst (AID, ‘general inspection service’), the Plantenziektenkundige Dienst (PD, ‘plant pathology service’) and the Voedsel- en Warenauthoriteit (VWA, ‘food & products authority’), now combining the mandates of all three. As a result, the NVWA is the authority for both risk assessment and risk management in The Netherlands. Risk assessment is the main responsibility of Bureau Risicobeoordeling &
Onderzoeksprogrammering (BuRo, ‘office for risk assessment and research’), which researches and defines what calamities cause a risk for national health and what calamities do not. The office’s risk assessments and its concurrent advice are
scientific backgrounds are unpoliticized10. This department’s use of chain analysis is still in its infancy because of the fusion, meaning BuRo has only released its first sector analysis in 201511. Risk management, in turn, combines both risk inspection and
supervision, which means that the NVWA deals with both counseling or (long/short-term) advice and the imposition of penalties when needed. By combining assessment and management, the NVWA creates the basics to act as a “knowledge-driven
authority with insight & vision on compliance of laws & regulation by the private sector”12. Supervision of food safety does not only confine itself to national companies and organizations; the NVWA also supervises both inter-EU imports and import flows that come from outside the EU into the Netherlands.
4.1.2 Government ministries
From a governmental perspective, policies that define the NVWA’s institutional and procedural arrangement come from two different ministerial bodies. The Ministerie voor Economische Zaken (EZ, Ministry of Economic Affairs) and the Ministerie van Volksgezondheid, Welzijn en Sport (VWS, Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport) can both give the NVWA assignments on what to inspect and define its agenda.
Specifically, EZ’s policy areas are animal health, animal welfare, plant health, fishery, agriculture, and nature, while VWS focuses on food safety, product safety, alcohol, and tobacco (Ministerie van Economische Zaken and Ministerie van Volksgezondheid Welzijn en Sport 2015, 5). They both also provide the NVWA with financial support. Institutionally, the NVWA is organized under EZ. The specific methods of supervision and inspection are still the responsibility of the NVWA itself (Algemene Rekenkamer
10
Wet onafhankelijke risicobeoordeling Nederlandse Voedsel- en Warenautoriteit. 2014. http://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0019795/2014-01-25 (accessed 22 August 2016).
11
NVWA. 2016. “Jaarverslag 2015. Risicoanalyse roodvleesketen.”
https://www.nvwa.nl/onderwerpen/hoe-nvwa-werkt/dossier/jaarverslag-2015/risicoanalyse-roodvleesketen (accessed 22 August 2016).
12
NVWA. 2016. “Jaarverslag 2015. Organisatieontwikkeling.”
https://www.nvwa.nl/onderwerpen/hoe-nvwa-werkt/dossier/jaarverslag-2015/organisatieontwikkeling (accessed 22 August 2016).
2013, 6–7).
4.2 The EU level
In contrast to the Dutch system, risk management and risk assessment in the EU has been divided between two different organizations. Additionally, cooperation between Member States has been accomplished through the use of a variety of food safety systems.
4.2.1 Legislative framework
The EU’s framework is very extensive, covering sections like border control, public health, the financial sector, import and export, and even aviation, among others. The food safety legislation network of the Netherlands is also heavily influenced by
regulations made in the European Union. The EU covers an extensive legal framework, covering, for example, hygiene rules, extra-EU import guidelines, national agency supervision strategies, and others. The EU’s food safety framework is currently made up of two important pieces of legislature that form the legislative basis for mandates currently carried by all the different agencies in the food safety sector of the EU.
General Food Law
First is the General Food Law (GFL), which contains the basic framework for food safety regulations13. It stipulates three important focal points: 1) guarantee a high level of protection of human life and health and the protection of consumers’ interests, 2) ensure free movement of food and feed manufactured and marketed in the Union, in accordance with the General Food Law Regulation, and 3) facilitate global trade of safe feed and safe, wholesome food by taking into account international standards and agreements14. These goals have to be implemented both independently from each other, but also effectively, taking differences between countries into account.
13
Regulation (EG) No. 178/2002. 14
European Commission. “Food Law General Principles”.
http://ec.europa.eu/food/safety/general_food_law/principles/index_en.htm (accessed 22 August 2016).
Therefore, the local discretion of GFL goals is divided between Directorate F for risk management and EFSA for risk assessment. Both have a specific setup that leaves responsibilities with the Member States, while still retaining monitoring capabilities within the EU to stimulate compliance with food law. The GFL completely focuses EU food safety on consumer protection, emphasizing “high level of protection of both health and consumers’ interests”, making it more important than market interests (Vos 2010, 154). Furthermore, it lays down basic principles for all Member States to be adhered to:
- “Protection of public health, plant health and animal health and welfare; - risk analysis and independent scientific advice;
- precaution;
- possibility to trace the origin of all products;
- transparency and clear, unambiguous information on food and feed;
- clearly defined responsibilities for all actors in the agro-food chain. It is the prime responsibility of all actors along the food chain to put safe food on the market;
- strict controls and regular checks;
- training and education” (European Commission 2014, 5).
Hygiene Package
Second is the Hygiene Package (HP). The HP is a compilation of EU legislature which lays down hygiene rules for foodstuffs produced in both EU Member States and non-EU countries exporting to the non-EU. It contains three important parts. First of all, the HP defines hygiene rules for all foodstuffs15. Second, it places hygiene prerequisites on food of animal origin to protect public health16. Third, official Member State agency controls need to be present as protector of the animal products’ food chains to ensure food safety17. It places special emphasis on animal products’ food safety because of higher risks of contamination. Combined with the GFL’s shifted focus on the private
15
Regulation (EC) No. 852/2004. 16
Regulation (EC) No. 853/2004. 17
sector’s responsibility towards food safety, the HP requires private enterprises to implement HACCP-based systems to mitigate risk. This also means that a veterinary examiner needs to be available at slaughterhouse operating hours at any time
(interview Goebbels).
4.2.2 Directorate F
Directorate F, which falls under The Directorate General for Health and Food Safety (DG SANTE), which were previously respectively called The Food and Veterinary Offices (FVO) and The Directorate General for Health and Consumers (DG SANCO), is the risk management branch of the EU. It checks all Member States on compliance towards standardized EU rules and laws on food safety norms within different sectors and how the national authorities set about to control these risks. The regulations for these official controls are described in the Official Food & Feed Controls Regulation (OFFC) (European Commission 2011, 5). It prescribes implementations of official controls regarding public health, food safety, animal health and welfare, and the health of crops and forests. Every Member State is audited every year for these purposes. The results of these audits are thereafter communicated with the Member State’s government to make plans for solving any possible problems an audit has uncovered. If problems appear to be too controversial or if the Member State is
unwilling to cooperate, Directorate F can apply their findings to the EU Commission’s Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed, where Member State
representatives can advise the Commission on imposing sanctions or penalties, using its hierarchical and legal authority (Vos 2010, 161).
4.2.3 EFSA
The European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) is the risk assessment agency of the EU, which is independent from DG SANTE and Commission control. Through scientific knowledge and a background neutral to Member State interests, EFSA tries “to protect consumers, animals and the environment from food-related risks” 18. EFSA does not, however, provide insight on how supervision should be regulated; its mandate
18
stretches only to providing independent scientific advice to food safety regulators like the Commission or Directorate F, who usually do not deviate from EFSA’s opinions (Sabel and Zeitlin 2008, 294). This data is used to specify risks as a means of support for risk management by both the EU and national food safety authorities.
The European Food Safety Authority works with the important task of crafting “scientific opinions which will serve as the scientific basis for the drafting and
adoption of Community measures”19. The Authority therefore has the special dual role of both risk assessor and risk communicator: its advice has to be scientifically-based and independent, with the assurance that its analysis conveys the entire food chain ‘from farm to fork’, while also publicly communicating these results to all Member States and to the EU’s civil society (Alemanno 2013, 7). It provides the scientific
background of the EU’s framework goals concerning food safety as protector of public health. Being the prime constructor of EU food safety law, Chalmers describes EFSA as a “normative agency”, sitting at the “privileged position within the law-making
process”, in the sense that they largely determine the content of EU food law and its implementation (Chalmers 2003, 532–33).
4.2.4 HACCP plans
An example of a regulatory system that uses both private means of meta-governance and a form of system-based regulation is the multi-level Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) system. Instead of focusing on the safety of the end product, HACCP analysis encourages enterprises to reduce hazards along “all stages of the food system, from production to consumption” (Corlett and Pierson 2012, ix). Within
HACCP plans, private firms that produce or supply food have to develop or implement either their own or otherwise already existent HACCP plans for that sector that follow a specific set of food safety guidelines (Havinga and Van Waarden 2013, 49). EU
Member State authorities like the NVWA are subsequently requested to check on the implementation of these HACCPs towards EU food safety compliance. Finally, both the Member State authority’s regulatory effectivity and the implementation of the
19
HACCPs are monitored by the EU’s Directorate F. The results of this monitoring are then used to revise and improve the HACCP plans (Sabel and Zeitlin 2012, 3).
4.2.5 RASFF
The Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) is the EU’s risk communication system that runs around the clock. It provides the opportunity for all EU countries to quickly report dangers to public health Europe-wide on an efficient basis. This way, all sectors that are affected by the infected food chain can swiftly react to threats to public health. RASFF also maintains its own database that collects all uses of the alert system since its conception in 1979. Since 2014, this database also has a special section for consumer reference as a means to improve EU transparency20.
4.3 The private sector
The private sector contains any and all non-governmental organizations or companies with a commercial background. When looking at the food sector, this means
everything that is involved with the industry like production or transport, but also retail and storage. All differently sized enterprises are included, differing from the local bakery around the corner to globalized retailers and holding companies.
4.3.1 The meat sector
Since the meat sector receives special attention in this research because of the particular issues it has had in regard to supervision, this sector needs to be defined more specifically. The meat sector contains every actor that is involved with anything concerning the production or retail of pork, beef or bovine meat. The animals are usually born and fed at livestock farms. Logistics companies that are specialized in the transport of live animals transport them to the slaughterhouses. This concerns the alive or premortem part of the meat process which ends with slaughter at the
slaughterhouses. The lifeless carcasses now enter the postmortem phase, where they
20
European Commission RASFF Portal. https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/rasff-window/portal/ (accessed 22 August 2016).
are first prepared by processing and cutting plants to separate meat of different qualities. Cold storages afterwards store the prepared meat, which is then separated and sold at retailers.
In The Netherlands, the Centrale Organisatie voor de Vleessector is the main interest advocate for the meat sector. They represent an approximate of 300 Dutch meat sector companies concerning themes like meat quality, working conditions, sustainability, food chain processes and market interests21.
4.3.2 Private supervision
Because of the new focus on system-based and meta-governance, different private organizations have tried to fill the gap between the NVWA and the sector.
Certification and norm development organizations
Some organizations try to create sector-specific schemes to standardize norms between companies to improve safety measurability. They focus on specific
requirements in food safety quality. Some of these norm-developing organizations are very large and cover a vast array of companies, like the British Retail Consortium (BRC) or the International Food Standard (IFS), while others are of a more specific nature: there are thousands of different certifications and norm systems to be used. Whatever the size, to get definite approval with governmental support, certificates need to be assessed by the use of audits, particularly if the system also wants to be compatible with HACCP procedures.
One Dutch organization that was of particular interest to this research is RiskPlaza. Originally founded by the agricultural sector as means of standardizing norms, RiskPlaza is now an autonomous private organization that is both a database of ingredient food safety information and the supplier of its own certification system, Audit+. This is an audit ‘on top of’ regular safety systems like IFS and HACCP that results in capacity reduction for the NVWA. RiskPlaza is a “model example of the new form of cooperation” by an organization that is officially approved of by the NVWA as
21
legitimate support for governmental audits (Havinga and Verbruggen 2014, 14).
4.4 Civil society
Civil society is the organized expression of society in the public sphere, which is “the space where people come together as citizens and articulate their autonomous views to influence the political institutions of society” (Castells 2008, 78). It is the collected effort of everything non-governmental that focusses on civil interests, ranging from NGOs to citizen protests and the like. As the main articulator and protector of civil interests, the media has become the major main representatives of public interest within this public sphere (Thompson 2013). As a result, civil society is both the receiver and the influencer of public policy, as “civil society serves to balance the power of the state and to protect individuals from the state’s power” (Fukuyama 2001, 11). In this thesis, civil society mainly consists of consumer organizations and the media.
CHAPTER 5.
New problems for the Dutch food sector
5.1. The history: from regulator to delegator
For the sake of clarity for this research, the development of the NVWA can be divided into three parts:
1. Defining the role of supervision in a modern society, a main theme at the end of the 20th century;
2. Less government, more efficient supervision in the beginning of the 21st century;
3. 2010 until now: the NVWA as a modern hybrid supervisor.
5.1.1 New roles in society
As was indicated in the theoretical section, traditional public representation was divided into the hierarchical forms of the ‘Weberian’ triangle that consisted of “political leadership, party, and bureaucracy” (Stoker 2006, 45). According to Stoker, democratically elected political leaders were free to represent their own stipulated view of public interest by using policy that was directly implemented by their right hand, the bureaucracy (p. 46). Policy was highly inflexible, and through democratic representation, political tasks, including subjects like supervision, remained mainly a hierarchical governmental ballgame (Bevir 2010, 34).
During the 1980s and the 1990s however, this perspective received a lot of criticism. The high focus on close governmental command-and-control types of state control created an immobile and entrenched government whose number of public servants was considered to be much too high and highly inefficient. Politics and government rule had to become cheaper and more compact. Therefore, emphasis was put on efficiency and marketization: the state was the entrepreneur, and the civil society its customer (Pollitt 2002, 276). Government gained a highly commercialized character, hence this new approach was named New Public Management (NPM). To maximize efficiency, state property and certain branches were privatized and tasks
were delegated (ibid.). This way, public servants were able to focus on their prime tasks and responsibilities, while diminishing state meddling in the nation’s affairs.
While the Dutch government underwent the same kind of changes in its position towards the nation and had its own experiences with privatization and marketization, supervision did not undergo these kinds of shifts in responsibilities at that time, since inspection and enforcement were still seen as one of these prime tasks of the government. The focus on efficient government shifted the focus of supervision from a bureaucratic responsibility back to what was called the ‘primacy of politics’ (Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid 2013b, 70). This meant that the actual policy-strategic structuring of supervision should be the responsibility of the politicians, not local bureaucrats (Koopmans 1998). This runs contradictory to the old traditional style of inspectors who based food safety inspections on personal
experience and his or her professional opinion (Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid 2013b, 47).
Every sector of inspection had to be centralized and standardized, therefore the actual implementation of supervision was redirected towards ministerial responsibility (Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken en Koninkrijksrelaties 2001). This way,
supervision as an executive tool was independent from political control, while its strategic arrangement was politicized (Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het
Regeringsbeleid 2013b, 73). There were even some plans to make supervision a
completely autonomous branch within Dutch government, but public disasters like a deadly fire in a café in Volendam (2001) and the destruction of a lit fireworks factory in Enschede (2000) caused the actual strategic goals of supervision to stay firmly in the hands of government (Mertens, Scherpenisse, and Van Der Steen 2014, 135).
5.1.2 Less government, more efficient supervision
By skipping four years forward, towards the 2005 policy program Andere Overheid (‘different government’) drafted by the second Balkenende cabinet, it can be clarified how emphases on efficiency and less government also entered the public realm of supervision. Debates about supervision efficiency soon entered the political realm, and a critical step would be made in Kaderstellende visie op toezicht (‘framework vision on supervision’) in 2005. Its name, Minder last, meer effect (‘less burden, more impact’)
typically reflects the new ideas on efficiency and smaller government at the time. The document defines guidelines towards good governance of how supervision should be formalized (p. 18). The document particularly connotes the importance of a shift from top-down supervision towards a governmental vision on sturing (‘steering’), which underlines the importance of more efficient government and the private responsibility towards food safety (Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid 2013b, 80). “The control of risks and the prevention of mistakes is a shared responsibility of government and the community” (Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken en
Koninkrijksrelaties 2005, 9). Predominantly, three new guidelines specified how the new focus on system-based governance and risk-based governance should be given form:
1. Selectivity. This focus particularly introduced the elements of risk-based and system-based regulation in Dutch supervision. Governmental rules, so stated the document, should not impede its prime function, which is to point society and the private sector to its own particular responsibility towards (in this case) food safety. All actors should make a shared attempt together with the public sector to protect public health. Here, notable steps were made towards documented importance of system-based governance, where supervision is made the responsibility of the sector in accordance with the GFL. Second, an emphasis on costs and benefits also showed how risk-based supervision was from that moment the officially supported approach. It was thought that by making an estimation of supposed risk and chances of non-compliance, governmental supervision should become more efficient.
2. Decisiveness. To make these new forms of supervision effective, the Dutch government had to be able to “show its teeth”: compliance should be rewarded, while issuing hard penalties for negligence and malpractice. 3. Cooperation. By sharing each other’s strong points and resources,
supervision could be made even more efficient by sharing knowledge, aligning the need for audits and examination, and to share manpower to cover every task and obligation (Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken en Koninkrijksrelaties 2005, 22). This cooperation puts a large emphasis on a
likewise new aspect of supervision for the NVWA: trust (Mertens, Scherpenisse, and Van Der Steen 2014, 33). By trusting the private sector with their renewed responsibilities towards food safety, the cooperation is mainly meant as another aspect to reduce expenses for the public sector and society in total (Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid 2013b, 81).
5.1.3 The NVWA as a public hybrid
Renewed efficiency by use of calculated risk and shared responsibility did not completely reduce the worries concerning the costs of supervision, however. While the form and procedures of supervision were the initial political subjects, from around 2005 onward the debate switched towards the inspector and the agency itself
(Mertens, Scherpenisse, and Van Der Steen 2014, 107). ‘Zelfrijzend bakmeel’ (‘self-rising flour’), a quote from parliamentary member De Nerée, became the hot term for describing the supposed self-perpetuating effect of supervisors who try to keep tasks to themselves for the sake of their own jobs (Ministerie van Economische Zaken and Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken en Koninkrijksrelaties 2006). The “demand for supervision was running out of control”22.
For the NVWA, this meant that hard blows concerning austerity measures were implemented to reduce the “supervision beast” that it had created (ibid.). The
financial crisis produced even more political pressure to reduce the costs of every sector of government oversight. To make the food safety sector more efficient, the VWA, IAD, and PD had to create plans for a fusion to reduce costs. The idea was that by fusing these services, the new focus on risk- and system-based supervision could be made even more efficient by combining forces, and the combined upscaling could make the new NVWA more cost-efficient as well (Algemene Rekenkamer 2013, 3). In total, the budget savings would total a 50 million euros and 500 full-time equivalent (ftes) workload hours (p. 87).
22
Gerard Bakker, Bob Hoogenboom and Marcel Pheijffer, “Behoefte aan toezicht loopt uit de hand,” NRC, 29 December, 2005, http://www.nrc.nl/handelsblad/2005/12/29/behoefte-aan-toezicht-loopt-uit-de-hand-11062063 (accessed 22 August 2016).
While the number of ftes and the height of the budget were reduced, the amount of tasks that were to be fulfilled by the NVWA’s workforce was not reduced; on the contrary, due to the shift in supervisory regulations, the workload had only increased (Leeuw, Morawski, and Ottow 2013). Lowered budget combined with higher workloads were reason for the NVWA to start experimenting with forms of system-based governance, risk-system-based supervision, and meta-governance. By combining these forms of public and private supervision, the NVWA serves as a hybrid between two sectors of society. Negative media coverage shows that implementation and full adaptation of these new forms of regulation have not been completely successful. These problems are caused by reasons that are in many ways connected to the changes that have been introduced in this first part of the chapter that has looked at the
historical process the Dutch food supervision sector has went through to reach the current state the NVWA is in.
To structure the next section that covers these problems, it will be categorized by certain structural problems that have been reported by two important documents released in the last three years: The Onderzoeksraad voor de Veiligheid’s rapport, ‘Risico’s in de Vleesketen’ (2014) and the Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het
Regeringsbeleid rapport, ‘Toezien op Publieke Belangen. Naar een Verruimd
Perspectief op Rijkstoezicht’ (2013). Functioning as guidance for the division of this chapter, the arguments posited by the OvV can be summarized as follows:
a. Lack of responsibility towards food safety in the private sector, also resulting in fraud, particularly in the meat sector;
• Lack of ‘interconnectedness’ between private sector organizations, causing systems of self-supervision to malfunction;
b. A lack of knowledge about the effective implementation of food safety systems, particularly regarding:
• Local implementation in smaller businesses that do not inform themselves about food safety in their sector systems;
• NVWA inspectors towards how local food safety should be managed.
