Ex ante regulatory impact assessments in the food safety area are currently carried out in piecemeal fashion. Various difficulties, primarily in the assessment of food safety risks for human health and the consequent lack of reliable and complete monetary values to adequately depict all likely socio-economic impacts of regulatory proposals, have been hampering the possibility to carry out proper cost-benefit analysis, which is the usual procedure for regulatory impact assessments. Within the MoniQA socio-economic research, a generic evaluation framework for food safety regulations has been developed - based on the EC Impact Assessment Guidelines – where various policy options are envisaged, the likely impacts of each policy options are estimated, and policy options are then compared regarding their impacts, in order to identify the ‘most preferred’ option. In order to cope with all the information and data collected for the assessment, a ‘multi-criteria analysis’ approach has been adopted for the development of Scryer, a fuzzy assessment tool which performs the comparison of policy options on the basis of a set of criteria (i.e. the likely impacts) and allows the use of – qualitative and quantitative – information affected by different types and degrees of uncertainty. In this presentation, we would like to present the strengths of such a tool with a case study on the regulatory needs in China after the melamine in milk scandal exploded in 2009. A huge amount of information and data on the food safety regime and the dairy sector in China were collected, and four policy options were identified: ‘do nothing’, statutory approach, non-statutory approach, and co-regulation. An extensive and in-depth analysis of the Chinese situation, including the regulatory framework, the private standards and the official controls in the dairy sector was carried out. In addition, a comparison with the situation within the European Union, and in a few individual European countries, revealed profound differences. From the extensive analysis carried out under the generic evaluation framework, the co-regulation approach, combining elements of the statutory and non-statutory approach, appears to offer the best chances of success and to be more cost-effective for reforming the Chinese dairy sector, and, more generally, the whole food sector. The results from the extensive analysis are confirmed by the application with Scryer. Co-regulation appears to be the ‘best option’. This case study is illustrative of the potentialities of the combined use of a generic evaluation framework, that allows to collect a big amount of information and carry out an in-depth analysis, and a multi-criteria assessment tool that – in a transparent way - systematises and ‘simplifies’ such information. This is especially important in regulatory impact assessment of food safety regulations, where the number of confounding factors and uncertainties is countless.

How a generic evaluation framework can be supported by fuzzy multi-criteria analysis: The case of regulatory needs after the melamine milk scandal in China

RAGONA, MADDALENA
2011

Abstract

Ex ante regulatory impact assessments in the food safety area are currently carried out in piecemeal fashion. Various difficulties, primarily in the assessment of food safety risks for human health and the consequent lack of reliable and complete monetary values to adequately depict all likely socio-economic impacts of regulatory proposals, have been hampering the possibility to carry out proper cost-benefit analysis, which is the usual procedure for regulatory impact assessments. Within the MoniQA socio-economic research, a generic evaluation framework for food safety regulations has been developed - based on the EC Impact Assessment Guidelines – where various policy options are envisaged, the likely impacts of each policy options are estimated, and policy options are then compared regarding their impacts, in order to identify the ‘most preferred’ option. In order to cope with all the information and data collected for the assessment, a ‘multi-criteria analysis’ approach has been adopted for the development of Scryer, a fuzzy assessment tool which performs the comparison of policy options on the basis of a set of criteria (i.e. the likely impacts) and allows the use of – qualitative and quantitative – information affected by different types and degrees of uncertainty. In this presentation, we would like to present the strengths of such a tool with a case study on the regulatory needs in China after the melamine in milk scandal exploded in 2009. A huge amount of information and data on the food safety regime and the dairy sector in China were collected, and four policy options were identified: ‘do nothing’, statutory approach, non-statutory approach, and co-regulation. An extensive and in-depth analysis of the Chinese situation, including the regulatory framework, the private standards and the official controls in the dairy sector was carried out. In addition, a comparison with the situation within the European Union, and in a few individual European countries, revealed profound differences. From the extensive analysis carried out under the generic evaluation framework, the co-regulation approach, combining elements of the statutory and non-statutory approach, appears to offer the best chances of success and to be more cost-effective for reforming the Chinese dairy sector, and, more generally, the whole food sector. The results from the extensive analysis are confirmed by the application with Scryer. Co-regulation appears to be the ‘best option’. This case study is illustrative of the potentialities of the combined use of a generic evaluation framework, that allows to collect a big amount of information and carry out an in-depth analysis, and a multi-criteria assessment tool that – in a transparent way - systematises and ‘simplifies’ such information. This is especially important in regulatory impact assessment of food safety regulations, where the number of confounding factors and uncertainties is countless.
2011
3rd MoniQA International Conference "Food Safety and Consumer Protection" - Book of Abstracts
48
49
Line Friis Lindner; MADDALENA RAGONA
File in questo prodotto:
Eventuali allegati, non sono esposti

I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.

Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11585/153658
 Attenzione

Attenzione! I dati visualizzati non sono stati sottoposti a validazione da parte dell'ateneo

Citazioni
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.pmc??? ND
  • Scopus ND
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.isi??? ND
social impact