Private food Law: Governing food chains through contract law, self-regulation, private standards, audits and certification Schemes

Over the last decade, worldwide initiatives from the private sector have turned the legal and regulatory environment for food businesses upside down. Litigation is no longer solely framed by legislative requirements, but ever more by private standards such as GlobalGAP, BRC, IFS, SQF and ISO. Private standards incorporate public law requirements, thus embedding them in contractual relations and exporting them beyond the jurisdiction of public legislators. Private standards are used to remedy shortcomings in legislation, to reach higher levels of consumer protection than the ones chosen by the EU legislature, to impose new obligations on contracting parties, to manage risks and liability beyond the traditional limits of food businesses and inally to give substance to corporate social responsibility. Private standards also play a role in deining speciic markets of growing importance and in self-regulating the commercial communication/advertising for foods and beverages. Organic standards have found an interesting symbioses with public law. Halal standards express the demands of some two billion consumers worldwide. Food businesses are inspected more often by private auditors than by public inspectors. Effects in terms of receiving or being denied certiication often far outweigh public law sanctions. In short, based on private law, an entire legal infrastructure for the food sector emerges, in parallel to, and sometimes complementing, the public law regulatory infrastructure.
[2011]

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