Private import safety regulation and transnational new governance

The world is awash in complex systems of private regulation, many of which are highly innovative and dynamic. This chapter discusses the current and potential role of private regulatory systems in ensuring import safety. Using recent developments in food safety regulation as a primary example, it argues that private regulatory institutions can provide valuable control and learning capacities for an effective import safety regulatory system. However, significant institutional developments are needed to adequately take into account the full range of interests that must be accommodated in global production systems. Safety regulation is currently spread out among a large number of public and private organizations, often with overlapping or competing roles, which can be thought of as constituting "regulatory ecosystems." Regulatory actors will have to develop new strategies for maximizing the effects of these polycentric authority structures. Moreover, most private safety regulation currently faces northward. It protects developed country ("northern," hereafter) interests, and has only haltingly and partially incorporated the voices and interests of developing country ("southern," hereafter) producers and publics. To achieve effective and sustainable transnational governance, private import safety regulation will have to pioneer significant new ways of incorporating the interests of southern countries and coordinating them with the interests of northern ones.