In Chapter Two, I will explain the basis of my US-UK comparison, presenting a detailed account of the existing regulatory framework governing leafy greens production in the United States and United Kingdom. I will ground my case study comparison in a comparative historical-political examination of food safety concerns and present the research framing that underpins my international comparison. In Chapter Three, I will present the results of my comparative research with US and UK lettuce farmers, retailers and regulators, in which I evaluate the structure of public regulatory controls, farmer opinions of food safety regulation, and the impact of public and private food safety standards on farmers’ land management decisions. In Chapter Four, I will explore underlying socio-cultural dimensions of difference within food safety discourse, including structural differences in how responsibility is assigned for food safety violations, regional differences in the discourse of food safety, divergent background framings of the growing environment, and different degrees of overlap between utilitarian agricultural use and preservationist conservation. I will end my comparative case by presenting a summary of my observations from this comparison, and recommendations for the future of transatlantic food safety governance.In response to the broad social and environmental changes brought by industrial activity in the 20th century, the industrialized world witnessed a change in public perception of human health, the environment, and the proper role of government in ensuring public safety. Beginning for the most part in the United States and spreading to Europe and the Global South, plant nursery benches these changes have been described by legal scholars as a series of gradual shifts in the functioning and accountability of government over time, contributing to the emergence of the modern regulatory state .
The concept of the rise of the modern regulatory state describes the growth of administrative structures leading to increasing expression of government authority through formal and informal rule-making by governments and their institutions, accompanied by systems of monitoring and enforcement . The early founding structures and commitments of European and American nation states were transformed during the 20th century by progressive reforms and bureaucratization, war mobilization, the rights revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, deregulation efforts during the 1980s, and the rise of corporate power from the 1980s onward . The regulatory language, structures and norms of practice that first gained prominence during this period of social and environmental awakening formed the basis for modern regulation of the food system. Modern regulatory states achieve policy goals through government actions that rely primarily on top-down processes of rule-making and enforcement. Regulatory rule-making involves defining goals to be achieved, such as the reduction of harmful pollutants in air or water, and to define the criteria and standards by which progress toward goals will be measured. Compliance with regulation can then be assessed through the designation of enforcement mechanisms to ensure uptake of regulatory targets . Regulation of this sort can enable a central government to achieve certain outcomes, but the durable structures of precedent in rule making may also constrain the use of executive power, limiting its usefulness as risk landscapes change over time. Additionally, some forms of regulation in a particular policy space may be more effective than others in terms of desired policy outcomes and broader attitudes toward regulation, engendering a wide variety of responses from those subject to regulation.
It is thus important to understand the relationships between regulatory approaches and the downstream economic and social effects that regulation creates within supply chains. The nature of regulatory requirements and how they are communicated can vary greatly from one government to another. Examining these differences allows scholars of regulation to discern differences in “regulatory style” which can be analyzed as indicators of national priorities, and as ways to explain the actions taken by various actors within both the public and private sectors . Ultimately the regulatory styles used to achieve policy outcomes will have impacts on the general norms of practice within industries subject to regulation, and the individual experiences of those complying with regulation. Regulatory style will also have consequences for the distribution of power among industry players, willingness of stakeholder parties to continue to submit to regulation, and broader societal good such as the environmental sustainability of agricultural production within a particular governance regime. For scholars of politics and policy, using a comparative approach that considers two or more different policy environments can be a powerful tool for seeing and analyzing policy mechanisms and their outcomes . Comparisons can reveal hidden details about the cases compared, and yield lessons that may be applicable in other contexts, identifiable through description, classification, hypothesis-testing and prediction . The core benefit of comparison is its ability to revealing ways in which aspects of policy that appear inevitable when viewed within their national context are in fact socially or culturally contingent when compared against other national contexts . By revealing that policy systems are culturally embedded, comparative policy work enables us to critically analyze the features of one policy system against another. This lens in turn allows us to benchmark policy systems against one another to show where the tools and outcomes of policy are equivalent, and where they are divergent. Where they are divergent, this style of analysis makes it possible to question the status quo. Many comparative policy scholars have chosen to compare countries, or groups of countries that share specific characteristics , and a great many comparisons have analyzed the English-speaking industrial powers as a cohesive group . For some purposes, it can also be useful to compare subnational units, for example in cases where using a national unit would introduce so much variation from one region to another that it would be impossible to see and analyze differences at smaller scales . In my analysis, I will examine the United States and United Kingdom as two nations from the industrialized, English-speaking world, comparing them on the basis of their policy similarity to identify possible sources for differences observed in policy outcomes. However, for the United States, I will center my analysis around a subnational unit: the state of California. Although this is somewhat unusual in the comparative politics literature, and may appear to be an inherently apples-and-oranges comparison, there are several reasons why I have chosen to situate my analysis in this unusual footing. First, the state of California is equivalent to a nation by measures including its population, area, and economy. Second, I hoped with this comparison to explore and benefit from past scholarly work examining areas of comparative policy difference such as use of the precautionary principle in public policy, and differences between adversarial direct regulation exemplified by certain periods of policy development in the United States and more cooperative models common in some European countries. Third, and most importantly, my comparative case study will be grounded in the production of fresh leafy greens, a sensitive agricultural crop grown in very specific climatic zones. In the United States, California supplies between 70% and 75% of US domestic nationwide leafy greens supply on an annual basis , metal greenhouse benches making its output clearly equivalent to a national unit. While most comparative politics research centers only on comparative policy contexts and the forms of regulation they embody, my analysis will add an element that is seldom considered.
My study will combine analysis of policy instruments at state, hybrid and non-state levels, with primary social science research conducted with farmers of leafy greens, providing real world information on the impacts that regulation in each national context is having on individual farmers and their environmental choices. In this way, I will deliver an interdisciplinary look at comparative policy in its human dimensions. In the remainder of this chapter, I will outline my comparative case by describing several forms of regulation currently active within the food system, as background for my investigation of the environmental consequences of public and private food safety regulation in fresh leafy greens. I will begin by examining three basic types of regulation that underlie current food safety governance regimes: State regulation, Co-regulation and Non-state regulation. I will explain the actors involved in each approach, how power is shared by actors, and the strengths and compliance challenges inherent in each approach. As a foundation for my international comparative case study of private regulation as it applies to leafy greens producers, I will trace the roots of current food safety regulation in the United Kingdom and in the United States and explain the role of food safety risk management in shaping farmers’ environmental practices. Lastly, I will present and explain the components of my comparative case study, and the guiding questions it aims to answer.Regulatory efforts in the modern food system exist along a spectrum from state-led regulation, through cooperative public-private regulation, to alternative forms of control in which standard setting and enforcement rely upon non-state entities. Table 2.1 compares and categorizes the most prominent regulatory forms that have been employed in the modern food system, arranging them according to the goals, methods, and structural characteristics of each approach. Although real-world regulatory efforts often reflect a blend of more than one style of regulation, it is nevertheless useful to examine archetypal forms to understand the multifaceted background of blended approaches and how their strategies borrow from these distinct types.Traditional state-led regulation as seen over the majority of the last century places control over rule-making, standard-setting and enforcement in the hands of public regulators and their regulatory scientists. Government regulators define regulatory targets, which industry actors must comply, what compliance looks like, how it shall be measured, and what consequences will accrue for noncompliance. This form of regulation is referred to as direct regulation, with the most extreme forms dubbed “Command-and-Control”. Firms operating under this form of regulation are ostensibly held separate from regulators, and do not participate directly in setting standards or crafting legislation. This style of regulation is often characterized as adversarial, punitive and legalistic; fear of sanctions forms a key motivating force . Outcomes are ensured through top-down administrative control, which typically stipulates both the desired outcome and how it must be achieved .Direct regulation came to prominence in the second half of the 20th century, paralleling the rise of modern regulatory states. In the United States, direct regulation evolved out of the Progressive Era’s focus on scientific rationality and direct provision of social and economic support through a bureaucratic central government. Direct regulations such as the Clean Air Act of 1963 and the Clean Water Act of 1972 applied a centrally controlled rule-making and enforcement process to the management of environmental problems linked to the activities of the manufacturing and chemical industries. Around the time of its establishment in the United States, this style of regulation became the dominant form of regulation across the nations of the Global North. Since the 1980s, this approach has struggled to maintain primacy in light of politically motivated deregulation efforts and increasing recognition of the international collective nature of many modern regulatory challenges. For example, many environmental and social problems— especially those in the modern, globalized food system—follow supply chains and human migration routes rather than national borders, outstripping the capacity and jurisdictional boundaries of traditional public regulation . Additional weaknesses of direct regulation include the lengthy process of gathering data, setting standards and crafting appropriate legislation, and the high financial and administrative costs of ensuring compliance once targets are set. Additionally, firms under this form of regulation may circumvent their exclusion from the regulatory table, through legally sanctioned lobbying and revolving door hiring, or via extra-legal activities such as concealed financial and political influence, any of which may allow them to “capture” regulators and weaken the regulatory process . Under the best of circumstances, it is difficult for state regulators to know everything that can and must be known for effective top-down management of a large and diverse array of threats, resulting in the potential for regulation of this sort to be incomplete or inadequate . Additionally, putting all the regulatory eggs in one basket by concentrating power into the hands of state regulators leaves command-and-control approaches subject to political regime changes, weak institutions, bureaucratic sluggishness, regulatory capture, and budget fluctuations, any of which may hamper regulatory outcomes .