UCD award-winning research on food crisis management
Research conducted by PhD students from the UCD School of Law and UCD Institute for Food and Health - Donal Casey (Ad Astra Scholar) and James Lawless (IRCHSS Government of Ireland Scholar) - has resulted in two significant publications which examine the governance implications of the 2008 Irish pork dioxin contamination. The contamination was one of the most significant food safety incidents in the European Union and tested the effectiveness of EU food safety rules since the implementation of major reforms of the sector over the past decade.
(Picture by Scott Bauer, the US Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service)
The most recent paper entitled “The Parable of the Poisoned Pork: Network Governance and the 2008 Irish Pork Dioxin Contamination” has been published in the leading journal Regulation & Governance (ISI Impact Factor 1.511; ranked 25/116 law). This paper explores the reasons for the failure to make more substantial use of risk communication networks during the 2008 Irish dioxin contamination. The paper focuses on weaknesses in EU’s Rapid Alert System for Feed and Food (RASFF) and the negative effects created by the transparency of this form of communication. Very recently RASFF has been at the centre of controversy when German food safety authorities wrongly notified Spanish cucumbers as the source of an E.coli outbreak in Germany.
The second paper entitled “A Tale of Two Crises: The Belgian and Irish Pork Dioxin Contamination Incidents”, co-authored with Prof. Patrick Wall (UCD School of Public Health and Population Science) was published during 2010 in the British Food Journal (ISI Impact Factor 0.752: ranked 71/118 Food Science and Technology). This paper compared a dioxin incident in Belgium in 1999 with the 2008 Irish dioxin contamination, with particular emphasis on regulatory successes/failures and their respective causes in both cases. The paper provided the first academic study of the 2008 Irish dioxin incident and highlighted the vital role of open, transparent and decisive decision-making in managing risk. In addition, through a comparative analysis of the Belgian and Irish incidents, the paper demonstrated the utility of the legal reforms prompted by previous food scares. In particular, the study highlighted the role played by the European Food Safety Authority in one of its first major tests as a risk assessor and risk communicator.
“A Tale of Two Crises: The Belgian and Irish Pork Dioxin Contamination Incidents” has recently been chosen as the Outstanding Paper Award Winner in the Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2011. The paper was chosen as the most impressive piece of work the editorial team had seen throughout 2010. The criteria for the award are: contribution to the current body of knowledge; excellence in both structure and presentation; rigour in terms of argument and analysis and; practical and theoretical relevance.
