Risk-based food safety and quality governance at the international law, EU, USA, Canada and France: Effective system for Lebanon as for the WTO accession

Following the establishment of the Lebanese food safety authority (LFSA) in the food safety draft law, this study aims to find the appropriate food safety governance system in Lebanon in accordance with the risk analysis and the clauses of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Agreement. It describes the regulatory and institutional food safety governance system developed in USA, EU, Canada and France using inventory approach and in-depth interviews at institutional level to profit from their previous experience in this field. The findings indicate that Lebanon showed compliance with the clauses of the WTO but it will not be for the interest of Lebanon to join the WTO before it strengthens its infrastructure capacity at the institutional and stakeholders level through harmonization of the Risk Assessment (RA) and Risk Management (RM) at the institutional level and at all stages of the food chain. Lebanon should rely on bilateral and multilateral agreements by carrying out equivalence that fits his socio-economic situation based on RA. As it was shown in the studied countries, power given to the food safety authority depends on the willing of the country to adopt the political democratic approach or political scientific approach and RM and RA were not always functionally and institutionally separated. Lebanon within his political and socio-economical situation will meet constraints if he relies only on scientific justification, he should adopt the political democratic approach and ensure collaboration among RA agencies and RM at different levels. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.