A gestão do risco alimentar: o novo poder de polícia dos alimentos

Abstract

The scope of work was taking care of changes made in the traditional categories of police power of food imposed by the transition from industrial and liberal society to risk society that will be through the study of the new model for public intervention: food risk analysis. Due to the advent of transnational, long-lived, hypercomplex and invisible risk (chemical residues of pesticides, environmental contamination by chemical fertilizers, genetically modified organism); the State was challenged to adopt a useful answer to beware the legal essentials like health from the side effects of technical and scientific developments in the food industry. Risk analysis constitutes one step further to transformation reactions, consisting of three interrelated components: risk assessment, risk management and risk communication. The risk assessment is a scientific evaluation of known or potential adverse effects. Risk management is the stage in which the decision is taking by considering risk assessment, and considering interested parties playing with weighing normative alternatives. It reveals new purpose (from public order to tolerated risk), new instruments (from repression to precautionary principle, from punctuality to continuity, from immutability to temporariness) and new subjects (from state monopoly to a network with public and private actors, national and international actors). The risk communication, finally, deals with the interactive exchange of information and perception of risk among actors involved in the food chain focused on early identification of side effects, which reveals the replacement of an authoritarian and unilateral relationship for a consensual and bilateral attitude.