| This thesis is about two food safety and animal health related disputes that occurred in the nineteenth-century, transatlantic trading world. Hitherto neglected by food scientists, trade officials, and sanitary regulators, the disputes offer important perspectives for today's policymakers at regulatory agencies, the Codex Alimentarius Commission, the World Trade Organization, and other venues where sanitary related matters dominate trade discussions.; During the nineteenth century, the United States and Great Britain were engaged in a significant trade in agricultural products, including livestock and meat. America's agricultural exports were praised for providing Britain with high-quality, affordable food; however, when animal diseases and foodborne pathogens surfaced among US livestock and meat products, Britain's importation policies required review. While other sanitary risks would become topics in the dispute, Britain and America soon wrangled about how to manage the cattle disease pleuro-pneumonia and the disease trichinosis, a human health risk posed by contaminated pork. As in today's disputes, US-British sanitary trade relations were characterized by more than straightforward considerations of public health and microbiological science. As transatlantic correspondence and other primary-source materials illustrate, the trade questions were interwoven with noteworthy factors of influence: (1) economic considerations; (2) scientific understanding of, public perceptions regarding, and management of risk; and (3) bilateral regulatory coordination. Of these three factors, economic considerations proved most influential in resolving the disputes. An in-depth review of the three factors yields several valuable lessons for today's sanitary trade officials. These lessons relate to the dispute-resolution powers yielded by innovation and investment in food technology, the necessity of backing up “safe food” claims with robust risk management practices, the tendency among regulators to mistrust foreign sources of sanitary risks, the value of bilateral regulatory harmonization, the extent to which food safety and animal health troubles in one sector can stigmatize other agricultural sectors, and the reminder, for scientists and their critics, that sanitary related decision making is often undertaken under the dim light of new science. |
