Improved Emergency Preparedness For Management Of The Food chain Via Stakeholder Involvement: Belgian and European Experience

Initiatives involving stakeholder engagement have gained increasing importance in sustainable decision making for many risk-related issues. This paper describes a Belgian experience within a European context related to food management options in the event of a radioactive contamination of the food chain. Under the auspices of the European Commission's 5. Framework Programme, the F.A.R.M.I.N.G. (F.A.R.M.I.N.G. 2000) project (co-ordinated by H.P.A.) a stakeholder network was established in a number of European countries, following a successful approach originally adopted in the UK. In a comparable approach, national working groups were thus established in Belgium, Finland, France and Greece in order to organise stakeholder panels and to discuss the outcomes of scientific and technical research related to management options for the food chain. The results of these panels were exchanged between participating Member States and on a wider international basis at the W.I.S.D.O.M.2. workshop in 2003. The F.A.R.M.I.N.G. project had many achievements and there were also several important lessons learned for Belgium (Vandecasteele et al., 2005): Firstly, many stakeholders showed a real interest in tackling problems relating to food chain contamination; Secondly, the Belgian agricultural system is very intensive and technically and economically optimised, making many of the options envisaged difficult to implement; thirdly, the applicability of management options is also limited by political and legal issues (e.g. competencies, environmental legislation), operational constraints (e.g. waste treatment, supplies of materials), societal and ethical aspects (e.g. milk disposal to sea, animal welfare), and economics (e.g. who pays the intervention cost?); fourthly, there is a now a greater awareness of these problems in both the food production sector and among the experts involved in emergency management; Fifthly, increased attention is now given in Belgium to the medium and long term management of a contaminated area than it was previously the case; Sixthly, the F.A.R.M.I.N.G. project has contributed to an organisational change in the Belgian emergency organisation through the creation of a special advisory committee for socio-economic aspects. The international dimension created by the F.A.R.M.I.N.G. network is of utmost importance. The W.I.S.D.O.M. workshop highlighted that there are plenty of differences between countries, both in their approach to the stakeholder process and in the management options finally considered as acceptable. These differences are partly due to parameters such as climate, soil and intensity of agricultural system, but also to cultural differences and variability in the organisation of emergency management. The successful outcome of the F.A.R.M.I.N.G. project has enabled further work involving stakeholder engagement to continue under the auspices of the 6. Framework Programme integrated project E.U.R.A.N.O.S.. Stakeholder panels are currently being convened for developing a generic handbook for the management of food production systems in Europe, based on a previous UK handbook. At this stage, feedback from the stakeholders is leading to considerable modifications of the original document. The adapted version will later be discussed within the stakeholder panels, prior to the final release. (authors)