While undermining the credibility of the EC’s food safety regulatory system and balkanizing the functioning of the internal market, the food crises of the 1990s brought their own impetus for reforming the EC food regime, leading to calls for an agency solution. Under the pressure of mounting political and public opinion, the European Community had to rapidly design a new approach to consumer health and food safety, moving away from its economic-oriented system toward an approach enlightened by consumer protection and food safety concerns. Through the publication of several policy documents, such as the Green Paper on the general principles of food law and the White Paper on food safety, the community launched an effective and exemplary policymaking process leading to the creation of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), originally promoted as a “European FDA”(European Commission 2000a, 1997a).

This chapter provides a narrative account of the historical evolution that has occurred in European food policy in the wake of the food scandals. Since the FDA analogy has been largely invoked during the debate leading to the establishment of EFSA, the chapter also explores the extent to which the US Food and Drug Administration actually represented a model for it. A comparison between the EFSA and the FDA that focuses on their respective powers and institutional organizations shows that this is not, if it ever was, the case.