Introduction to the Special Issue on Contemporary Food Regulatory Regimes and the Challenges Ahead

Food is one of the fundamental elements of human life: it guarantees survival, it can dispense death and, above all, as Marcel Proust reminds us, it is deeply connected to our own ‘essence,’ having the power of blessing men with ‘exquisite pleasure’ and ‘all-powerful joy.’ Given the exceptional nature of the regulated matter, regulating food transcends its own domain, mirroring some of the most crucial challenges of regulating contemporary societies. This short introduction to the issue of Erasmus Law Review on ‘food regulatory regimes and the challenges ahead’ identifies two interlinked challenges for contemporary ‘food regulators’: the first is how national and regional regulators can best deal with the increasingly globalised nature of food production and the second is how to create consistency and harmony in a highly fragmented regulatory space. The four contributions to this issue all deal with these two challenges, albeit in different ways.