History of food & drug regulation in Southeast Asia: Issues for research

Food safety and drug regulation issues often do make it to the news in ASEAN countries, such as Thailand, and the issues are also considered important in the general context of ASEAN (see here & here for instance).

However, there does not seem to be much formal academic research from a broader public health, historical or social sciences perspective, especially from the perspective favored here, the sociology of law which provides ethnography and interviewing as empirical methodology and powerful theory to contextual empirical findings (see here).

So one could say "food and drug regulation", from the perspective of sociology of law or economic history, is virgin territory for research.

There has, however, been high-caliber research in the US and Europe and this research can provide a good model for research on the history and sociology of regulatory law in Southeast Asia.

A wonderful overview and review of the literature on the "History of Food and Drug Regulation in the United States" has been put together by the scholar Dr. Marc T. Law  (see here). The overview is hosted at EH.net, a website run by the Economic History Association that shares resources related to economic history research and teaching.

Professor Law is an Associate Professor of economics at University of Vermont who does research on the economic history of regulation (see here). He has also published papers on the rise of the regulatory state in the US, medical and occupational licensing, utility regulation, truth-in-advertising regulation and food and drug regulation (see his papers here).

His overview history of US food and drug regulation is a useful vehicle for brainstorming issues and avenues to explore when researching the history of food and drug regulation in Southeast Asia.

ISSUES IN THE HISTORY OF FOOD & DRUG REGULATION

Many issues that are applicable to food and drug safety in Southeast Asian countries. There are also local issues applicable in the Southeast Asian context, food safety in wet markets and street vendors being two examples. Here is a list of some food and drug safety issues in Southeast Asia:  

1. Food adulteration incidents that make the news, nowadays often through consumer self-made videos posted to YouTube of adulterated food.

2. Patent medicines with dubious efficacy and safety.

3. The role of food and drug safety incidents or crises in driving the government to take food and drug safety measures.

4. Regulatory capture by larger firms seeking to push out or exclude smaller firms.

5. Food cleanliness, inspection and safety in wet markets, often documented nowadays with self-made videos of rats crawling over meat in a wet market or a rat in the donut display container, for instance (see here, here).

6. Chemical residues on vegetables found both in markets and retailers, including organically grown vegetables. This sort of research is done by independent NGOs and reported on in newspapers (see here & here).

7. Illegally imported drugs, lotions, cosmetics or other items such as cosmetic contact lenses that scratch the cornea (see here).

8. Food labeling for health conscious consumers and truth-in-advertising laws.

9. The use of food preservatives that may be hazardous to the health such as by street vendors selling fresh fruit (see here & here).

10. Globalized regulation has become an issue recently, with the US and EU passing laws and making regulatory efforts to eliminate forced migrant labour (or "slave" labour) from the export supply chain (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here & here).

More issues to be added as they are brainstormed.

(Source of photo at top: Wikipedia on food safety)