Regulation, innovation and public welfare: the example of the food industry

The complex relationship between innovation and regulation in the food industry is analyzed with a view to identifying the ways in which regulation both promotes and inhibits particular kinds of innovation, and also the relevance of both innovation and regulation to the protection and improvement of public health. The effects of regulation on innovation are complex, since regulation simultaneously inhibits some kinds of development while encouraging others, but those which are inhibited are typically unsafe or undesirale. There is, however, no evidence that public welfare is being undermined by excessive regulations or by too few innovations in the food sector.