With the proliferation of private regulation of food safety, governments have shown interests in engaging private schemes as co-regulators. This raises the issue of accountability in private schemes; that is holding the bodies auditing the standards accountable. The ability to do so affects the integrity of private regulatory schemes. Holding auditors accountable can be conceived of as a principal–agent problem. This article analyses the two most widely used global private food safety standard schemes in the Australian food sector. The analysis shows that the existence of well-developed accountability mechanisms and multiple principals has resulted in a multi-layered and comprehensive system of accountability. Hence, holding auditors accountable to their principals does not appear to be a concern for governments considering to engage in co-regulatory arrangements with private schemes. However, concerns about integrity have been raised. The prescriptive nature of the standards and the multitude of standard schemes with their own accountability arrangements has brought about a situation in which the individual auditors have to devote disproportionately much time to respond to the accountability mechanisms.

中文翻译：

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私营食品安全监管中的问责制和诚信：来自澳大利亚食品部门的证据

随着私人食品安全监管的普及，政府已经表现出让私人计划成为共同监管者的兴趣。这引发了私人计划中的问责制问题；那就是让审计标准的机构承担责任。这样做的能力会影响私人监管计划的完整性。追究审计师的责任可以被视为委托代理问题。本文分析了澳大利亚食品行业使用最广泛的两个全球私营食品安全标准体系。分析表明，完善的问责机制和多方主体的存在，形成了多层次、全面的问责体系。因此，让审计师对其负责人负责似乎不是政府考虑与私营计划进行共同监管安排的问题。然而，人们对完整性提出了担忧。标准的规定性和众多标准计划以及各自的问责安排导致了个别审计师不得不花费不成比例的大量时间来响应问责机制的情况。