The regulation of meat safety has occupied much of the European Union’s legislative, policy and political time since the earliest days of European integration. Among the first pieces of Community legislation in the 1960s were Directive 64/432 and Directive 64/433 setting harmonised standards for intra-Community trade in bovine and porcine animals and meat. Controversy has also marked the regulation of these commodities over almost five decades: from the infamous Franco-Italian dispute over veterinary inspections in the 1976 Simmenthal1 case, to the control of hormones in the 1980s, through to the (mis)management of BSE and the Belgian meat dioxin contamination in the 1990s. Meeting these challenges has required the EU to manage complex issues of food risk, complicated further by contentious issues of national regulatory sovereignty, international trade obligations and consumer concerns. In addition, the primary risks to humans of various zoonoses have evolved over time; from the post-war concern with bovine tuberculosis and trichinella to the modern problems of E.coli and campylobacter contamination of meat. This article will examine some elements in the evolution of meat safety risks and meat safety risk regulation in order to assess how (and why) these two phenomena have or have not “kept pace” with one another over time.