This research project investigates the early development and circulation of food safety regulations in the medieval Low Countries, focusing on the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It combines a comparative analysis of urban and village regulations to reconstruct practices of food-related market regulation. The project has three main objectives: (1) mapping out food safety practices across the Low Countries, (2) revealing underlying notions on health, contamination, community and safety in the preindustrial period, (3) understanding food safety as a socially and culturally constructed concept. By situating food regulations within the mechanism of normative exchange, the research aims to redefine our understanding of how social norms were negotiated and adapted in premodern Europe.