La geografia alimentare: informazione e sicurezza nell'Unione europea.

Rising incomes, mobility and world wide incidents involving food and agriculture have given rise to demands to know how food is produced and to be assured of its safety and quality. Consumers in developed countries have become more demanding and critical in their food choices, leading to situations where quality differentiation of food products, both vertical and horizontal, has become necessary in order to satisfy consumers. In recent years there has been an increased focus on food safety in Europe in response to enhanced, both real and perceived, food safety problems. Public food safety standards have been enforced through legislation (Reg. 178/2002, Reg. n.853/2004), and firms at different levels of the supply chain have developed various private standards. Legislations adopted to improve food safety include standards regarding the characteristics of the final product, production practices in the food supply chain, traceability within the supply chain and the legal liability of the supply chain. The change in public regulations has been accompanied by an increased use of private standards. These standards, which may include rules on infrastructure, equipment, modes of production, processing and quality management, often stipulate more stringent requirements than required by law. These programs are responding to higher consumer requirements, needs for safety controls throughout the vertical chain of distribution, and changes in regulatory and liability requirements. Public and private standards do not only influence how safe the final goods are, but also affect the internal organization of firms, their strategic behavior and the organization of the supply chain. Companies are seeking efficient private means to assure the quality levels necessary to be acceptable to buyers and in compliance with regulations across multiple countries. Traceability systems are methods of record keeping that are used to trace a product along the agricultural supply chain (Golan et al., 2004). Implementing traceability is costly, but the information obtained by tracing a product’s history provides benefits to growers, handlers, and consumers of food products. Food safety failures were seen to damage reputation and to generate significant negative effects on consumer confidence and thus future sales and earnings. Ensuring food safety was considered a basic requirement to doing business in the food sector. This article discusses some of the major factors behind these developments. Regulatory systems are facing a number of new and continuing food safety challenges. Food safety controls, however, continue to focus predominantly on process-based requirements. Similar pressure has developed to ensure that product liability systems provide efficient incentives to food producers, processors, and distributors to deliver products of acceptable safety.