Qualitätssicherungssysteme im türkischen Agribusiness

Abstract

As the implementation of certification systems and other food quality and safety systems has become a strong trend in Turkish agribusiness, there are no comprehensive studies in such field, which is considered of major significance for the future development of Turkey’s food industry. We went beyond existing studies by taking into account a broader set of food safety and quality assurance systems and agri-food industries. We considered a complete set of determinants of the implementation of food safety and quality system practices that take into account various Turkish agribusiness sectors rather than just one sector. Furthermore, it considered a broad spectrum of public and private standards. Many indicators were detected as incentives for enterprises to follow food safety and quality practices, comply with standards or even implement third-party audit-based certification schemes. The adoption of food safety and quality assurance practices was found to be very closely linked to objective data characterizing Turkish food processors, whereas subjective perceptions turned out to be insignificant. Legal form of ownership, region of ownership and control, firm size, being an exporter and major market served have a greater influence than industry subsector, level of foreign market sales and processed food share. Economic performance indicators as profitability, multifactor productivity, costs and reputation will provide insights into further developments in such area.With Turkey seeking EU accession, a series of reform packages were developed to fulfill the membership requirements (Akşit and Üstün 2009). However, despite these efforts, the process of harmonizing Turkish legislation with EU legislation is a slow one. For instance, food safety and quality assurance standards are not fully and effectively applied in the field, and many gaps still need to be filled in this regard. Many papers and reports have sought to evaluate the effectiveness of certain measures in meeting EU requirements among food enterprises in Turkey. However, firm operators’ perceptions of EU requirements regarding food safety and quality regulations are still unverified. Therefore, but seeks to better understand the perception and, thus, implementation of such EU requirements at the firm level. We revealed that perception of the EU requirements is very closely linked to the knowledge and the personal and economic characteristics of Turkish food processors. More precisely, improving knowledge about food safety and quality perceptions decisively increases firms’ ability to cope with the EU instructions. Such studies need to be extended and the alignment of Turkish legislation with EU legislation completed accordingly.