Abstract
Rapid globalization of the agrifood industry has important impacts on international trade and quality management (QM). Likewise, the European Union has negotiated a series of bilateral free trade agreements. Of note was the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the United States of America, where the debate focused on the mutual recognition and harmonization of quality standards, especially for agricultural and food products. This topic offered the mainstream media excellent substances for coverage. This paper explores German print media, television, and radio on the importance of international quality standards in the agrifood sectors in light of the TTIP. A quantitative and qualitative empirical content analysis was performed to investigate media reporting regarding (a) it is scientific character, (b) the use of the term “quality standards” of the agrifood industry, and (c) the reporting on the agrifood industry and QM linked with TTIP, focused on harmonization. The results showed that interrelations between QM and global trade were not presented to recipients in-depth. A trend toward information asymmetries in recipient’s knowledge is indicated. The study addresses recommendations for future collaborations between media, policy-makers, and further cooperation in the mutual recognition and harmonization of quality standards and control procedures within global trade.
Highlights
In the European Union (EU), several regulations on food safety and quality management (QM) in the agrifood sector apply to all Member States
The Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations started in the second half of 2013 and three rounds of negotiations were completed by the end of 2013, reporting was rather low
Of the 13th round of negotiations, 28% of the contributions appeared as debates on regulatory cooperation [6] that had relevance for the agrifood sectors occurred during this round
Summary
In the European Union (EU), several regulations on food safety and quality management (QM) in the agrifood sector apply to all Member States. On 25 July 2018, the two partners launched a new phase of the Transatlantic Partnership [8] and agreed on a joint declaration They agreed to completely eliminate tariffs, non-tariff barriers to trade, and subventions. With the election of the 46th US President, Joe Biden, on 20 January 2021, much optimism has been expressed by the EU side and in Germany that the new administration will inject new impetus into transatlantic trade relations [12,13,14,15] This is a clear sign that trade relations between the two partners are gaining momentum and the mainstream media will once again report on the negotiations, with the aim of improving recipient’s knowledge
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