Food Safety Governance Research Articles

Critical Success Factors for Safer Food Supply Chains: Qualitative Evidence from Chinese and Vietnamese Fishery Manufacturers

ABSTRACT Food manufacturers must monitor food safety along the supply chain until it reaches the final customers, necessitating a successful food safety management system (FSMS). Underpinned by critical success factors (CSFs) theory, the context of Asian fishery supply chains is employed in this study to investigate manufacturers’ in-depth knowledge of CSFs for FSMS implementation. Various CSFs from three levels, including organization, market, and food-safety governance, are qualitatively identified and explained how they contribute to FSMS implementation through semi-structured interviews, numerous field trips and cross-national case analyses. Among 18 identified CSFs, human resource is the most concerning component among the organizational-level CSFs, especially, employees’ commitment, awareness, knowledge, and involvement. Supplier management and external market support from stakeholders play essential roles in ensuring high-quality and safer inputs for food businesses. Interestingly, food-safety governance affects FSMS as evidence to authorities that enterprises comply with requirements and offer competitive advantages for firms in international trading. The study findings broaden the understanding of CSF theory in food safety management and explain their impacts in the natural setting. Multiple study directions are suggested for a more proactive approach enabling food managers to identify improvement opportunities, as highlighted and exhibited by field study insights from practitioners.

Private actors and food safety governance in the Accra City Region: Implications for local food policy

Globally, private actors and civil society groups are increasingly participating in food safety governance. Although prevalent in developed countries, the phenomenon is emerging in developing countries. Using certification schemes, actors behind these governance arrangements exercise responsibilities over the food system through the enforcement of best practices, the promotion and sale of certified products, and the communication of diverse value-laden product attributes to consumers through labels. In Ghana, a new food safety governance arrangement – the Ghana Green Label Foundation – has emerged through the collaboration of multiple state and non-state actors. The arrangement represents the first successful introduction of a co-regulation regime in Ghana, achieving local market adoption and consumer patronage. This article examines the evolution of the Foundation, highlighting its trajectory towards market entry, for possible transfer of lessons into other geographic contexts. The location of this study, with a large informal food market sector, as well as the interdependence on peripheral areas and other farther regions for food supply, provide a unique context for adding to the international food governance literature. The article makes recommendations on how local policymakers could sustain the Foundation to contribute to long-term social, economic, and environmental sustainability goals.

Milk quality and safety in the informal sector in Assam, India: governance, perceptions, and practices

This paper explores how the safety of milk and dairy products is understood and managed within the informal dairy sector of Guwahati, the largest city in Assam, north-east India. The article contributes to a growing body of literature that questions negative assumptions about food safety in informal markets, and seeks to understand how access to safe and healthy food for all is, or can be, achieved in these markets. The study combines a literature review of the informal dairy sector in Assam and India with a field survey and key informant interviews. A survey of 113 producers, intermediaries, retailers, traditional processors and consumers, provides insights into how people think about the safety of milk, and the everyday practices they employ to mitigate food safety risks when trading and consuming dairy products. Our findings suggest that, in the absence of formal guarantees of quality and safety, consumers’ cultural practices and producers’ and traders’ knowledge likely reduce the risks of consuming raw milk. Despite the informal dairy sector receiving little direct government support in India, we found that at the state level, there has been some cooperation between government officials, small-scale producers and informal traders. We conclude that the absence of adverse relations between these groups, together with proactive attempts at collaboration, could inform other Indian states’ approaches to food safety governance, and are a positive foundation for future improvements to food safety in Assam’s dairy sector.

Interregional collaboration for food safety governance: the scheme design and performance evaluation with cases in China

The spatial spillover of food safety risks and the regional mobility of food enterprises make territorial governance inefficient, which calls for interregional collaboration to enhance food safety in the context of territorial governance. However, due to the lack of a collaborative food safety governance scheme, there has been no substantial progress in interregional collaboration for food safety governance in China. Therefore, this paper refines the three key elements of collaboration from the perspective of supply chain, economy and geography and puts forward the optimal zoning scheme of interregional collaboration for food safety governance. By analysing the evolution trend of interregional collaboration, we found China has already produced the germination of interregional collaboration in terms of food safety issues, though it has been slow and volatile. To promote the process of interregional collaboration, this paper also analyses the determinants of the coordinated regulatory performance of food safety. The results show that collaborative actions within regions can facilitate coordinated regulatory practice. The interregional difference in regulatory intensity and consumption patterns hinder the interregional collaboration for food safety governance, while the interregional difference in industrial structure inversely promotes the coordinated regulatory performance. These findings lend support to effective promotion of interregional collaboration.

Social Capital, Political Efficacy and Chinese Residents' Willingness to Participate in Food Safety Governance.

Residents play an important role as one of the main actors in food safety governance. To build a pattern of food safety risk co-governance, the positive and effective participation of residents is vital. This study first establishes a comprehensive analysis framework combining social capital theory and political efficacy theory. Data from a survey of 714 residents in Shandong Province, China, were analysed through structural equation modelling and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to examine the causal relationship between residents’ willingness to participate and its driving factors. The results indicated that: (1) reciprocity norm, institutional trust and social engagement have significant positive effects on willingness to participate; (2) political efficacy has a partial mediating effect in the relationship between social capital and willingness to participate; (3) fsQCA findings have four solutions to achieving residents’ strong willingness to participate; reciprocity norm, institutional trust and political efficacy are the core elements that affected residents’ high willingness to participate, whereas social engagement and sociodemographic variables are the non-core variables. Therefore, we put forward suggestions for improving residents’ willingness to participate in food safety governance, including improving the appeal expression and feedback mechanism, cultivating residents’ social capital and paying attention to the superposition effect of social capital and political efficacy.

Grid Supervision Path of Platform Food Safety Collaborative Governance Based on Big Data

Food safety is the focus of people’s attention. This year, there have a lot of bad pieces of news related to food safety, which has increased people’s attention to it. According to the requirements for traceability of platform food information attributes, the article aims to study the implementation of grids for food safety governance in the context of big data. This paper designs a nonconformity rate evaluation index to screen qualified food through the grid management of the area using big data processing under the DHRA copy management strategy to achieve the function of assisting food safety supervision. The experimental results of this paper show that grid management can effectively and quickly manage food safety problems. The method of this paper can also optimize the error of food detection, and the error can reach less than 2% in the end. It makes people’s lives safer and ensures that the food they consume is safer.

Edge Computing and Lightning Network Empowered Secure Food Supply Management

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of food safety and supply chain governance. In other words, we need to ensure traceability along the supply chain and support high-frequency transactions, effective data collections, etc. Thus, we posit the potential of using a lightning network, which is a decentralized traceable paradigm for achieving high-frequency transactions in blockchain-based systems. In addition, we also utilize edge computing to help facilitate data collection. However, a key challenge in securing food supplies is determining the optimal global transaction path in the lightning network while achieving efficiency and meeting the dynamic nature of food supply management. Thus, we propose a blockchain-edge scheme that utilizes our proposed dynamic programming to produce optimal solutions for selecting global transaction paths. Specifically, our scheme optimizes routing fees under existing constraints (e.g., transmission cost, computing resource consumption, and lightning network balance). The findings from our evaluations demonstrate the utility of our proposed approach in facilitating food safety management.

Why did China's cost‐reduction‐oriented policies in food safety governance fail? The collective action dilemma perspective

AbstractConsumer participation plays an important role in improving food safety. Current research shows that reducing associated costs can promote consumer participation; however, the cost‐reduction‐oriented policies adopted by the Chinese government has had little impact on consumer participation. This study explores the reasons for the failure of the Chinese cost‐reduction‐oriented policies in food safety governance from the perspective of the collective action dilemma. Building upon previous work and using data from an online survey of 1229 consumers in China, we use a mediating effect model to examine the causal relationship between the low participation rate and the high participation cost. The results suggest that low consumer participation in food safety governance is due to free‐riding built on the actions of others. The problem with the cost‐reduction‐oriented policies is that they addressed high participation costs, identified by this study as the consequence of non‐participation, but paid little attention to the actual cause – free‐riding. Our research sheds light on the collective action dilemma from a new perspective to understand consumer participation. Assessing the relationship between participation cost, free‐riding, and the actual participation behavior in food safety governance could lead to a new line of theoretical and empirical inquiry for studying collective action in public affairs.

‘All we have to do is be uncertain’: assessing the ‘amplification of institutional incertitude’ in European food safety and risk governance

This paper addresses efforts made by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) in recent years to foreground the identification, representation, and public disclosure of scientific uncertainty in its risk assessment procedures and communications, a process aptly characterised in this paper as the ‘amplification of institutional incertitude’. We argue that while the introduction of EFSA’s novel uncertainty reforms has opened a welcome space for academic and policy dialogue, this strategic initiative will nevertheless struggle to reconcile ongoing stakeholder concerns about the legitimacy, direction, and authority of the agency’s scientific opinions and expert advice. We observe that the instigation of EFSA’s uncertainty reforms is prefigured by a longstanding policy tension running at the heart of the agency’s directives requiring officials to be both open and transparent on the one hand, whilst being free from political influence and remaining distanced from risk management decisions on the other. The uncertainty reforms adopted may accordingly be understood as a way for EFSA to reconcile a current ‘uncertainty paradox’ facing the agency by accommodating wider concerns about uncertainty and opening itself up to further scrutiny of its risk assessment processes without relinquishing independence. We argue that prior policy tensions are unlikely to be resolved by simply ‘being uncertain’ however, because this prescriptive ‘solution’ offers only limited congruency with the wider problem diagnoses facing the agency. Moreover, we caution that as institutional incertitude is increasingly amplified, EFSA will in turn be further prompted to rethink and refresh its stakeholder engagement initiatives in order to improve its standing in the food safety field amidst ongoing criticisms and calls for greater inclusion, oversight, and input that follow. Finally, we offer some policy recommendations and highlight the need for future lines of research inquiry to take greater account of the socio-political context in which the assessment and communication of uncertainty takes place.

From the Chief Executive and IFST News

From the Chief Executive and <scp>IFST</scp> News

ShrimpChain: A blockchain-based transparent and traceable framework to enhance the export potentiality of Bangladeshi shrimp

Despite substantial progress achieved with shrimp production during the last three and a half decades, growth of shrimp export remains minimal in Bangladesh. In the absence of effective traceability and transparency practices, a wide range of malpractice occurs both at the production and post-harvest stages. Traditional paper-based record-keeping methods for the shrimp supply chain are disparate and, therefore, cannot provide efficient traceability capacity and holistic view of the supply chain. These limit the identification of any issues in earlier juncture to proactively ensure food safety, best practice, and good governance. Addressing this multiplexed challenge, we present here ShrimpChain, a public-private hybrid blockchain-based conceptual framework. Focusing on the export market and utilizing existing technologies, the conceptual framework addresses the traceability, transparency, and certification challenges associated with shrimp export. In this framework, from the post-larva purchasing to the final packaging stage, relevant data for every stage will be entered by the associated actors via mobile/web app or Internet of Things devices to the blockchain network. Data authentication will be achieved by a novel approach of incorporating community consensus in conjunction with the machine-derived data entry timestamping method. Instead of the traditional central and endpoint certification approach, we propose a distributed and accumulative score-based certification approach that will grade packaged shrimps according to the completeness and accuracy of the authenticated data entered during different stages. Such distributed approach of certification will enhance not only food safety but also the quality and compliance to best practices. Most importantly, engaging shrimp farmers in the safety and quality assurance as well as to the certification process will empower them to have better control over the market and incentive to produce high-quality shrimp for high-value market.

Food Safety Governance and Guardianship: The Role of the Private Sector in Addressing the EU Ethylene Oxide Incident

Sesame seeds within the European Union (EU) are classified as foods not of animal origin. Two food safety issues associated with sesame seeds have emerged in recent years, i.e., Salmonella contamination and the presence of ethylene oxide. Fumigation with ethylene oxide to reduce Salmonella in seeds and spices is not approved in the EU, so its presence in sesame seeds from India was a sentinel incident sparking multiple trans-European product recalls between 2020–2021. Following an interpretivist approach, this study utilises academic and grey sources including data from the EU Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) database to inform a critical appraisal of current EU foods not of animal origin legislation and associated governance structures and surveillance programs. This is of particular importance as consumers are encouraged towards plant-based diets. This study shows the importance of collaborative governance utilizing data from company testing and audits as well as official regulatory controls to define the depth and breadth of a given incident in Europe. The development of reflexive governance supported by the newest technology (e.g., blockchain) might be of value in public–private models of food safety governance. This study contributes to the literature on the adoption of risk-based food safety regulation and the associated hybrid public–private models of food safety governance where both regulators and private organizations play a vital role in assuring public health.

Digital Technology, Knowledge Level, and Food Safety Governance: Implications for National Healthcare System.

Exploring the intrinsic relationship between digital technology and the efficiency of food safety supervision contributes to a better understanding of the role of digital technology in food safety supervision and how to maximize its influence. This study employed sample data from 31 regions in China between 2015 and 2017 for an empirical analysis of the correlation between the two and to examine the moderating effects of the knowledge levels of food producers and consumers. The results show that the development of digital technology contributes to enhancing the efficiency of food safety supervision. In this process, the higher the knowledge level of consumers, the greater the positive promotional effect of digital technology. On the contrary, when the knowledge level of producers is higher, it is not conducive to enhancing the effect of digital technology on the efficiency of food safety supervision. The author holds the view that this is related to the fact that employees in the food production and manufacturing industry have insufficient moral and legal knowledge. This not only limits the effect of digital technology on enhancing the efficiency of food safety supervision, but also opens the door to illegal production for some unprincipled producers. The policy implications are that digital technology should be used to improve food safety supervision, the moral and legal knowledge of food producers should be improved, and consumers should be encouraged to use digital technology more in the pursuit of food safety. Implications for national healthcare system would be also discussed in our paper.

From Slow Food to Slow Meat: Slowing Line Speeds to Improve Worker Health and Animal Welfare in Canadian Abattoirs

This article examines the regulation of production line speeds in Canadian meat and poultry processing facilities to better understand their impact on worker safety and animal welfare. The article begins with an overview of the regulatory framework that sets line speed conditions in federally licenced facilities. It notes how recent shifts in food safety governance facilitate increased speeds that endanger workers and animals on the kill floor. First, it highlights tensions between regulatory objectives in the Safe Food for Canadians Regulations that focus on food safety targets and humane handling guidelines respectively. It then turns to the occupational health and safety risks associated with working at meat and poultry processing facilities. Particular emphasis is placed on the way that COVID-19 outbreaks in Canadian slaughterhouses drew attention to this grueling work that had previously been ignored. The article concludes by noting that the pandemic has created a unique policy window to slow down production speeds; a policy window that should be seized.

Risk Governance Mechanism of Food Safety Based on Product Reputation

Food matters public daily lives, it is both practically and theoretically imperative to enhance the governance of food safety risks. In this paper, a three-tier supply chain model involving government regulatory authorities, food producers and customers is established for designing a risk governance mechanism of food safety based on a reputation updating model. Meanwhile, the study also explores the influence of reputation on product quality and sales price for food producers, as well as the accuracy in testing product quality of government and the effectiveness of governmental regulations. The results show that product price is positively correlated with the reputation, and negatively related the government's rewards and punishments. When the government improves accuracy of food sample testing and enhances rewards and strengthens punishments for food producers, product quality can be effectively controlled, sales prices can be balanced, and producer’s profits can be improved. Finally, this paper provides insight on the risk governance of food safety through many observations. It is found that a relatively slow process for producers to improve company reputation by improving its product quality, but issues with food quality and safety afford a devastating blow to the company reputation once this information is released.

Stakeholder perspectives on infant formula safety governance in China: a decade after the melamine crisis

ABSTRACT This paper critically engages with dynamics of the Chinese food safety governance infrastructure following the melamine crisis. It presents a qualitative analysis of 16 in-depth stakeholder interviews in Hunan, Hubei, and Henan. We reveal tensions between a segmented model of governance and a centralized model, between a centralized top-down model and stakeholder participation, and between a public model and a private, decentral market where corporate reputation must result in transparency and trust. Stakeholders also see gaps between ideals of inclusive, transparent, and participatory governance, and effective problem-solving. Governance of food safety in China, even when targeting inclusion and public accountability, remains heavily dependent on the central state as a pivotal actor.

Food safety: A policy history and introduction to avenues for economic research

AbstractFoodborne illness ranks seventh globally among major health hazards, falling between air pollution and tuberculosis. Yet food safety is relatively understudied by economists. This paper provides an introduction to food safety for economists new to the subject. It presents an overview of the problem, the history of major policy reforms, and the structure of food safety governance in the United States and internationally. It identifies potential opportunities for economists in interdisciplinary food safety research and presents one example of this kind of collaboration, namely research focused on identifying the food sources of US Campylobacter infections.JEL CLASSIFICATIONI1; Q17; Q18

A bibliometric analysis of food safety governance research from 1999 to 2019.

Although the number of food governance‐related studies increased rapidly in the recent decade, the current academic research still lacked systematic integration of food safety governance. To clarify the development trends of research therein, this study summarized research articles concerning food safety governance by the Web of Science Core Collection. An in‐depth bibliometric analysis was then conducted through CiteSpace to summarize the current characters and hot spots of food safety governance research, and predicted future research trends. Results showed that food safety governance was multidisciplinary, which included environmental science, food science, economics, and agriculture. The United States had the largest number of relevant articles, and Wageningen University was the most influential scientific research institution. Among all the journals in this field, Food Policy ranked the first in publication volume and co‐citation frequency. The development of food safety governance research was divided into three processes, namely the separate formulation of the standards for public and private sectors, the joint implementation of these standards, and co‐governance by multiple sectors. The most popular research hot spots in this field were food safety policy integration and public–private partnership of food safety governance. Lower‐ and middle‐income countries focused more on food supply and food system design, and regrettably not on food safety. Higher‐income countries cared more about food safety and food nutrition. Besides, researchers of higher‐income countries also concentrated on consumers' voices in participating in food safety governance. Food safety co‐governance, online food governance, the willingness to buy safe food, and food safety governance under pandemics were considered as future research directions.

Precautionary authoritarianism and the contested governance of Chinese food safety

ABSTRACT Chinese food policy has changed over the last two decades from a productivist focus to embracing a precautionary approach to food safety. What are the drivers of this change? And what are the implications for the Chinese political regime? While acknowledging the relevance of global dynamics, we claim that domestic dynamics have largely accounted for this change. A series of food scandals in the 2000s has caused concerns among Chinese consumers and ultimately lead to a contested governance of food safety in the nation that has challenged the legitimacy of the regime itself. The government has responded by introducing new precautionary measures, as theorists of responsive authoritarianism would predict. Contrary to such predictions, though, the Chinese government toughened provisions to repress violations. Due to these characteristics, we conclude that the Chinese approach to food safety that emerged after the food scandals can be synthesised as a form of precautionary authoritarianism.

Industrial applications of selected JFS articles

Industrial applications of selected <i>JFS</i> articles