Private Food Safety Research Articles

Padrões de qualidade e segurança alimentares no terreno institucional brasileiro

Private food quality and safety standards are emerging as language of the food industry. The Brazilian market is experiencing the decline of the CEASAs, or Wholesale Produce Markets, and the expansion of supermarkets, including in the distribution of fresh produce. This growth is interpreted by the New Institutional Economy as the efficiency of private quality systems as compared to the purportedly inefficient public systems. Based on the political and cultural approach of the New Economic Sociology (NES), the article challenges the evidential nature of the institutions' efficiency, as well as the definition of quality and safety as neutral concepts. Based on the NES approach, these concepts can be seen as cultural constructs.

In Search of a Balanced Relationship: Public and Private Food Safety Standards and International Law

The purpose of this paper is thus to analyze how the interconnection between international food safety standards and the rules of free trade is playing out and what the end-result of such interplay is for the potentially conflicting objectives of free trade and food safety. In performing this analysis, the paper opposes the merits of two types of food safety standards, public and private standards, in order to determine which of them is more likely to constitute an appropriate regulatory model for transnational food safety in the context of the WTO-led liberalization of the international trade in food products. The paper opposes two concrete examples of such standards, namely the public Codex Alimentarius standards, which have been assigned a formal role by the WTO; and the private GLOBALG.A.P. Standard for agricultural products, which is developed in isolation from international trade rules.

Actors in Private Food Regulation: Taking Responsibility or Passing the Buck to Someone Else?

In recent years, retailers and their organizations are playing an active role in food safety regulation. They initiated several private food safety standards and compelled suppliers of food products to comply with these standards. Which actors are involved in decision-making in this type of private food regulation? This question is important for problems of effectiveness, legitimacy and accountability. Several categories of private actors are distinguished based on their position in the regulatory arrangement. Private regulatory arrangements do develop in course of time; in different stages of their development other actors may be involved. Finally, we distinguish between direct (in person) and indirect (representation) participation in decision making. Some cases of retail-driven private food safety arrangements are examined.

Policy Implications of Trends in Agribusiness Value Chains

Production and export of non-traditional agricultural products offer potential for economic growth and poverty reduction in developing countries. However, market access for small farmers is being undermined by the increasing complexity of global value chains in agribusiness. Increasing vertical coordination in global agribusiness value chains changes the requirements placed on small farmers. Policies aimed at supporting such farmers need to be realistic about the prospects for small farmer upgrading by large firms in global value chains and about how to respond to the new challenges posed by public and private food safety standards. In the light of these challenges, consideration should be given to policies that shift small farmers away from the most demanding global markets and global buyers. La production et l'exportation de produits agricoles non traditionnels presentent un potentiel pour la croissance economique et la reduction de la pauvrete dans les pays en developpement. Toutefois, l'acces au march...

Private food safety and quality standards for fresh produce exporters: The case of Hortico Agrisystems, Zimbabwe

There is evidence that the challenges of complying with stricter food safety and quality standards are acting to exclude small-scale producers from export supply chains for high-value agricultural products. The case of Hortico Agrisystems illustrates the considerable challenges and costs faced by supermarket suppliers in sourcing from a broad base of small-scale producers in the context of evolving food safety and quality standards. While small-scale producers are able to achieve levels of compliance at least equal to those of large-scale producers, multi-tiered and dynamic systems of control are required to maintain control. These need to include measures that facilitate compliance, incentives to reward good performance and penalties to punish non-compliance. In establishing a sustainable supply system in this context, both exporters and small-scale producers face a steep learning curve in adjusting to new requirements, further emphasising the need for supply chains to be responsive to change.

Private agri-food standards: Implications for food policy and the agri-food system

This paper provides a brief introduction to the evolution and nature of private food safety and quality standards, highlighting the resultant impacts on the structure and modus operandi of supply chains for agricultural and food products and the challenges posed for processes of agricultural development. It serves as an introduction to a series of papers that provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of knowledge regarding private food safety and quality standards in both an industrialised and developing country context. In so doing, it aims to provide a catalyst for further research on this rapidly evolving field of inquiry.

The rise of private food quality and safety standards: illustrations from Brazil

Over the past decade, the private sector has rapidly built up an array of private food standards to assure quality and safety in a fiercely competitive market. These private standards have sometimes been to fill in for missing public standards, especially for safety, and to differentiate products and build reputation, for both quality and safety. Moreover, private standards are increasingly related to meta-management systems assuring both quality and safety at all levels of a chain, enforcing and certifying the implementation of process standards. The privatization of standards has been important for both buyers and suppliers in the chain. They tend to be formulated and imposed by buyers (retailers and processors), and are key to their cost control and reputation with consumers, thus overall competitiveness. They are imposed on suppliers, who often find that the standards imply very substantial outlays for reporting, new equipment, and training. The lucky—a relatively small subset of the original set of suppliers—tend to find that meeting the standards, with formal certification in hand, benefits their business, opens new opportunities. The excluded tend to find themselves relegated to waning and unprofitable markets. The above points concerning the determinants and effects of the formulation and implementation of private standards are illustrated with cases from the dairy, coffee, wheat products, and coconut product chains in Brazil.

Food safety regulation: an overview of contemporary issues

This article discusses a number of issues that are influencing the evolution of food safety regulation in developed and, to a lesser extent, developing countries. Whilst not definitive, it aims to highlight those factors which are considered crucial to an understanding of contemporary food safety controls in both the public and private spheres. These issues include criteria applied to assess the need/justification for food safety regulation, relationships between public and private food safety control systems, alternative forms that public food safety regulation can take, strategic responses to food safety regulation, and the trade implications of national food safety controls. The article serves as an introduction to these issues, which are discussed at greater length in the other papers that make up this special issue of Food Policy.

Sustainability in the Diffusion of Innovations: Smallholder Nontraditional Agro‐Exports in Guatemala

I. Nontraditional Agro-Exports in Guatemala Since the late 1970s, Guatemala, like a number of other developing countries, has experienced an extraordinarily rapid growth in the production of nontraditional agro-exports (NTXs). The share of agricultural exports coming from NTXs grew from less than 6% in 1980 to more than 22% in 1992. Rationales behind the promotion of NTXs by governments and development agencies include seeking foreign exchange earnings, alternatives to depressed market conditions for traditional export crops, and rural poverty reduction. As part of the packages mandated by structural adjustment and trade liberalization programs, many national governments, including Guatemala’s, introduced policies in favor of NTX producers, such as export facilitation procedures, subsidy programs, and fiscal reforms. Trade agreements such as the Generalized System of Preferences and the Caribbean Basin Initiative created additional incentives for NTX exporters. In the Guatemalan context, private organizations and trade associations, such as the Association of Exporters of Nontraditional Products, played a catalytic role in promoting NTXs in the 1980s. As a potential new approach to rural development, international donors have invested heavily in the promotion of NTXs among smallholders. One such effort that received considerable attention is the agricultural cooperative Cuatro Pinos that was founded in 1979 with financial assistance from a Swiss development agency. Cooperative membership grew tenfold in the following 10 years, reaching more than 1,900 members in the late 1980s and operating in ten different villages. Pre-NTX agriculture in the region was dominated by the milpa sys-