Ethical Traceability and Communicating Food

The theme of this book evolved from the idea of linking three concepts around food: traceability, ethics and informed choice. We believe that the current devel- ment and implementation of traceability in the agri-food sector offers an interesting way not only of handling food safety but also of addressing and communicating ethical issues arising from current food production practices. Practices in the agri-food sector worry food consumers (as we all are, since we need to eat and drink to stay alive). But how can consumers act upon their concerns? Paradoxically, although consumers are bombarded with information on food – from the media, the food industry, food authorities, NGOs and interest groups – details about how foods are actually produced is often hard to find. Much of the infor- tion available is superficial, conflicting or partial, and it is hard for consumers seeking to mak e informed food choices to know which information to trust. The consumers we interviewed for this project felt that information about food products was withheld and manipulated. Traceability, which provides a record of the history and journey of a given food, and which is increasingly used in the food sector for legal and commercial reasons, has the potential to communicate a more authentic picture of how food is produced.

Traceability – the ability to track a product from farm to plate – is now widely used in the food sector for a range of purposes: it allows companies to improve efficiency, facilitates product recall, and helps producers flag the specific characteristics of their goods. But traceability systems are mainly designed and used by the people directly involved in the food chain. The people at the end of the food chain – food consumers – have little say in which attributes are traced, and can rarely access the information stored in traceability systems.

This book draws on philosophical discourses (like ethics, political philosophy and philosophy of law) around food ethics and empirical research in three important food chains (UK bread, Danish bacon and Greek olive oil) to argue that ethical traceability systems could be used to communicate food information to consumers, allowing them not only to make food choices consistent with their own values, but also to play a more informed role in the way food is produced and distributed. It will appeal to academics, students and policy makers with an interest in traceability, food ethics and food policy.