As the issue of food safety became one of the important public agenda, consumer concern for food safety became the general public concern. The Korea U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA) completion allowing import of U.S. beef to Korea has turned into a massive public uproar and a series of demonstrations, revealing widespread concerns on the part of Korean producers and consumers about government food safety regulations and mishandling of the beef trade requirement. The mishandling of public concerns for BSE (...) on U.S. beef import by the administrators led to a breakdown of the relationship between the public and the government and a loss of consumer confidence in Korea’s food safety system. The KORUS FTA beef crisis raised the issues of government accountability and the importance of understanding moral and ethical aspects of food safety management that pose perceived risk for BSE by the Korean citizen. The aim of this paper is to address the importance of understanding consumer concerns, food ethics and of appropriate risk communication in dealing with politically and publically sensitive food safety issues. This is achieved by assessing the factors that contributed to the conflict between the Korean government and the Korean public over the KORUS FTA beef agreement. (shrink)

In this paper I want to show that consumer concerns can be implemented in food chains by organizing ethical discussions of conflicting values that include them as participators. First, it is argued that there are several types of consumer concerns about food and agriculture that are multi-interpretable and often contradict each other or are at least difficult to reconcile without considerable loss. Second, these consumer concerns are inherently dynamic because they respond to difficult and complex societal and technological situations and (...) developments. For example, because of the rising concern with global warming, carbon dioxide absorption of crops is now attracting public attention, which means that new requirements are being proposed for the environmentally friendly production of crops. Third, there are different types of consumers, and their choices between conflicting values differ accordingly. Consumers use different weighing models and various types of information in making their food choices. Changing food chains more in accordance with consumer concerns should at least take into account the multi-interpretable, dynamic, and pluralist features of consumer concerns, for example, in traceability schemes. In discussing usual approaches such as codes, stakeholder analysis, and assurance schemes, I conclude that these traditional approaches can be helpful. However, in cases of dynamic, pluralistic, and uncertain developments, maintaining some pre-existing evaluating scheme or some clear cut normative hierarchy, such as codes or assurance schemes, can be disastrous in undermining new ethical desirable initiatives. Instead of considering ethical standards and targets as fixed, which is done with codes and schemes, it is more fruitful to emphasize the structure of the processes in which ethical weighing of relevant consumer concerns get shaped. The concept of “Ethical Room for Maneuver” (ERM) is constructed to specify the ethical desirable conditions under which identification and weighing of paramount values and their dilemmas can be processed. The main aims of the ERM are making room in all the links of the food chain for regulating and implementing the relevant consumer concerns by (1) balancing and negotiating, (2) supporting information systems that are relevant and communicative for various consumer groups and (3) organizing consumer involvement in the links of the food chain. The social and political context of agriculture and food production, particularly in Europe, gives ample opportunity for implementing several types of Ethical Rooms for Maneuver. Finally, I discuss several types of Ethical Rooms for Manoeuvre in the food chains that can be communicated by means of specific traceability schemes to less involved stakeholders with the potential consequence that the stakeholders will be motivated to be more involved. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to explore how food can be analyzed in terms of signs and codes of everyday life, and especially how food can be used to express ethical concerns. The paper investigates the potential of a semiotic conceptual analysis: How can the semiotic approach be used to analyze expressions of ethics and food ethics in everyday life? The intention is to explore from a theoretical point of view and with constructed cases, how semiotics can be used (...) to analyze the role of food as an expression of ethics in everyday life among families, friends, and colleagues: How do foodstuffs function as signs of ethics in everyday life? How is food used to send signals about care and concern? How are the signs of food ethics perceived? It is concluded that analyzing ethical considerations with respect to food with the help of the semiotic model can show us perspectives that otherwise would be difficult to see and thus we can address everyday food ethical issues that otherwise might not be noted. The semiotic approach to food ethics in everyday life is a conceptual framework that can be used to draw attention to certain domains and fields of food ethical behavior that otherwise would tend to remain implicit and unspoken. (shrink)

The relation between food and morality is not a novel concern in Philosophy. There have been discussions about the same in traditions as early as the Vedic and Buddhist traditions in Indian philosophy. While food has always been a significant topic of discussion in ethics, there has been the upcoming of a new understanding of the relation between food and morality in the twenty-first century, namely—food ethics.

In policy-making the consumption of specially labelled products, and its role in improving the welfare of livestock, has attracted considerable attention. There is in many countries a diverse market for animal welfare-friendly products which is potentially confusing and may lack transparency. We ask whether special quality labels that involve medium levels of animal welfare, as compared with labels promoting premium levels of animal welfare, have a role to play in promoting improvements in animal welfare. The Danish pork market is our (...) reference case, but we also widen the context by comparing the markets for pork in three other European countries. Our findings suggest that in order to improve animal welfare through demand for welfare-friendly products it is important to maintain separate the market for products with strong animal welfare profiles from markets for products with medium levels of animal welfare where, often, animal welfare is bundled together with other food quality attributes. We conclude that such quality labels may indeed play an important role in promoting higher animal welfare standards provided that they offer real improvements in animal welfare as compared with standard products. They will be attractive to consumers with a positive, but not especially strong interest in animal welfare as an individual food attribute who would otherwise be inclined to purchase standard products. (shrink)

Nowadays, product labels are often used to enable consumers choose products that are friendly to the environment and to animals, natural, healthful and socially responsible. However, certain features of commonly used labels limit their usefulness. This thesis identifies a number of these limitations and presents an innovative labeling approach designed to address them. More specifically, the following features limit the usefulness of the commonly used “endorsement” labels: they (1) offer a single certification grade, the requirements for which (2) are ‘static’ (...) in the sense that certification standards do not depend on the evolution of the market, (3) are voluntary, and (4) are defined by stakeholders. Consequently, common labels fail to remove information asymmetry regarding the ethical performance of non-certified products; limit the opportunities for moderately –yet positively– concerned consumers to reveal ethical preferences; fail to motivate product improvement beyond certification standard; allow the emergence of a confusing variety of overlapping labels; and allow production stakeholders to resist socially desirable certification requirements when these are unfavorable to their business. In shoft, ethical labels currently fail to unleash on ethical aspects of production the inherently ‘free-market’ dynamics according to which products and firms must continuously innovate and improve, or else become obsolete and vanish. As an alternative, this thesis proposes and works out an innovative “comparative” labeling approach that is designed to address these limitations. The proposed type of label is (1) multi-grade or continuous, (2) dynamic, (3) mandatory, and (4) society-defined. An example of this type of label is given at Figure 1. Figure 1: Two variations of an example intuitive color-coded label format. The variations depict different sets of product attributes, and also different aggregation levels of the Environmental Impact attribute. This type of labeling could motivate the creation of a ‘vitruous cyrcle’ or ‘race to the top’, in which the ethical performance of products moves to the direction that society at large regards as ‘positive’. This process is outlined at Figure 2. Figure 2: Expected effects on the environmental performance of marketed product substitutes from the introduction of the proposed labeling system, in three phases. In Phase 1, the label is introduced on product substitutes available in the market (supply). In Phase 2, the supply evolves. To the standard (negative) incentives for cost minimization, are now added (positive) incentives to avoid negative reputation and to improve further the environmental frontiers of production through innovation. In Phase 3, the label is adjusted (updated) to the evolved supply. Products that failed to improve since last update might become downgraded (blue arrows). It is argued that the proposed labeling approach has the potential to boost ethical consumerism as a force for the ethical optimization of the market. This can be directly relevant to issues about which society is concerned, and democratically elected goverments have limited ability to regulate. Among possible uses of the method developed to assess the relative performance of substitute products, are the comparative ranking of presently available labels (so as to inform consumers on the relative impact of different certified products), the justification of the allocation of incentives and discincentives in state policy, and also the ethical optimization and promotion of own production by socially responsible suppliers. Overall, the described approach aspires to transform markets into instruments that work to the direction willed by society, so as to bring market-driven and continuous improvement for production aspects of societal concern, such as environmental and socioeconomic aspects of the real economy. (shrink)

The discourse about traceability in food chains focused on traceability as means towards the end of managing health risks. This discourse witnessed a call to broaden traceability to accommodate consumer concerns about foods that are not related to health. This call envisions the development of ethical traceability. This paper presents a justification of ethical traceability. The argument is couched in liberal distinctions, since the call for ethical traceability is based on intuitions about consumer rights to informed choice. The paper suggests (...) that two versions of ethical traceability find justification. The first version of ethical traceability entails that governments ensure that all consumers are provided with foods that respect some threshold level of, e.g., animal welfare that is supported by an overlapping consensus. The second version of ethical traceability entails that food producers provide consumers with products, and sufficient information about these products, that are relevant for reasonable, non-superficial values that are not supported by an overlapping consensus. Governments should facilitate this in the sense that consumers are not provided with misinformation about characteristics of foods that are relevant for reasonable, non-superficial values that are not supported by an overlapping consensus. (shrink)

Dietary guidelines are mostly issued by agrifood departments or agencies of governments, and are the result of power play between interest groups and values. They have considerable influence over food preferences and purchases of consumers. Ethical problems are at stake not only with respect to power strategies and their influence on consumers. In this paper I will consider three different types of guidelines: a nutrient oriented type, a process oriented type and a meal oriented type. In the nutrient oriented guidelines (...) healthy nutrients and food stuffs are mentioned that excel in containing one or more ‘healthy’ nutrients. Bio- and nutrition scientists and the producers of nutrients, like the sugar, dairy and animal industry, have a lot of influence in this variant. The nutrient oriented framing of food is focussed on individual health. Individuals are implicitly addressed to take responsibility for their own long term health; they have to acquire surveillance and cognitive skills in interpreting their bio data. They don’t need to acquire skills to cook. In the process oriented type, foods and ingredients are categorized according to minimal, refined and reconstituted production processes. Nutrition scientists have the last say here. Consumers do need some food skills to handle fresh products. In the meal oriented guidelines, politicians, social scientists and fresh food producers have prominent responsibilities with respect to the formulation of the guidelines and their application. Buying fresh products, preparing and eating together are the main themes. Food is framed in terms of cooking, and eating and sharing meals. Consumers have to spend time in buying fresh ingredients and cooking; they have to develop food capabilities. The formulation of dietary guidelines is not a neutral operation, but determined by controversies about framings of food and health, responsibilities and also by integrity and self-confidence of experts. It is striking that biological and nutrition scientists often proclaim to possess the final truth on the healthiness of nutrients, and heap scorn on diet gurus. They don’t care that their often incoherent recommendations cause a lot of confusion with consumers and sometimes even lack of trust. I discuss these themes in the paper and will also give some arguments why in the current situation the meal oriented type is ethically more acceptable. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that there is a duty to inform consumers about the environmental impact of foods, and discuss what this duty entails and to whom it falls. We analyze previous proposals that justify ethical traceability with arguments from sustainability and the respect for the autonomy of consumers, showing that they cannot ground a duty to inform. We argue instead that the duty rests on the right of consumers not to be harmed, insofar as consumers have an interest (...) in the morality of their own agency that is frustrated if they are not informed about the environmental impact of the production and transport of what they consume. Our argument detaches the regulation of labeling from substantive theories of environmental ethics or perfectionist conceptions of citizens’ responsibility, thus defending a case for labeling that is compelling also for those who take the role of the state to be limited to the prevention of harm. (shrink)

In a world of glossy corporate social responsibility reports, the shallowness of the actual CSR results may well be its counterpart. We claim that the possible gaps between aspirations and implementations are due to the company's overrating abilities to deal with the irrational and complex moral world of business. Many academic approaches aim to lift business ethics up to a higher level by enhancing competences but will fail because they are too rationalistic and generalistic to match the pluralistic and situational (...) practice constituted by the mosaic of values and set of constraints. This is demonstrated by describing and analyzing the CSR development of the multinational caterer Sodexo and in particular its Dutch branch. We explain what they do and why they are not successful. We present a new tool named Ethical Room for Maneuver that centers experiences and concrete situations in a playground of inquiry and experiment to enhance abilities to operate in themoral world and to meliorate business and society with more effectiveness. (shrink)