ARTICLE IN PRESS

Int. J. Production Economics 113 (2008) 107122

www.elsevier.com/locate/ijpe

Quality and safety standards in the food industry,

developments and challenges
Jacques Trienekens, Peter ZuurbierI
Management Studies Group, Wageningen University, Hollandseweg 1, 6706 KN Wageningen, The Netherlands
Accepted 20 February 2007
Available online 13 November 2007

Abstract
Consumer concerns related to food safety scandals and globalization of food production have resulted in a global and
interconnected system for the production and distribution of food. In the last decade many public and private standards on
food safety and quality have been developed as a result of these developments. Currently, there is proliferation of
standards worldwide. One effect is that, in particular, companies from developing countries and emerging economies have
problems to comply with these standards. Another important effect is increasing marginal costs of certication and
accreditation, which also puts pressure on company prots in industrialized countries. The combined impacts of these
effects ask for strategies to revalue the cost/effectiveness of the certication and accreditation system.
r 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Quality and safety standards; Food system; Chain approach; Publicprivate; Implementation and impact

1. Introduction
1.1. The need for food safety standards
Consumers in industrialized countries demand
food products of high and consistent quality in
broad assortments throughout the year and for
competitive prices. Todays consumer has become
increasingly concerned about the quality and safety
of food and the negative effects of bio-industrial
production. It is estimated that millions of people in
OECD countries get ill every year from food
contamination (Rocourt et al., 2003). Important
Corresponding author. Tel.: +31 317 484160;

fax: +31 317 485454.

E-mail address: Jacques.Trienekens@wur.nl (J. Trienekens).
I
Peter.Zuurbier@wur.nl

causes are salmonella, campylobacter and E. coli O

157. Moreover, consumers can nd recall announcements almost weekly in any newspaper. Even
though food products seem to be safer than ever
before, from a technical point of view and due to
many quality control programs, the safety perception of consumers has decreased signicantly.
At the same time, food sectors have rapidly
internationalized. Market demand is no longer
conned to local or regional supply. Retailers and
food industries now source their products from all
over the world, transforming the food industry
towards an interconnected system with a large
variety of complex relationships. Currently, even
fresh produce shipped from halfway around the
world can be offered at competitive prices. This has
spurred an enormous growth of product assortment
in the supermarkets (a large Western supermarket in

0925-5273/$ - see front matter r 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.ijpe.2007.02.050

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the early 1990s carried an assortment of on average

10,000 articles, now it carries more than 30,000
articles).
These developments have changed the production, trade and distribution of food products
beyond recognition. Governments, both national
and international, are responding to this by imposing new legislation and regulations to ensure safe
and animal-friendly production, restricted pollution
and to economize on the use of resources. Examples
are the Codex Alimentarius standards (FAO/
WHO), The General Food Law (European Union
(EU) 2002/178) and the EU-BSE regulations.
For food businesses this implies placing more
emphasis on quality and safety control, on traceability of food products and on environmental
issues and, at the same time, shifting from bulk
production towards production of specialities with
high added value. Furthermore, because of their
embeddedness in the global economy, collaboration
with other parties becomes important for all
businesses to achieve safe and high-quality food
products for the consumer. This means that business strategies must now move their focus from
traditional economical and technological interests
to topical issues such as the safety and healthfulness
of food products, animal friendliness, the environment, etc. These processes are affecting the entire
food chain from producer through to retailer.
To deal with these challenges, companies around
the world are increasingly using standard quality
assurance systems to improve the quality and safety
of products and production processes. Quality
assurance systems enable the application and
verication of control measures intended to assure
the quality and safety of food. They are required
at each step in the food production chain to
ensure safe food and to show compliance with
regulatory and customer requirements. Governments have an important role in providing policy
guidance on the most appropriate quality assurance
systems and verifying/auditing their implementation
as a means of regulatory compliance (FAO, 2002).
Furthermore, there is a denite move from the old
end-of-line product inspection approach to a new
environment of a quality assurance approach where
the suppliers in the chain assume responsibility for
safety.
During the last decade there was a strong trend
towards quality certication by large Western
retailers (Jahn et al., 2004a, b). Private safety
control systems, standards and certication pro-

grams are used to respond to higher consumer

expectation, because quality is no longer related
to the product alone, but also to the characteristics
of the production and distribution processes
(Holleran et al., 1999; Jahn et al., 2004a, b).
Contrary to more general quality systems like
HACCP and ISO, systems of retailers often cover
more parties in the chain (Trienekens, 2004).
Examples of these certication systems are British
Retail Consortium, European Retail Good Agricultural Practices (EUREP-GAP) and Safe Quality
Food.
Not all companies are able to follow demands
pushed by Western markets. This is especially
difcult for companies from developing countries.
Developing countries are becoming more and more
integrated in the global food market due to the
increase of consumer demand in Western countries
for year-round supply of exotic products and global
sourcing of Western retailers and food industries.
This means, however, that developing countries
must adapt to the stringent quality and safety
standards and regulations in these markets. They
must also gain better control over production, trade
and distribution of their agricultural products in
order to guarantee traceability of their products and
to operate in a cost-effective way so as to compete
on the global market.
1.2. Quality and safety characteristics of food
production
Food products and production processes have a
number of specic characteristics that inuence
product quality and quality assurance in production
processes (Ziggers and Trienekens, 1999; Vorst van
der, 2000):





Quality variation between different producers

and between different lots of produce, due to,
e.g., weather conditions, biological variation and
seasonality, but also as a possible result of
variations in production.
Perishability of produce and fresh products. For
many materials shelf-life constraints apply.
Production yields are often uncertain due to, for
example, weather conditions and quality variation within and between lots.
There are special demands for storage and
transportation, such as cooling facilities and
hygienic measurements.

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In relation to these characteristics some specic

hazards exist in the production and distribution of
food:

Because batches in many food industries are

mixed, cross-contamination of batches is a
general problem. Another reason for the occurrence of cross-contamination is the use of the
same resources for the production of different
(inter-mediate) products
Most food industries have many sources of raw
materials. Because of internationalization of food
chains and networks, sourcing becomes more and
more international. This makes quality assurance
hard to achieve.
Recycling of products or semi-nished products
is common in food-processing industries. In
many cases, end-products that do not meet
quality standards and waste or by-products can
be recycled.
Most food chains incorporate many actors with
formal and informal relationships. In a food
chain transactions often take place through arms
length relationships. Solid administration of
transactions often lacks.

To effectively address quality and safety demands

facing businesses, a multi-disciplinary and chain

-Choice of seed variety

-Seed protection

-Harvesting method
-Hygienic conditions
picking
-Choice of clean fruits
-Protection of harvested
fruits from sun, insects

approach to food quality and safety is necessary,

addressing technological, logistical and economical
and organizational aspects in an integrated way. To
illustrate the manifold of inuences on quality in
food chains, Fig. 1 depicts the variety of factors that
inuence quality in a fruit chain. In this article, we
focus on the development, application and consequences of food safety and quality standards from
an international food chain perspective. Section 2
describes public and private food safety and quality
standards. Section 3 will discuss the implementation
of standards in different regions in the world.
Section 4 goes into implementation processes and
costs and benets of standards. Section 5 contains
conclusions and discussion.
2. Food quality standards
2.1. Global and international regulations on food
safety and quality
On a global level, in particular, the Food and
Agricultural Organisation (FAO), the World Health
Organisation (WHO), both UN organizations, and
the World Trade Organisation (WTO) deal with
food safety issues. In 1962, as a result of the Food
Standards Programme, the Codex Alimentarius was
established by the FAO and WHO to act as an

PLANTING

GROWING

-In-store handling
-Cool chain conditions
(packaging, temperature)
Storage on display
under fresh conditions

-Irrigation (drop by
drop)
-Use of pesticides
-Protection from frost,
insects,...

HARVEST

TRANSPORT
-Elimination of foreign
bodies (wood, ..)
-Packaging quality

109

-Loading/unloading
conditions
-Respect of the cool
chain conditions

SORTING

PROCESSING

-Hygienic conditions
-Tests: physical,
chemical, microbiological and sensory

RETAIL

Fig. 1. Factors inuencing quality in a fruit chain.

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umbrella organization for policy making regarding

food on a global level. The aim of the Codex is to
protect public health and to support balanced trade
relationships in food. For this purpose standards
are developed. Codex Alimentarius food standard
issues range from specic raw and processed
materials characteristics to food hygiene, pesticides
residues, contaminants and labelling, to analysis
and sampling methods (Luning et al., 2002).
Since the establishment of the WTO in 1995,
Codex-standards are used in trade disputes. The
Codex currently counts 171 member countries,
representing 98% of the world population.
The Codex Alimentarius has great relevance to
the international food trade. With respect to the
increasing global market, in particular, the advantages of having universally uniform food standards
for the protection of consumers are self-evident. It is
not surprising, therefore, that the Agreement on the
Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS) and the Agreement on Technical
Barriers to Trade (TBT) both encourage the
international harmonization of food standards
(Boutrif, 2003). A product of the Uruguay Round
of multinational trade negotiations, the SPS
Agreement cites Codex standards, guidelines and
recommendations as the preferred international
measures for facilitating international trade in food.
As such, Codex standards have become the benchmarks against which national food measures
and regulations are evaluated within the legal
parameters of the Uruguay Round Agreements
(www.fao.org).
According to the SPS agreement, WTO members
are obliged to apply only those measures for food
safety and quality that are based on scientic
principles and do not constitute a disguised restriction on international trade. Article 2.2 of the SPS
Agreement states: Members shall ensure that any
sanitary and phytosanitary measure is applied only
to the extent necessary to protect human, animal or
plant life or health, is based on scientic principles
and is not maintained without sufcient scientic
evidence y. However, Henson and Loader (2001)
showed that many developing countries lack the
resources to effectively participate in international
trade because for these countries it is already
difcult to comply with the requirement of the
SPS agreement because of the lack of a legal
framework. Reasons for this lack are outdated
laws, lack of knowledge sharing as a result of
limited coordination between organizations hand-

ling food safety issues, under-funding of national

research institutes and the lack of awareness for
standards and quality (The Ssemwanga Group Ltd,
2003).
On national and international levels also much
legislation on quality and safety of food has been
established. For example, the EU has developed a
wide range of legislative demands with regard to
food safety. The EU Directive 93/43 on the Hygiene
of Foodstuffs states that food business operators
shall identify any step in their activities critically to
ensure food safety and to ensure that adequate
procedures are identied, implemented, maintained
and reviewed on the basis of HACCP. The General
Food Law of the EU, implemented in January 2005,
states the primary liability of food (and animal feed)
companies in the event of unsafe products. This
implies the implementation of monitoring systems
at company level. With information from these
systems it should be possible to determine the
source of safety or quality problems, and it must be
possible to nd out where other items with the same
problem are located in the supply chain (Trienekens, 2004). With regard to traceability, as of
1 January 2005, companies are obliged to keep
registration of raw materials supplies and customer
deliveries on a transaction basis.
In the USA, quality assurance systems also exist
for many years. The systems, in particular, aim at
safe production methods and physical health of
animals on the farm and not on issues such as
traceability and animal welfare. Examples are the
Beef Quality Assurance program of the National
Cattlemens Beef Association aiming for the reduction of residues in veal and the National Pork
Producers Council Pork Quality Assurance program aiming at good management practices.
Although in the previous years more attention has
been given to issues like animal welfare and the
environment, traceability has only recently reached
the top management agenda.
On a global scale countries and regions have their
own legislative measurements regarding food safety
and quality. Even within EU there are still many
differences regarding food safety legislation between
countries, making trade often complicated (Esbjerg
and Bruun, 2003).
2.2. Public and private standards
Giovannucci and Reardon (2001) dene standards as dened parameters that segregate similar

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products into categories and describe them with

consistent terminology that can be commonly
understood by market participants. They thereby
improve the efciency of markets. Standards concern any of the processes in the food chain. In this
article, we focus on food standards, in a broad
sense, including social and environmental considerations, and their application by various parties in
the food chain.
Since the 1990s there has been an enormous
increase in food standards. Companies around the
world are using quality assurance systems to
improve their product and production processes.
In this development there is a move from the former
end-of-line product inspection approach to a new
environment of a quality assurance approach where
the links in the food chain assume responsibility for
safety through control of their processes. This
means that quality assurance is required at each
step in the food production chain to ensure safe
food and to show compliance with regulatory and
customer requirements. Legislation at global (i.e.
Codex Alimentarius), international and national
levels provides the basic framework and policy
guidance for the most common quality assurance
systems.

2.2.1. Generic food quality and safety standards

The three most important generic quality assurance systems in the food sector are Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs), Hazard Analysis of Critical
Control Points (HACCPs) and International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO).
GAP systems include a set of guideline for
agricultural practices aiming at assuring minimum
standards for production and storage. Important
topics are pest management (optimal use of
pesticides), manure handling at animal farms,
maintenance of water quality, worker and eld
sanitation, guidelines for post-harvest handling and
transportation, among others. In the previous years
increasing attention has been given to managerial
aspects like documentation, complaint and recall
procedures, labelling, etc.
HACCP is a systematic approach to the identication, evaluation and control of those steps in
food manufacturing that are critical to product
safety. Currently, HACCP principles are the basis
of most food quality and safety assurance systems
(Codex Alimentarius, EU and US food legislation,
most private standards).

111

HACCP identies risks in the production processes that can lead to unsafe products, and designs
measurements to reduce these risks to acceptable
levels. HACCP aims at prevention of hazards
instead of end-of-pipe inspection. It is basically
designed for application in all links of the food
chain, ranging from growing, harvesting, processing, distribution and retail to preparing food for
consumption. HACCP involves seven principles:









analyze hazards (biological, chemical or physical);

identify critical control points (These are points
in a foods production at which the potential
hazard can be controlled or eliminated.);
establish preventive measures with critical limits
for each control point;
establish procedures to monitor the critical
control points;
establish corrective actions to be taken when
monitoring shows that a critical limit has not
been met;
establish procedures to verify that the system is
working properly;
establish effective recordkeeping to document the
HACCP system.

There are some important pre-requisites for

HACCP implementation, such as sanitary design
principles (e.g. linear product ow); GMP and
safety programs should be present; written specications for all ingredients, products and packaging
materials should be present; sanitary design principles and maintenance schedules should be present;
personal hygiene requirements, documented procedures to assure segregation and proper use of nonfood chemicals should be in place, traceability and
recall procedures should be in place, etc.
ISO standards are international standards in
order to achieve uniformity and to prevent technical
barriers to trade throughout the world. The essence
of an ISO 9000-based quality system is that all
activities and handling must be established in
procedures, which must be followed by ensuring
clear assignment of responsibilities and authorities.
Whilst GAP and HACCP pay attention to both
technological and management issues, ISO focuses
on management. The most used of all ISO standards
is the ISO 9000 series for quality. These standards
are independent of any specic industry. In the 2000
version (ISO 9001:2000) the objectives are: achievement of customer satisfaction by meeting customer

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requirements, continuous improvement of the system and prevention of non-conformity (Luning

et al., 2006). In 2005 the new ISO 22,000 standard,
specically aiming at managing safety in the food
chain, has been published. It is a specic standard
for food processors setting out safety management
procedures. The standard applies to organizations
ranging from feed producers, primary producers
through food manufacturers, transport and storage
operators and subcontractors to retail and food
service outlets. The standard extends the ISO
9001:2000 quality management system standard,
which is widely implemented in all sectors but does
not specically address food safety (www.ISO.org).
2.2.2. Private food safety and quality standards
Since the 1990s many private food quality and
safety standards have been developed. The major
aims of private food safety standards are (Vellema
and Boselie, 2003):






to improve supplier standards and consistency,

and avoid product failure;
to eliminate multiple audit of food suppliers
manufacturers through certication of their
processes;
to support consumer and retailer objectives by
transferring their demands to parties upstream
the chain;
to be able to provide concise information about
production processes in case of food incidents.

Demands regarding private food safety and

quality standards are best represented by three
examples of, world-wide used, systems: Eurep-GAP,
the British Retail Consortium (BRC) and Safe
Quality Food (SQF).
Table 1 shows how these standards are related to
the generic standards described in the previous
section and to which sections of the supply chain
they apply.
2.2.2.1. Eurep-GAP. Eurep is an organization of
more than 20 large European retailers and purchase
organizations (e.g. AHOLD, TESCO). GAP stands
for Good Agricultural Practice. It is a package of
norms aiming to guarantee environment-friendly,
safe and high-quality products. Eurep-GAP pays
major attention to food safety, human resource
management and environmental measurements and
aims at primary producers. The Eurep-GAP certicate is developed to make business processes

Table 1
Examples of private quality and safety standards in food chains
Standard

Key element

Part of the chain

involved

EurepGAP
BRC
SQF

Good Agricultural
Practices (GAPs)
HACCP
HACCP, ISO 9000

Primary production
Processing rms
Primary production,
processing rms, retail

transparent. The norms of the Eurep-GAP retailers

are more rigid than (EU) governmental demands.
Disadvantages of Eurep-GAP are that it takes the
legislation of the country where it is implemented as
a starting point and that there is still no uniform
certication scheme. This explains why Eurep-GAP
implementations can differ from country to country. Box 1 depicts typical Eurep-GAP requirements.
2.2.2.2. BRC (British Retail Consortium). In 1998,
the BRC, with participants such as TESCO and
Sainsbury, took the initiative to dene common
criteria for the inspection of suppliers of food
products. The inspections are carried out by
certied inspection organizations. Before BRC was
introduced retailers carried out inspections separately; joint inspections, however, reduce costs.
Retailers in other European countries now also
demand from their suppliers for inspections according to BRC rules and for accompanying quality
reports. The norms of the BRC are converging with
HACCP norms, although more attention is paid to
a documented quality management system, factory
environment and facilities, product and process
control and personnel.
2.2.2.3. SQF (Safe Quality Food). SQF aims at
quality assurance from a total supply chain perspective. The SQF program is based on the
principles of HACCP, ISO-9000 series norms and
Quality Management Systems. SQF distinguishes
between two norms. SQF 1000 focuses on primary
producers, all other companies are certied according to SQF 2000. An important difference between
both norms is that SQF 2000 companies must work
according to HACCP. SQF is developed in Australia and is internationally well accepted. An
advantage is that SQF can be included in the
product label.
The three standards described above are only
three examples of the wide range of private

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113

Box 1
Typical Eurep-GAP requirements for fruit and vegetables (www.eurep.org)














Traceability of products up to the farm (a documented system is required)

Record keeping of farm activities (to be stored for 2 years)
Record keeping of varieties and rootstocks (e.g. quality certificates of seeds, nursery stock
health certificates)
Record keeping of site history and site management (e.g. site characteristics, crop rotation)
Soil and substrate management (e.g. soil mapping, soil erosion management)
Record keeping of fertilizer usage, pesticides usage (e.g. type, quantities, applications)
Record keeping of irrigation activities (quality and supply of water, rainfall documents)
Record keeping of harvesting activities (documented hygiene protocol, records on
operations)
Waste and pollution management (types, quantities, recycling plan)
Attention to worker health, safety and welfare (e.g. first aid boxes, training records)
Attention to environmental issues (e.g. dealing with wild life, biodiversity)
Internal audit (one internal audit against the Eurep-GAP standard every year, Eurep-GAP
check list).

standards that exist throughout the world (see also

e.g. Tunc- er, 2001). Various types of standards can
be distinguished:




Certication systems for sustainable agriculture.

These systems focus on environmental-friendly
production and the use of specic quality standards. Examples of such systems are EKO in
The Netherlands and CRAE in Spain. Farmers
must keep receipts and product documentation
for monitoring and control purposes.
Sector-based (often on national level) quality
assurance systems. These systems aim at control
of primary production in certain agri-sectors.
They aim at safe and healthy food products.
Examples are the Farm Assured British Beef
and Lamb and Integraal Keten Beheer (IKB,
Integrated Quality Management-IQC in English) in The Netherlands.
Quality assurance systems initiated by food industries. These are managed by national or
international food industries that aim for specic
and distinct processes (e.g. Sustainable Agriculture
Initiative). A traceability example is Hipps
traceability system, which allows the producer of
baby-food to trace the origin of all raw materials in
every jar based on a production code.
Retailer systems. These systems are controlled by
retailers. Most of these systems aim at sustainable and safe production. The most important

example is Eurep-GAP introduced by the

Euro-Retailer Group (a group with the major
European Retailers, www.eurep.org).
Regional or traditional quality assurance systems. This category includes all initiatives that
refer to regional or local production and have
implemented their own standards. An example in
the Netherlands is Nautilus, EKO products
from a region in The Netherlands.

This summary shows that various parties can take

the initiative to set up new standards. Box 2 gives
the example of the IQC standard implemented by the
Dutch umbrella organization for pork production.
The proliferation of quality standards described
above has led to increasing concerns of parties in the
food chain about costs of implementation (and
certication) and accessibility of markets governed
by the multitude of these systems. A large group of
internationally operating retailers has taken the
Global Food Safety Initiative that aims at harmonization of existing standards so as to arrive at
uniform norms, instead of the current way where
countries and companies dene their own standards
(www.ciesnet.com/global_food/main.html). The expectation is that private (retail) standards like
Eurep-GAP and BRC will be more and more
harmonized with other private standards reecting
an extra layer of demands put on food companies
above legal obligations like Codex Alimentarius and

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Box 2
Integrated Quality Control in the Dutch Pork Chain
The Dutch pork sector is the fourth biggest exporter of pork meat in the world. Important
factors driving the change in the pork sector have been high costs of production and
governmental regulations, issues of food safety and animal welfare, environmental protection,
traceability and consumer preferences, e.g. nutritional value, sensorial aspects and ease of
preparation. To compete successfully on international level increased chain collaboration was
considered to be of strategic importance. In this regard the Dutch quality system Integrated
Quality Control (in Dutch: Integral Keten Beheersing, IKB) can be considered as an instrument
for providing the necessary vertical collaboration between different parties in the supply chain.
Introduced in 1992 by the Product Board for Livestock, Meat and Eggs (PVE) in co-operation
with the livestock and meat sector, the IKB system sets out standards for feed quality, hygiene,
transport, information and use of veterinary products, among other things. The system covers
now more than 90 per cent of all slaughtered pigs in the Netherlands, and most Dutch retailers
and butchers sell pork meat products produced according to the IKB system.

the use of HACCP in industrialized countries.

However, above these private compulsory systems layer, another layer of standards with even
more specic demands has evolved. Well-known
examples are Tescos Natures Choice, which puts
a number of environmental demands on top of
Eurep-GAP demands, EKO labels and Fair-Trade
labels. In this perspective it is expected that
proliferation of standards will continue, only on a
different level as was the case so far.
Fig. 2 depicts this three-layer model for quality
system standards.
Section 3 will discuss the implementation of
standards in different regions of the world.

Private
dedicated
systems:
fair trade, EKO
Private
compulsory systems:
Eurep-GAP, BRC, etc.

Public regulations: Codex

Alimentarius, HACCP, etc.

3. The global character of food safety and quality

standardization
Fig. 2. Different levels of food safety and quality standards.

In industrialized countries most companies in the

food chain comply with basic standards on food
safety and quality. For developing country and
emerging economy producers the situation is more
difcult. In the following, we will look in more detail
at the use of food quality and safety standards in
different regions. We will identify major bottlenecks
and opportunities related to food safety and quality in
different regions and investigate whether different
patterns or stages of development can be discovered.
The information in this section is based on
comparative research into the use of quality and
safety standards in three regions: EU (industrialized
countries), Mercosur (emerging economy countries)
and ACP (African Caribbean Pacic, least devel-

oped countries), which was performed in the EU

Commission-funded concerted action Safe and
High Quality Food Supply Chains and Networks
(Trienekens et al, 2005). In this program, which ran
from 2002 to 2005, 6 EU, 3 Latin American and 3
ACP countries collaborated to exchange information in the eld of quality and safety of food. In all
participating countries inventories on legislation,
private quality and safety standards, bottlenecks
regarding food quality and safety and market trends
were performed in the rst half of 2003. Inventories
were based on expert interviews and interviews with
organizations such as government departments and

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certication bodies, and secondary material such as

government and research reports. In the second half
of 2003, in each country a workshop was held in
which inventory outcomes were discussed. Participants in these workshops were experts from public
and private organizations working in the eld of
food safety and quality standards. The number of
participants per workshop varied from 9 to more
than 30. In the second half of 2004, follow-up
workshops were organized in Brazil, Portugal and
Uganda, with representatives from the participating
countries in Latin America, Europe and Africa,
respectively. In these workshops the outcomes of
the country inventories were consolidated at a
regional level. In June 2005, a nal discussion
between the three regions took place at a workshop
in Buenos Aires, Argentina, leading to the nal
results of the project.
3.1. Comparison between three regions
In the description of the outcomes of the
program, a distinction is made between primary
production and processing and distribution.
3.1.1. Primary producers in EU
GAPs and Good Health Practices (GHP) are
generally used in primary production in EU
countries. In most of the EU-15 countries (the 10
countries that joined in 2004 excluded) extended
legislation has been dened to further assure safe
production, such as the Pesticides Law in The
Netherlands and specic laws on additives and
labelling of allergens in Denmark. Interesting in this
regard is the British Pesticides Safety Directorate
for its name and shame policy: if a company
violates these standards, it will be publicly
shamed. Besides generally applied standards and
legislation, there are many private (often retail)
standards aiming at the primary producer. Examples for fruit and vegetables are sustainability
standards such as Agro-Milieukeur in The Netherlands and Genesis QA in UK (with a focus on
physical and microbiological residues), EKO (organic EU food standard) and international retail
standards such as Eurep-GAP and Natures Choice
of Tesco (with extended demands on environmental
issues) (see also Section 2). For the production of
beef examples are, the chain-wide Integrated Quality Control (IKB) in the Netherlands and Farm
Assure British Beef and Lam in UK. Nevertheless,
large differences exist between EU countries. In

115

Portugal, for example, there is still a high level of

non-compliance to EU-regulations. On the other
hand, especially in Southern EU countries, we see
the emergence of standards related to region-related
products and organic food.
3.1.2. Primary producers in Mercosur/ACP
Export-oriented producers in Mercosur countries
often use GAP or GHP to comply with international quality and safety demands. Many of these
producers are also ISO 9000-certied. A number of
large export-oriented vegetables and fruit producers
follow Eurep-GAP or Eurep-GAP-like standards.
Mercosur countries increasingly try to comply with
international standards. For example, in Argentina
beef labelling conforms to EU norm 820/97 and for
export-oriented companies beef traceability is compulsory until the farm of origin. In ACP countries,
GAP/GHP is only applied by very few exportoriented farms. However, an increase of the use of
GAP is reported in some of the least-developing
countries (e.g. in the Caribbean, Wickham et al.,
2003), supported by organizations like marketing
boards. Application of Eurep-GAP is even more
seldom; only a few large farms that deliver directly
to Western supermarkets produce according to
Eurep-GAP or Eurep-GAP-like standards.
3.1.3. Processing/distribution in EU
In EU, since 1998, HACCP is obligatory for all
companies in the food chain, except for the primary
producer. In many countries standards have been
developed which go even a step further. For
example, in Denmark, a HACCP norm is accepted
that includes specic attention to the provision of
management information. This system (DS 3027) is
on the forefront of quality system development and
has been one of the pillars for the new ISO standard
22,000 on food quality. Denmark is also in the front
of developing principles for self-monitoring. The
most important international retail standard that
has emerged in the last years is BRC (see Section 2).
BRC is now compulsory for suppliers of many of
the large retailers in Europa. Another development
in EU is the emerging chain approach in setting
standards (Box 3). Just as is the case of primary
production, there are large regional differences in
the application of standards in processing and
distribution in the EU. For example, in Portugal,
in March 2003, there was still only a minority of
companies that were HACCP certied, whilst in
Northern and Western countries in Europe most

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food processing companies were HACCP certied

at that date.
3.1.4. Processing/distribution in Mercosur/ACP
In Mercosur countries HACCP is mainly applied
in export (packing) rms. For example, since June
2003 all export-packers and processors in Argentina
should be HACCP certied. In ACP countries
HACCP systems are especially used in specic
export sectors, such as sh from Lake Victoria in
Uganda (see Box 4) and fruit exports from
Caribbean countries. However, these systems are
fragile, as is shown by the high refusal rate of these
products on Western markets due to frequent
discovery of pesticides residues, etc. In export
sectors, often more systems are used concurrently.
For example, processors and packers of sh for
export use GMP, ISO 90002 and HACCP. In
general, however, within these countries there are
hardly uniform standards for processors and
distributors.
3.2. Bottlenecks and opportunities for the application
of food quality and safety standards
An important barrier for the application of
standards by developing country producers is the
proliferation of standards in Western markets

(Section 2). Another barrier is the lack of an

enabling environment (institutional and infrastructure facilities). For example, many countries
lack skilled personnel and laboratory facilities,
which makes effective quality management difcult.
Table 2 depicts major bottlenecks and opportunities
related to food quality and safety in EU, Latin
American and ACP countries as considered
by experts in the participating countries (Trienekens
et al., 2005).
Table 2 shows that countries in the EU focus
especially on consumer-related topics. Companies
increasingly focus at, for example, traceability and
labelling systems. Currently, chains in this region
have to comply with many private and public
demands, which often result in multiple audits.
Moreover, companies are involved in developing
innovative products, such as organic products, and
packaging materials. Communication about food
safety and quality in the chain should also be
improved, e.g. dissemination of R&D knowledge.
Mercosur countries are focusing on developing
new markets, both national and international.
Mercosur countries have considerable home markets, but due to unequal income division requirements differ heavily in different market segments.
This results in separate food systems with different
quality and safety requirements (e.g. local, national

Box 3
Example of a chain approach in setting standards
Assured British Meat
ABM was established in 1998 by the Meat and Livestock Commission and takes a whole
chain approach. The ABM board is responsible for setting standards. It has six Technical
Advisory Bodies covering feed, farm, transport, auction markets, abattoir and secondary
wholesalers, and catering butchers. ABM has standards that are above legal requirements and
Codes of Practice. The guidelines allow medicines and veterinary treatments only when
necessary and only for treatment or preventative purposes (Duffy and Fearne, 2003).

Box 4
EU-regulation-based quality standard in Uganda and Kenya
The quality standard for fish in Uganda is based on EU directive 91/493/EEC and on Codex
Alimentarius. The standard covers the following fields: microbiology levels, pesticide residues,
heavy metals, effluents, Good Manufacturing Practices (processing stage) and HACCP
(processing stage) (Ssemwanga, 2003).
For its export of fruit and vegetables, Kenya complies as much as possible to the United
Kingdoms Food Safety Act of 1990. The testing laboratories are accredited to ISO 17025; 2000
by United Kingdom Accreditation Services (UKAS) (Kari, 2003).

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Table 2
Bottlenecks and opportunities regarding application of food
quality and safety standards in three regions
Bottlenecks

Opportunities

K EU

K EU

J
J
J

lacking consumer
knowledge
insufcient risk
communication
low dissemination
R&D knowledge

J
J
J

provision of product
information
monitoring safety and
quality of food
innovative products and
packagings and niche
markets

K Mercosur
K Mercosur
J uneven income
J design of coordinated
distribution
subsystems
J harmonization of
J standards harmonization
standards
(PP) within and between
J lack of coordination
Mercosur countries
J improvement of inspections
(horizontal and
and enforcements
vertical)
K ACP
J no or too few
laboratories
J low investments in
transportation and
storage
J lack of legal
framework

K ACP
J investments in
infrastructures
J improvements in feed and
feeding system
J PP development of
standards

117

building of facilities to improve quality regulations

and the building of government structures to ensure
quality and safety of products are key points of
attention. Investments in (cooled) transportation
and storage are necessary to effectively participate
in international trade. The governments must
encourage nancial institutions to avail credit to
farmers and play a facilitating role by providing
market information, education and establishment of
standards. Furthermore, there is an opportunity for
governments of ACP countries to work together in
order to adopt a common stance and generate
consensus with regards to trade negotiations in the
WTO.
From the above, we may conclude that Western/
EU countries with regard to food safety and quality
have well-established industry standards and are
now focusing on communication of quality and
safety aspects to consumers. Mercosur (emerging
economy) countries are in the phase of implementation and harmonization of food quality and safety
standards, while ACP (developing) countries are
still struggling with the establishment of the right
(infrastructural) conditions to enforce food quality
and safety of their products.
The next section will discuss implementation
processes, costs and benets and market access
implications of modern quality assurance systems.

Trienekens et al. (2005).

4. Implementation and impact

and international market). In fact, this group of
countries are in the middle of a process of awareness
and adoption of quality and safety regulations both
for government as for the business. The design of
organizational and governmental structures for
ensuring food safety and quality has a priority in
Mercosur countries. In this regard, food safety
policies in Mercosur countries are greatly inuenced
by the requirements of international trade. A major
bottleneck is that food control is not adequately
done; there are very few activities involving
preventive inspection; little attention is paid to
education of standards and the sanction system is
weakly developed.
ACP countries are lagging behind compared with
Mercosur countries. ACP countries are in a phase of
discovering quality and safety of food as important
conditions for international food trade and have to
start from scratch. Important issues often deal
about what, which and how quality regulations
and systems should be adapted. Moreover, the

4.1. The process of implementation

With regard to implementation of quality standards and certication schemes three major dimensions are considered:





the organizational dimension,

the information dimension and
the managerial dimension.

The organizational dimension is often translated

into organizational structures that ensure the
implementation. For that, ad-hoc implementation
teams are established for executing the planning of
implementation, the development of procedures for
monitoring the process, the distribution of tasks,
responsibilities and assignment of authority and the
reporting system.
Without adequate information not only the
implementation will be jeopardized but also the
management of the implementation. For these

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Box 5
Steps in a HACCP plan
Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Step 4
Step 5
Step 6

Step 7
Step 8
Step 9
Step
10
Step
11
Step
12

Assemble HACCP team

Describe product
Identify intended use
Construct flow diagram
On-site confirmation of flow
diagram
List all potential hazards, conduct a
hazard analysis, and consider
control measures
Determine critical control points
(CCPs)
Establish critical limits for each CCP
Establish a monitoring system for
each CCP
Establish corrective actions
Establish verification procedures
Establish documentation and
record-keeping (Steps 612 are the
basic HACCP principles, see also
Section 2.2.1)

reasons, information plays a vital role: information

for planning, execution and monitoring functions. The
managerial dimension covers the decision-making and
control processes. In some cases, quality managers are
seen as having key roles in these processes.
To guarantee the implementation of quality
standards, a number of practical guidelines have
been designed. These guidelines provide stepwise
approaches like in the case of HACCP (Estriche, in
Luning et al., 2006) (Box 5).
4.2. Assurance of certification and accreditation
At both national and international level, purchasers require guarantees about the quality of goods
and services supplied to them, since the variety on
offer is nowadays huge. Accordingly, a supplier can
have his product or service objectively assessed or
tested by a laboratory, certication or inspection
body. This can be done throughout any eld of
work imaginable, including construction, energy,
environment, drinking water, health and transport,
to name a few. If the results are good, the assessing

body provides the product or service with a

statement of conformity. This statement is usually
in the form of a certicate or a report. Accordingly,
an assessing body is known as a conformityassessment body. It is important for this body to
be competent, since only then is the statement of
conformity of use and reliable.
Every certifying body must have their interests
represented. In the Netherlands, for example, this is
done through a Committee of Experts. The task of
such a committee is to guarantee the impartiality of
the body. Often such a committee will also draw up
a certication scheme, either at the request of the
government or on the initiative of business. In the
case of socially relevant subjects, use is often made
of a harmonized certication scheme and/or a
normative document, which can be used by several
certifying bodies. Such a harmonized scheme or
normative document is drawn up by a Centralized
Committee of Experts. Certifying bodies are accredited according to their elds of work, under the
following standards. An accreditation body assesses
both the management system and the technical
competency of the conformity-certifying body. In
addition, the accreditation body exercises supervision to guarantee the impartiality and expertise of
the conformity-certifying body. In many countries it
is the government that oversees accreditation.
However, in some countries like in the Netherlands,
the accreditation body is a private law organization.
The government acts here as client, supervisor and
negotiating partner.
4.3. Costs and benefits of quality standards
Quality standards have contributed to food safety
(Escriche et al., 2006). For example, HACCP
contributes to reducing levels of food-borne pathogens in food production. Other benets are related
to general human and animal health. By that,
consumers condence increased. The quality assurance system may also contribute to the rms
competitiveness through the effects on production
efciency, cost price and extrinsic advantage of the
production practice and intrinsic advantage related
to the products attributes. In the start-up stage of
an assurance system the innovators may capture this
benet. Once the industry has adopted the assurance system, the comparative advantage will disappear and the system becomes de facto mandatory.
In the food chain, transaction costs are reduced
by quality assurance systems and the respective

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standards. Also, traceability improves due to

documented evidence embedded in quality assurance systems.
However, what are the costs for complying with
assurance systems and standards? To give an
indication of the costs of certication and auditing,
we refer to a studies of Gellynck et al. (2004a b).
Based on 17 Belgian companies in the food industry,
investments and costs related to food quality
management were calculated (Table 3):
Relative to the costs for implementing GMP/GHP
and HACCP, the costs for certication and auditing
are smaller. This is evident, considering the efforts to
analyze the companys processes, to develop
alternatives and implement the changes. In the
Belgian case, two certication schemes were
taken into consideration. As mentioned earlier, more
and more certication schemes are offered to the
market. For companies these schemes contribute to
higher costs for certication and auditing, once they
want or have to comply with their customer
demands.
How do companies respond to these increasing
costs? To answer this question we elaborate on Jahn
et al. (2004a, b). Assuming that in the food industry
actors in the food chain are primarily driven
towards opportunistic behavior to safeguard their
rents, and assuming certication and auditing fees
being xed by the certication organizations, one
may expect companies to reduce costs as much as
possible. Because of the character of the certication process, whereby the customers in many cases
impose certication schemes on their suppliers, one
may expect companies to act rationally, i.e. not
seeking for the highest compliance level and
minimizing costs as well. They may achieve these
goals by assessing the certiers market, look for
lowest fees and consider risks involved for not being
taken seriously by the customer. The marginal costs
for the company are equal to their marginal costs
for implementing the certication schemes and
auditing process plus the marginal costs for loss of
reputation from the customer point of view. Hence,

119

total costs for not complying may get relatively

higher. This also is conrmed by some empirical
studies in the US (Capmany et al., 2000). In their
study on implementation of ISO 9000, they concluded that certication process and maintenance
costs seem to be offset by the benets.

4.4. Market access

As described in Section 3, it is difcult for smalland medium-size enterprises from developing countries and also the newly emerging economies to
comply with standards as required in Western
markets (Dinham, 2003; Unnevehr, 2000). There
are various reasons for this:







SPS and TBT often constitute barriers for export

from developing countries to industrialized
countries,
producers at most times lack awareness and
adequate information about specic demands of
western standards,
the multitude of standards in industrialized
countries differ from country to country and
from market to market,
the lack of harmonization of national norms like
in the case of maximum residue-level requirements in the developed countries,
the costs of certication.

Another important barrier for developing country producers to take part in international chains is
the lack of an enabling environment (institutional
and infrastructure facilities). For example, many
countries lack skilled people and laboratory facilities, which make good-quality management difcult. If domestic customers increasingly insist on
technical requirements in schemes, and quality
inspectors of these schemes are accredited to
national or EU level, foreign suppliers may experience huge disadvantages (Bredahl et al., 2001).

Table 3
Food safety investments and costs, 2001 in euro per full-time equivalent (Gellynck, 2004a)
Range of costs per fte

Cost for implementing

GMP/GHP

Costs for implementing

HACCP

Certicate and
auditing costs

Food safety
investments

Total

Minimum
Maximum

1.644
9.452

240
2.408

37
1.248

0
14.527

1.555
26.165

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Dedicated
systems

EU SME,
large/DC large

EU SME/
large

BRC/EurepGAP/

EU SME/
DC large

HACCP/
GAP/
DC
medium

Codex
Alimentarius

No system

DC Small

Market access
Fig. 3. Market access for producers using different food safety standards (DC developing country, SME small and medium
enterprises).

Fig. 3 pictures (stylized) how standards used by

different types of companies are related to (international) market access.
Companies, also in the food industry, increase
economies of scale and lower transaction costs by
reducing the number of suppliers. The specic effect
of standardization offers buyers a specic instrument to distinguish their supplier in terms of
conformity to the standards. By standardization
companies increase their prot through superior
efciency. Through superior efciency companies
are lowering value chain costs and build up
economies of scale. With the relatively un-concentrated food industry the variation in the rate of
return as rm size increases is quite small. However,
as the industry moves towards a more concentrated
structure, the difference between the rate of return
made by small rms and the rate of return being
made by the larger rms is getting greater. This is
quite evident from a value chain point of view:
larger rms in the value chain will use their power to
exploit consumer by agreeing above cost and
eliminating competition between them. Doing so,
protability increases and concentration reduces the
number of competitors. Also, the superior efciency
of the larger rms drives down costs, causing both
an increase in concentration and an increase in
protability (Demsetz, 1973).
The impact on smaller rms, not having capabilities to comply with standards and not having asset

specicities, that generate value for buyers, is

becoming clear. Their sustainability will be jeopardized. An interesting example of this phenomenon is
shown by Boselie and Buurma (Vellema and Boselie,
2003). In their study on grades and standards in
Thailand, they describe the transition from a
traditional supply chain system where personalized
relationships in which family relationships and
individual strategic motives prevailed above company prots to a preferred supplier system between
wholesalers and buyers. After introducing the new
system professional large-scale producers remained
in the supply chain. As they experiences: Changes in
grades, standards and certication practices have
tended to exclude small rms and farms from
participating in market growth because of the
implied investments.(p. 149).
5. Conclusions and discussion
Quality assurance in the food industry has
become a reality. Based on requirements of the
public sector, private safety and quality standards
are emerging and implemented. In the process of
change, compulsory standards such as HACCP are
a prerequisite for companies behavior. The additional standards, such as Eurep-Gap, are disseminated through the industry as well. Within the food
industry, with numerous producers of raw materials, fragmentation and low levels of concentration,

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the pressure to standardize quality has become

important from a food safety point of view. Quality
assurance, however, has, as has been discussed,
impact on the market structure and creates additional costs as well.
What are the future outlooks for quality assurance in the food industry?
First, on the level of food chains, we may expect
that quality assurance will dominate the process of
production and distribution. The primary processes
will be standardized to reduce risks, moving to zerodefect solutions. Specically, the larger retailing
companies will put pressure on their suppliers to
comply with all standards, public and private.
Third-party audits and certication will be the
mechanisms to achieve this strategy. Due to the
open nature of the food industry, all kinds of
existing and new stakeholders will try to develop,
specify and rene new norms to be included in the
certication schemes. This, as we have discussed,
will create more favorable conditions to increase
economies of scale and reduce the number of
suppliers.
Second, on the level of the market structure, what
are the chances for new entrants? It may be argued
that new entrants always appear in the market, once
rents can be captured based on asset specicities.
Opportunities will exist either for small or for larger
companies to dene new opportunities that might
create customer value. Non-allergenic food items,
for example, have already created a niche market.
This market complies with the highest hygienic
standards, almost comparable to those in the
pharmaceutical industry.
Third, we may expect that the differentiation of
markets and, hence, the differentiation in quality
standards, certication schemes and labels will
encourage companies and value chains to build up
brands that are based on the quality assurances. In
other words, quality assurance may give benets to
companies to create consumer and customer value.
Fourth, the additional costs for certication,
auditing and quality assurance in general may
evoke new responses by companies. First, companies in the value chain may reduce differentiation by
standardization of certication system, based on a
modular system that may capture all kinds of new
or rened standards and norms. Technological
innovation might also create higher efciency and
reduce costs: for example, by dening protocols for
the quality data on industry level companies may
benet from standardization. Also, companies in

121

food chains may reduce quality assurance costs by

economies of scale through concentration of certifying bodies. Specically, measures like internal audits
replacing, partly, third-party audits and web-based
documentary inspections can also add to higher
efciency.
Concluding, the food industry has responded to
food scandals by installing new quality assurance
systems, on top of public regulations. Due to the
global nature of the food industry, the impacts on
the market are twofold: consumers receive benets
in terms of more and better safe food globally, and
suppliers in the food industry have been entrenched
into a variety of assurance systems, adding up to
costs and doubts about the effectiveness of the
systems.
However, the dissemination of the assurance
systems, standards and certication schemes globally is relatively limited and may imply the reduction of market access of suppliers.
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