Creating Transparency and Trust in Global Food Chains

By John Keogh

The concepts of transparency and trust present a formidable paradox in that scholars have difficulty in agreeing which comes first. A recent literature review uncovered a lot of unanswered questions: is transparency an antecedent of trust or vice versa? Does transparency mediate consumer trust? Is trust required to build trust? Transparency for whom, when and why? Does a desire for information, or possession of information imply a necessity to disclose? It’s a complicated issue and scholars also note that while rules, laws, regulations, best practices, and technologies, etc., aid in transparency, they all depend heavily on people with integrity doing the right thing.

Non-Negotiable and Non-Competitive

They all depend heavily on people with integrity doing the right thing.

There is a shared view between scholars and industry that food safety should be both non-negotiable and non-competitive.