Consumer reactions to food safety scandals: A research model and moderating effects

Food safety scandals are recurring events in the food industry worldwide. Consumers and companies are not immune to these incidents. However, there is a paucity of studies that examine consumer responses toward food companies involved in food safety scandals. This chapter attempts to address these issues. First, it provides theoretical bases for the psychological mechanisms through which consumers form judgments of blame toward food brands involved in food safety scandals. Second, it clarifies how attributions of blame negatively affect relevant consumer non-behavioural responses (emotions and attitude) and behavioural responses (purchase intention, word-of-mouth, and boycott) toward faulty food brands. Third, it provides a literature review of the most relevant consumer-related, brand-related, and context-related variables, which may influence the psychological mechanisms of blame attribution, and subsequent non-behavioural and behavioural responses, in the context of a food safety incident.

Responding to neoliberal diets: School meal programmes in Brazil and Canada

This chapter identifies school meal programs in Brazil and Canada as sustainable alternatives to some of the harms caused by the dominance large corporations exert on the global food system. It analyses the new version of the Brazilian National School Meal Program (PNAE) and British Columbia’s Farm to School initiative (F2S BC) in Canada. On one hand, PNAE creates an institutional market for family farmers, while offering students a greater amount of locally produced fresh and healthy food. On the other, F2S BC takes form through activities such as school gardens, food education and incentives to purchase locally produced food. This work finds that PNAE has more reach but limits school meals to consumption, whereas F2S BC emphasizes the role of schools as spaces for growing and recognises food as a pedagogical resource.

Crime versus harm in the transportation of animals: A closer look at Ontario’s ‘pig trial’

In December of 2016 the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s proposal to amend the Health of Animals Regulations was made public. Among the changes proposed is a reduction in the maximum amount of time animals can be transported without food or water. The timing of this proposal coincides with an on-going court case in Ontario that has come to be known as the ‘pig trial’. Anita Krajnc, an animal rights activist with Toronto Pig Save, has been charged with criminal mischief for providing water to pigs on a truck en route to slaughter. This chapter examines the Krajnc case and the newly proposed regulations from a green criminological perspective, and delves into the debate over what constitutes a food crime in the context of livestock transportation.

Ethical challenges facing farm managers

Although an extensive literature examines how moral character and environmental context relates to ethical awareness, judgment and behaviour, very little work focuses on the ethics of farmers. Understanding farmer ethics is important because farmers face unique pressures and constraints that affect their ethical judgments and behaviours. Research shows that there are different types of ethical problems that farmers have to deal with, such as actions that cause harm or potential harm to others, the environment and non-human animals, and actions that are defined as wrong by law, contract or agreement. Important pressures and constraints affecting farmer ethics include increasing production costs and land prices, rising debt and worsening financial health, more stringent government rules and regulations, and reduced options for producing and marketing agricultural products.

A food crime perspective

A food crime perspective involves an evaluation of the (lack of) criminal, legal, and regulatory organisation, and the insufficient, ineffective, or lack of enforcement, which surrounds the criminal behaviour and social harms produced within systems of food production, processing, marketing, distribution, selling, consumption, and disposal, victimising (often simultaneously) humans, animals, and the environment. Married to a social harm approach, and grounded in the views of critical criminology, green criminology, and radical victimology, a food crime perspective problematises the practices and contexts of food systems as immoral, harmful, and criminal. This chapter introduces this concept of a food crime perspective in three parts. First, it recognises the study of food must be contextualised in contemporary global food systems. Second, it situates a food crime perspective among other (sub)theories of criminology. Finally, it concludes with an argument why it is important to think criminologically about food.

Coming together to combat food crime: Regulatory networks in the EU

A joined up response is necessary to respond to the challenges of food crime. With the increasingly globalised food system, sharing of information between different regulatory and law enforcement bodies is necessary. One method of ensuring information sharing is through the construction of regulatory networks. This chapter examines different methods for constructing regulatory networks, with a particular focus on the EU. It considers both the advantages and disadvantages of networks in responding to breaches of food law, and considers four case studies; the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed; the Food Fraud Network; Co-ordinated Control Plans; and the Opson Operations. The chapter argues that, despite their weaknesses, regulatory networks are essential in dealing with modern food crimes and harms.

Prohibitive property practices: The impact of restrictive covenants on the built food environment

This chapter presents an overview of restrictive covenants as a corporate real estate practice that places conditions on land use, such as prohibiting the sale of food or prohibiting the development of grocery stores. Restrictive covenants are a significant barrier to establishing a new store in older neighbourhoods and the consequences are interconnected: when food stores act as anchors in a community shopping area, their closure can lead to a loss of neighbourhood-level identity and history. Rectifying existing nutrition deserts is much harder than preventing new ones. Alternative food systems are needed and should support urban agriculture, urban greenhouses and cooperative food store models, incentivise the development of mobile healthy food vending, and offer tax abatements or subsidies for healthy food retail in low-income nutrition desert neighbourhoods. Government support is needed to limit restrictive covenants and develop alternative food channels through various creative means.

Counter crimes and food democracy: Suspects and citizens remaking the food system

This chapter acknowledges the concept of food crime within the current global industrialised food system and explores three examples of crimes of consumption. A variety of acts of citizen resistance or ‘counter crimes’ in response to food crime are discussed. Counter crimes can be seen as a spectrum of acts of crime or disobedience, which have used food to make public statements. Both opposition and constructivist politics are employed in counter crime. Constructivist activities are incubators for the emergence of new food systems, while oppositional activities focus on the current food system. Constructivist efforts involve fostering and building different food systems for consumers, underpinned by democratic processes, for example farmer’s markets and community gardens. Actions underpinned by democratic principles, constitute a participatory movement whereby citizens exert some modicum of control over their food system. Collectively known as food democracy, it offers some hope in ‘re-making’ an honest food system.

Agency and responsibility: The case of the food industry and obesity

Obesity has become a global health epidemic and, as a result, a vivid debate about who bears responsibility has emerged. The book chapter elaborates on three fundamental elements that significantly influence agency in the context of food decisions: awareness and knowledge, the presence of alternatives, and addictive or addiction-like tendencies of human physiology and psychology. Under current conditions consumers do not have full agency to take full responsibility for obesity. Instead, corporations and governments play an active role in restoring consumer agency to make responsible food choices.

Impact of hazardous substances and pesticides on farmers and farming communities

Understanding the health risks of farmers and farming communities is essential in elaborating the phenomenon of food crime. This chapter argues that the production of agricultural food products is inimical to the health and safety of those who produce them. This is an ironic situation where the providers of food – farmers – become vulnerable, ill or injured, or disabled, or even die in the process of agricultural production. This is compounded by the lack of social and health protection for farmers, and absence of institutional support for farming in many developing countries despite the fact that farming is the most elemental and basic means of food production in society. This chapter argues that agricultural practices arising from market-oriented agricultural policies of institutions and governments present as food crime, and there should be conscious and concerted considerations at the institutional level, in including ecologic, health, and social implications of food production systems.