No abstract

Globalization causes plant production systems to be increasingly threatened by invasive pests and pathogens. Much research is devoted to support management of these risks. Yet, the role of growers' perceptions and behavior in risk management has remained insufficiently analyzed. This article aims to fill this gap by addressing risk management of invasive pathogens from a sociopsychological perspective. An analytical framework based on the Theory of Planned Behavior was used to explain growers' decisions on voluntary risk management measures. Survey information from 303 Dutch horticultural growers was statistically analyzed, including regression and cluster analysis. It appeared that growers were generally willing to apply risk management measures, and that poor risk management was mainly due to perceived barriers, such as high costs and doubts regarding efficacy of management measures. The management measures applied varied considerably among growers, depending on production sector and farm-specific circumstances. Growers' risk perception was found to play a role in their risk management, although the causal relation remained unclear. These results underscore the need to apply a holistic perspective to farm level management of invasive pathogen risk, considering the entire package of management measures and accounting for sector- and farm-specific circumstances. Moreover, they demonstrate that invasive pathogen risk management can benefit from a multidisciplinary approach that incorporates growers' perceptions and behavior.

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.

No abstract

No abstract