Competition Policy and Food Sector in the European Union

Abstract

The article reviews the enforcement of the EU competition policy in the food sector in order to evaluate its actual ability to promote a fair and efficient food supply. Competition policy is scrutinized stemming from the different perspectives offered by 3 antitrust schools, namely, the Harvard, the Chicago, and the post-Chicago Schools. The main finding of the article is that with reforms carried out in the 1990s, EU competition policy has followed the shift that occurred in the United States since the late 1970s from the traditionalist Harvard School to the Chicago and post-Chicago Schools of antitrust. The general effect of this shift has been a significant drop in antitrust enforcement and merger control activity. As a consequence, currently competition policy is not able to tackle the wide range of social and economic problems associated with the overwhelming power of large agrofood corporations

Nanotechnology: The new perspective in precision agriculture

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From Pest to Profit—The Potential of Shipworms for Sustainable Aquaculture

“…To ensure shipworm-based foods are easily affordable to consumers several mechanisms could be deployed. These include governmental and private investment to allow the industry to scale rapidly and achieve lower operating costs, subsidies to encourage purchase of nutritious shipworm-based food in place of less sustainable meat products (An, 2013), and enforcement of industry regulations to promote competition in shipworm production and food processing (Sodano and Verneau, 2014). Marketing will also play a pivotal role in encouraging consumer selection and purchase of bivalve based foods.…”

Innovation Trajectories and Sustainability in the Food System

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