Consumer Rights to Food Ethical Traceability

Regulatory and scientific discourse about traceability in food production chains hitherto predominantly focused on the development of traceability schemes as a means towards the end of managing food-borne health risks. The overall aim of developing traceability schemes within this context of risk management in production chains has been to ensure that consumers can trust that their consumption of food products as provided in the market is not risky in terms of health consequences (see Chapter 2 for an overview of conceptual and operational aspects of traceability).

The chapter starts by introducing the basic liberal distinctions to be used subsequently. It then argues that the operational domain for ethical traceability should be positioned somewhere between needs like food safety that entail positive unconditional rights of consumers and positive unconditional duties of producers and regulators with respect to the provision and traceability of food products, and non-reasonable and/or superficial wants with respect to food that do not entail any rights and duties. The basic argument is that ethical traceability is operational within the domain of reasonable and non-superficial wants with respect to food, which entail conditional rights of consumers and conditional duties of producers and regulators. Before concluding, the chapter asks whether calls for the development of ethical traceability schemes are not better – if cynically – understood as veiled attempts to increase corporate power in food production chains.