Challenges in the Traceability of Seafood

The increasing global trade of foods and animal feeds have to be channelled in right directions to guarantee product safety, transparency and the protection of consumer health. According to this fact the European Regulation (EC) No 178/2002 lays down the common principle for implementing traceability systems in product supply chains. However, seafood is a highly perishable food item which is increasingly global traded so that a lot of particular conditions and difficulties more have to be taken into account compared to other food products. This review discusses the relevant regulations for traceability in seafood and gives a survey about the most important analysis techniques for characterizing seafood.     

Challenges in the Traceability of Seafood

The increasing global trade of foods and animal feeds have to be channelled in right directions to guarantee product safety, transparency and the protection of consumer health. According to this fact the European Regulation (EC) No 178/2002 lays down the common principle for implementing traceability systems in product supply chains. However, seafood is a highly perishable food item which is increasingly global traded so that a lot of particular conditions and difficulties more have to be taken into account compared to other food products. This review discusses the relevant regulations for traceability in seafood and gives a survey about the most important analysis techniques for characterizing seafood. Received: September 17, 2007     

食品安全事件背景下消费者购买行为变化与恢复——基于三聚氰胺事件后的消费者调查

以三聚氰胺事件后的消费者调查数据为基础,对奶制品消费者的购买行为变化与恢复进行实证分析。研究中,将食品安全事件背景下消费者购买数量变化过程划分为减少和恢复两个阶段,并利用两阶段决策模型同时分析两个阶段中消费者的购买行为变化及其影响因素。结果表明,三聚氰胺事件后,奶制品消费者的购买数量减少行为与恢复行为具有显著的正相关性;特征变量在消费者购买数量减少阶段具有更显著的影响,阶段性因素在消费者购买数量恢复阶段具有更显著的影响。     

消费者眼中的食品安全

<正>关注食品安全是食品生产企业的社 会责任、讲商业道德的体现,也是 市场经济运行规律对国家行政主管部门、 消费者组织的内在要求。我们希望通过 社会广泛的呼吁,在政府的专项整治和 社会各界的配合下,在行业的自觉自律 下,食品市场能够早日走向规范。     

Consumer interest in information cues denoting quality,traceability and origin: An application of ordered probit models to beef labels

The objective of this paper is, first, to determine which information cues on beef labels really attract consumer interest, specified as the level of perceived importance attached to and attention paid to label cues. The focus is (1) on indications of quality through a quality label and quality guarantee, (2) on indications referring to the mandatory European beef labelling regulation and traceability system, and (3) on indications reflecting country-of-origin. The second objective is to assess the impact of a campaign aiming at informing consumers about beef traceability, and at raising consumer interest in beef quality, traceability and origin. Data were collected from a sample of 278 beef consumers in Belgium. Ordered probit models were specified and estimated to assess the impact of individual characteristics and the beef labelling information campaign. Findings reveal that consumer interest is generally low for traceability, moderate for origin and high for direct indications of quality like a quality guarantee seal or expiration date. Interest in label cues is specifically low among younger males. Further, the information campaign had a measurable positive impact on consumer attention paid to direct indications of quality and country-of-origin. Strategies including traceability for backing up on-label indications of quality and origin, rather than providing consumers with detailed traceability information on-label, are recommended.     

Progress and challenges associated with halal authentication of consumer packaged goods

Abusive business practices are increasingly evident in consumer packaged goods. Although consumers have the right to protect themselves against such practices, rapid urbanization and industrialization result in greater distances between producers and consumers, raising serious concerns on the supply chain. The operational complexities surrounding halal authentication pose serious challenges on the integrity of consumer packaged goods. This article attempts to address the progress and challenges associated with halal authentication. Advancement and concerns on the application of new, rapid analytical methods for halal authentication are discussed. The significance of zero tolerance policy in consumer packaged foods and its impact on analytical testing are presented. The role of halal assurance systems and their challenges are also considered. In conclusion, consensus on the establishment of one standard approach coupled with a sound traceability system and constant monitoring would certainly improve and ensure halalness of consumer packaged goods. © 2017 Society of Chemical Industry     

SEAFOODplus – how to provide health promoting, safe seafood of high eating quality to consumers

The strategic objective of the SEAFOODplus Integrated Project is to reduce health problems and to increase well-being among European consumers by applying the benefits obtained through consumption of health promoting and safe seafood products of high eating quality. The relevance of seafood in the diet to diminish the increased incidences of e.g. cardiovascular, cancer and inflammatory diseases is being assessed by performing dietary intervention and epidemiological studies. Other focus areas are health of young populations, to treat overweight, to prevent osteoporosis and postpartum depression observed for women giving birth. Seafood’s importance for consumer behaviour and well-being is assessed to understand determinants of consumers’ seafood consumption and to adapt seafood products to consumer demands. The objectives of the seafood safety component are to make seafood safe for the consumer, by identifying risk factors and avoiding risks caused by viral and bacterial contamination and biogenic amines in seafood. The total value chain is addressed by developing consumer driven tailor-made, functional seafood products to improve health and to ensure nutritional quality and safety by full utilisation of raw materials from aquaculture and from traditional fisheries. The aquaculture component will study the effects of dietary modulation, husbandry, fish physiology, genetics and pre-slaughter conditions. Validated traceability systems are assessed to make it possible to apply a total chain approach from the live fish to the consumer product, and to trace back any feature from fork to farm. Received: January 7, 2008; accepted January 8, 2008     

Exploring food consumers’ motivations to fight both climate change and biodiversity loss: Combining insights from behavior theory and Eurobarometer data

Using data from Eurobarometer 83.4, this study combines the two branches of research that address climate-related and biodiversity-related opinions and actions of individuals in the EU. The literature shows that the differences between climate-related and biodiversity-related policies correspond, at an individual level, to a person's basic attitudes towards environmental protection and towards nature protection, respectively. The contribution of this study is to demonstrate how these attitudes can influence behavior that has environmental repercussions for both issues, such as food consumption practices. The analysis focused on two Eurobarometer questions about buying local and seasonal food (to fight climate change) and about buying organic and local food (to protect biodiversity and nature). The results of two multinomial regression analyses, separately in Northwestern European countries and Eastern and Southern European countries, demonstrated that climate-related and biodiversity-related attitudes were, independent of each other, related to the adoption of these purchase behaviors. The results may support Europe’s new Farm to Fork (F2F) strategy and indicate that improving food consumption practices can enable individuals to better play their part in fighting climate change and biodiversity loss simultaneously, which opens up interesting new perspectives for policymakers, businesses and consumers.     

Implementing Interoperability in the Seafood Industry: Learning from Experiences in Other Sectors

Interoperability of communication and information technologies within and between businesses operating along supply chains is being pursued and implemented in numerous industries worldwide to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of operations. The desire for greater interoperability is also driven by the need to reduce business risk through more informed management decisions. Interoperability is achieved by the development of a technology architecture that guides the design and implementation of communication systems existing within individual businesses and between businesses comprising the supply chain. Technology architectures are developed through a purposeful dialogue about why the architecture is required, the benefits and opportunities that the architecture offers the industry, and how the architecture will translate into practical results. An assessment of how the finance, travel, and health industries and a sector of the food industry—fresh produce—have implemented interoperability was conducted to identify lessons learned that can aid the development of interoperability in the seafood industry. The findings include identification of the need for strong, effective governance during the establishment and operation of an interoperability initiative to ensure the existence of common protocols and standards. The resulting insights were distilled into a series of principles for enabling syntactic and semantic interoperability in any industry, which we summarize in this article. Categorized as “structural,” “operational,” and “integrative,” the principles describe requirements and solutions that are pivotal to enabling businesses to create and capture value from full chain interoperability. The principles are also fundamental to allowing governments and advocacy groups to use traceability for public good.     

Factors associated with consumer perception and conduct toward certified beef from Brazil

The aims of this study were to establish a relationship between consumers’ socioeconomic aspects, key meat attributes, and consumer perception and conduct toward traced beef in Brazil. The authors applied a structured form in 52 supermarkets in eight Brazilian cities, through interviews with 2.949 consumers, in 2012. Federal or state inspection stamp was the attribute that most influenced the consumers’ purchase decision (14.1%). Most of the interviewees (57.3%) had never heard about bovine traceability. Among those who had heard about bovine traceability, 63.2% would be willing to pay more for beef with certified origin. Consumers with higher education and income had a better knowledge about this type of certification, as well as older consumers, and therefore they would be willing to pay more for certified beef. This research suggests that educational level was the reason that most influenced Brazilian consumers during beef purchase.     

Seafood Traceability in the United States: Current Trends,System Design,and Potential Applications

Increasing globalization of our food supply combined with recent outbreaks of foodborne disease has heightened concerns over food safety issues around the globe. In response to these growing concerns, both by government and consumers, many nations are looking at food traceability as a means to restore confidence in the food supply and limit damages incurred by the sale and distribution of unsafe products. Traceability, which allows for the tracking of food products through all steps of production, distribution, and sales, can provide information on the nature, origin, and quality of a product; allowing consumers to make more informed purchasing decisions while providing the mechanisms for quick and thorough product recall procedures. Implementing traceablity systems will require improved vertical intergration between entities and the development of standars for the collection and dissemination of traceability data. Fortunately, rapid advances in information technology have made it possible to implement traceability systems within the food industry. This review will explore the current trends toward tracebility in the U.S. seafood industry. Current legislation, both here and abroad, and its effects on the seafood industry will be explored, and the design of a traceability system will be discussed.     

Rollout Strategy to Implement Interoperable Traceability in the Seafood Industry

Verifying the accuracy and rigor of data exchanged within and between businesses for the purposes of traceability rests on the existence of effective and efficient interoperable information systems that meet users’ needs. Interoperability, particularly given the complexities intrinsic to the seafood industry, requires that the systems used by businesses operating along the supply chain share a common technology architecture that is robust, resilient, and evolves as industry needs change. Technology architectures are developed through engaging industry stakeholders in understanding why an architecture is required, the benefits provided to the industry and individual businesses and supply chains, and how the architecture will translate into practical results. This article begins by reiterating the benefits that the global seafood industry can capture by implementing interoperable chain‐length traceability and the reason for basing the architecture on a peer‐to‐peer networked database concept versus more traditional centralized or linear approaches. A summary of capabilities that already exist within the seafood industry that the proposed architecture uses is discussed; and a strategy for implementing the architecture is presented. The 6‐step strategy is presented in the form of a critical path.     

How will my wine purchase decision be viewed by others?

A person’s self-image can be a strong motivator for influencing marketplace decisions, particularly if the consequences of a purchase decision have financial or social risk. A model is suggested that defines how self-esteem, considered as a mediator between self-efficacy and sources of information, influences the selection of an information source during wine buying situations. Search engine marketing was used to recruit individuals. An AdWords campaign was created using text ads under specific keywords. Results indicate that self-esteem has a significant impact on the value placed on different information sources, mainly given the extent of perceived social risk and the impact on self-image. The study provides wine marketing professionals with new insights to develop better communication strategies. In addition to product characteristics, customers’ purchasing decisions may be driven by less obvious factors such as their perceptions of how others will view them and the information selected during a wine purchase situation.     

精酿啤酒的消费者偏好分析

以消费者偏好为出发点进行了精酿啤酒调查问卷,发布并回收有效问卷1 025份。利用统计分析软件SPSS 25.0对问卷的数据进行分析,通过人口统计学特征和精酿啤酒月平均消费情况与影响因素两方面对样本进行统计分析,最后利用有序Logistic模型完成消费者精酿啤酒偏好实证分析。调查结果表明,精酿啤酒仍属于小众产品,市场并未达到饱和;男性消费者购买精酿啤酒比例显著高于女性消费者,消费水平与购买行为呈现正相关关系。对于有精酿啤酒消费习惯的消费者而言：有序Logistic回归分析结果表明,消费者对于精酿啤酒的依赖程度与对产品价位和大小规格的偏好存在相关性,但与对产品包装的偏好并无关联。通过调查分析期望为后续精酿啤酒新产品的开发与市场推广提供参考。     

关于乳酸饮料消费的市场调查分析

本研究通过消费市场调查,发现青少年是乳酸饮料的主要消费群体,消费者对乳酸饮料的购买品牌相对比较集中,更喜欢的口味是原味,对消费者购买影响最大的因素是广告宣传,品牌效应也不可忽视,而明星代言、价格等因素影响相对较小。     

Consumers wine preferences according to purchase occasion: Personal consumption and gift-giving

We tested the hypothesis that individuals may act differently when buying a bottle of wine for themselves than they do when buying wine as a gift. Using a between-subject design, we estimated the differences in consumer preference for these two occasions. We conducted a choice experiment on 618 Italian wine consumers and included the attributes of price, geographical indication (i.e. IGT, DOC, or DOCG), organic claim, and brand (i.e. famous producer or a non-famous producer). By applying an error component random parameters logit model, we detected relevant differences between the two scenarios in terms of the relative importance of the studied attributes. The gift-giving scenario was further investigated using a latent class model, which identified three segments of consumers; we profiled these according to personal attitudes and wine knowledge. Our results show a relevant heterogeneity among consumers’ preferences for the gift-giving scenario, with geographical indication having a low impact and brand and organic claim playing a pivotal role. This study provides relevant insights for winemakers and retailers regarding diversifying marketing strategies.     

The impact of innovation-related perception on consumer acceptance of food innovations – Development of an integrated framework of the consumer acceptance process

Innovations are an important part of the further advancement of societies in general as well as of companies in particular. Individuals can benefit from the advantages of innovations, while companies can maintain or increase their market share and profitability. However, especially in the food sector, scientific or technological innovations often encounter mistrust and rejecting reactions from consumers, resulting in decreasing acceptance of those innovations. Therefore, this paper aims to gain a deeper comprehension of consumer acceptance of innovative food products as well as to identify antecedent factors of innovation-related perception. For the empirical investigation of our conceptualized model, an online survey was conducted in Germany (n = 617) and the collected data were analyzed through structural equation modeling. The results confirmed a high predictive power of the multi-dimensional model of consumer acceptance. Our first major finding indicates that relative advantage, naturalness, novelty, and discomfort are the most important driving factors of the innovation-related perception of food products. Further important findings show that innovation-related perception has a strong positive and highly significant impact on customer perceived value, respectively a strong negative and highly significant impact on the customer perceived risk. In summary, innovation-related perception, customer perceived value, as well as customer perceived risk, are all important variables related to the acceptance of an innovative food product. The food sector can benefit from the insights provided by this study to communicate and market their products accordingly to the results to reduce mistrust and increase acceptance of food innovations on the consumer side.     

Understanding consumer resistance to the consumption of organic food. A study of ethical consumption,purchasing, and choice behaviour

Although the demand for organic food is growing globally, the mainstream consumption of organic food is far less. The present study attempts to understand the underlying reasons for consumer resistance toward consuming organic food using the theoretical framework of innovation resistance theory (IRT). The study further examines the association between different consumer barriers and purchase decisions (purchase intentions, ethical consumption intentions, and choice behaviour) at different levels of buying involvement and environmental concerns. The collected data, consisting of 452 consumers, were analyzed by structural equation modeling approach. The results showed that value barrier shared a negative association with purchase intentions and ethical consumption intentions. Ethical consumption and purchase intention were found to have a direct influence on choice behaviour. Additionally, the relationship between ethical consumption intention and choice behaviour is mediated by purchase intention. However, no significant differences have emerged based on the level of buying involvement and environment concerns. The findings of the study provide insight into public policymakers, marketers, suppliers, and consumer associations by enhancing their current understanding of buying behaviour of the growing organic food community.     

Consumer perceptions of traceability: A cross-national comparison of the associated benefits

Consumer perceptions regarding traceability were investigated by means-end-chain laddering. Consumers in four European countries were questioned about the benefits they associate with traceability related attributes. The benefits consumers associate with traceability are in terms of health, quality, safety and control, of which the latter was associated with trust and confidence. These benefits were similarly important in the countries investigated. Cross-national differences were also observed. Importantly, both quality and safety were shown to be related to traceability in the consumers′ minds with quality implying safety. The results show that traceability may contribute to improving consumer confidence. The most important aspects of traceability which should be incorporated into communication with consumers are discussed.