According to participants from both countries, a public authority must be in charge
of promoting the establishment an adequate traceability system along the food
chain. Consumers from both countries are used that, for instance, in case of any
food scare, public authorities (national and regional ones) were the first to react
instead of the affected company or food sector. Perhaps consumers from these
countries still don’t feel too much protected by their respective governments.
Nowadays inspection on controls is an issue to be improved and a clear and precise
mark/logo would satisfy Spanish participants in order to assess the correct
supervision of a food product. Among the supply chain players, Italian participants
felt that retailers and, secondly, producers and processing industries should inform
consumers on these issues.
4.5. Beef traceability perception
Traceability is seen by the participants of both countries like an adequate system
able to guarantee origin information and health and food product safety. This is
also true for beef, where participants felt that a traceability system would enable
supply chain to give more information on product history and to assure the
product withdrawal in case of need.
In the second focus group Italian and Spanish participants where asked to rank four
different pictures of beef products according to their level of traceability. The most
preferred products in terms of traceability in Spain are “Retailer brand, National
origin” and “POD Label”; in Italy are “Retailer Brand bullock Italian/French Origin”
and “Strong retailer brand calf, National origin”.
Results from the following discussion shown that for Italian participants a good
traced product can be evaluated on the basis of the detailed labelled information,
such as the presence of an animal identification number, the indication of the
specific farm and slaughterhouse where the meat has been processed, the non-
GMOs feeding methods. Finally, the trust in the cooperative retailer directly lead to
the trust in its “ability to trace” food products. On the other hand, the perceived
less traced product is the one with more general information about origin and row
materials.
Spanish consumers infer traceability information especially from the origin of the
product. Even if they didn’t find many differences across the displayed pictures,
they generally preferred the national products compared to the foreign one. Some
of them argued that for foreign product it is more difficult to preserve the cold
chain because of the distance. For both Spanish and Italian consumers the difficulty
to read labels lead to feel uncomfortable with product traceability. This feeling
evokes the necessity to display more synthetic and clear information.
Table 3.Perceived cues to assess the level of beef
traceability.
|
______________________Good traceability cues______________________ |
_______________________Bad traceability cues_______________________ | ||
|
________________Italy_________________ |
_____________Spain_____________ |
________________Italy_________________ |
_____________Spain_____________ |
|
■ Presence of an animal ■ Identification of farms ■ Non- GMO feed (GM ■ Trust in the retailer |
■ National origin ■ Flavour ■ Good general ■ Individual preferences |
■ Too general ■ General lot number ■ Uncomfortable to read ______the label (not clear)_______ |
■ Foreign origin ■ Distance / transport ■ Uncomfortable to read ■ Bad presentation |
4.6. Different supports for traceability
Traceability is often proposed primarily to reduce the information asymmetry
within the supply chain. As commented previously, in both Italy and Spain,
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