ABSTRACT
Modern food supply chains have become larger, faster and more complex, due to the globalization and outsourcing of food products. Beef safety crises, such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in the United Kingdom and illness outbreaks associated with Escherichia coli O157:H7 in the United States, have raised consumer concerns about food safety. The economic cost of food-borne illness in the United States alone is $50-80 billion annually, which includes health care costs, lost productivity and diminished quality of life (Scharff, 2012). The food industries face growing challenges to ensure consumer health against a wide range of food safety threats (e.g. introduction of pathogens, contamination and food adulteration, degradation, mislabelling and counterfeiting) (Farooq et al., 2016). These safety concerns, combined with an increasing quest for information on the origin of food (as populations are further removed from agricultural backgrounds), are acting as major drivers for the development of traceability systems (Bloom and Hinrichs, 2010; Olynk, 2012). Recently, just 28% of the US consumers surveyed strongly agreed with the statement: ‘I have access to all the information I want about where my food comes from, how it’s produced and its safety’ (The Center for Food Integrity, 2016; p. 18).
