ABSTRACT
Over recent decades, food systems around the world have become increasingly – and, some would say, excessively – concentrated, so that just a few large transnational corporations now control the vast majority of the world’s food supply (Lawrence and Burch, 2007). In a period that has arguably heralded the emergence of a food regime based upon ‘greening’ tendencies among consumers (Burch and Lawrence, 2005; Friedmann, 2005), supermarkets have attained the balance of power and are said to be increasingly dictating what, where and how food is produced and consumed around the globe (see the contributions in Lawrence and Burch, 2007). These transformations have been well researched and documented (see Reardon and Beardegue, 2002; Lang and Heasman, 2004; Burch and Lawrence, 2007; McMichael, 2009). However, evidence regarding the health implications of this concentration of market power (in terms of both extent and market conduct) has been slower to emerge. Research in this area remains limited by lack of agreement over where responsibility for public health (beyond a narrow focus on food safety) lies in relation to the food system, as well as by the absence of an accepted framework for examining the multiple dimensions of food system-related health.
