Consumer concerns and ethical traceability: outline of a liberal argument

Volkert Beekman

Consumer concerns and ethical traceability: outline of a liberal argument

In: Ethics and the politics of food

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Volkert Beekman

Volkert Beekman Applied Philosophy Group, Wageningen University, Hollandseweg 1, 6706 KN Wageningen, The Netherlands, volkert.beekman@wur.nl

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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 49–55

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.3920/9789086865758_006

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Discourse about traceability in food chains focused on traceability as means towards the end of managing food-born health risks. The aim of traceability has been to ensure that consumers can trust that their food consumption is not risky in terms of health consequences. This discourse witnessed a call to broaden traceability and make it instrumental for the accommodation of consumer concerns about product and process characteristics of foods that are not related to health risks. This call envisions the development of ethical traceability. Then, the first question in need of scrutiny is whether ethical traceability might be a worthwhile objective. A justification discourse about ethical traceability needs to precede an application discourse. This paper presents a contribution to this justification of ethical traceability. The main line or argument is couched in terms of liberal distinctions, since the call for ethical traceability seems to be based on intuitions about consumer rights to informed choice on the food market. The paper suggests that two versions of ethical traceability find justification. First, ethical traceability as a tool to ensure that consumers are provided with foods that respect some threshold level of, e.g., animal welfare or fair trade as supported by an overlapping consensus of food values. Second, ethical traceability as a tool to facilitate that certain consumers are not provided with misinformation about product and process characteristics of foods that are relevant for reasonable, non-superficial values that are not supported by an overlapping consensus.

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Ethics and the politics of food

Preprints of the 6th Congress of the European Society for Agricultural and Food Ethics

E-Book ISBN:: 9789086865758

Publisher:: Wageningen Academic

Print Publication Date:: 10 Oct 2006

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- Life Sciences

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Consumer concerns and ethical traceability: outline of a liberal argument

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Ethics and the politics of food

Preprints of the 6th Congress of the European Society for Agricultural and Food Ethics

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