Abstract
The Farm to Fork Strategy (FFS) under the umbrella of the Green Deal also focuses on how better to promote the consumer empowerment through the role of labels in the goal of promoting healthy and sustainable diets. The COVID-19 pandemic increased the need to reflect upon food strategies and the threats beyond them, which could potentially link to world pandemics. The Farm to Fork Strategy proposes a plan of action in order to inform consumers of the power they have in choosing what is at the same time healthy but also socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable. A resilient consumer will be the one able to embrace “conscious” choices. However, consumer’s information on agro-food products is unevenly spread in various countries in the EU. Diverse voluntary Front of Pack (FoP) labels co-exist across EU Member States. An interesting case study is how agro-food Geographical Indications (PDO, PGI), well promoted in the EU CAP policy, could possibly be left without protection and even classified at times as “unhealthy” or “unsustainable” according to the information present in some FoP. The paper highlights this information asymmetry gap and the role that European consumers could potentially play in improving the current approach to EU agro-food policies towards diets that are both healthy and sustainable. Consumers should therefore be empowered to make the “right choice” based on equally distributed information across European Union member states; information that should not be driven by market stakeholders or laid on exclusively medical requirements.
Presenters
Alessandra NarcisoResearch Fellow, ISEM-CNR (Institute of European Mediterranean History of the National Research Council), Roma, Italy
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
EU FFS, Front-of-pack labels, Consumer choices, Agro-food geographical indications
