Food safety importers’ strategies and typologies of international fresh fruit and vegetables supply chains

Abstract

Related to growing concerns about food safety, the present heterogeneity of certifications and types of control adopted in international supply chains has been interacting with a number of private level strategies, having supermarket chains and large distributors as main protagonists, such as the strategic selection of target market or the differentiation strategy of B2B ('Business to Business') and B2C ('Business to Consumer'), which are applicable to food safety in the fresh fruit and vegetable distribution channel. In this paper, on the one hand, we describe the types of international supply chains for fresh products, and on the other hand, the strategies related to food safety of importers and distributors in developed countries. This with the aim of determining how these strategies influence and interact with both the health risk and the management and decision processes along the supply chain. Especially, it is shown how the diversity of effects caused by the introduction and development of risk management systems is reflected in the wide range of inter-related responses performed by the different members of the distribution channel. This paper proposes a summary of the more noteworthy ones in a segmented way according to their strategic purposes. As main conclusions of this paper we have that, due to the need and obligation for the distribution channel´s members to meet the quality and safety levels required by the market, the characteristics of the linkages, which were established until now along the supply chain, have been altered towards a search for higher upstream commitments from retailers to producers, and thus, the operator´s response to the new dimension acquired by food safety within the supply chain has led to the staging of new methods and procedures for its management. It can also be observed that the bulk of the literature in the area of food safety in the fresh fruit and vegetables supply chain is about the government and implementation of quality in products, processes, or with specific protocols, being much less present a pragmatic and management approach oriented to executive staff in their various areas of responsibility, as well as empirical fieldworks.