Greening the networked economy - Environmental Reform in the Information Age - page 176

General Food Law. 18 In addition to governmental pushes, private
company initiatives such as product stewardship policies, account-
ability programs, insurance requirements and social and environmen-
tal corporate responsibility programs have significantly contributed to
ideas of tracing and tracking of products. Where information on (dif-
ferent steps in) the product life cycle go beyond the internal affairs of
private actors in the chains and networks and are made public, tracing
and tracking flows over into transparency. Information becomes then
relevant for stakeholders outside the production systems: consumers,
citizens, public authorities, NGOs and so on. Transparency aims to pro-
vide access to product-relevant information (in its broadest meaning)
by those not directly involved in the commodity chains or networks.
Although transparency was arguably initiated to satisfy worries of pub-
lic authorities, private consumers and civil society actors, it also has
important functions for the commodity chain itself, for instance, in pre-
serving product identity, adding value and identifying (or preventing)
illegal competitors.
Especially when transparency is related to actors outside the com-
modity chain, trust is crucial. In a globalised market, with increas-
ing geographical distances in chains, trust has to be built increas-
ingly via abstract information systems and symbolic tokens and less
via sensory experiences, face-to-face communications and past records
(or the “repetition of history”). Questions of reliability and verifi-
cation of informational symbolic tokens become central. But also in
large-distance linkages and coordination within commodity chains
and networks transparency and trust via abstract information systems
and symbolic tokens play important roles. Although transparency has
become to a certain extent fashionable in entering the new millennium
and practices of information disclosure in commodity chains and net-
works are increasing, there still exist many good reasons for, and con-
tinuing practices of, keeping (environmentally relevant) information

18

EC regulation 178/2002 of the European Parliament and of the Council of
28 January laying down the general principles and requirements of food law,
establishing the European Food Safety Authority and laying down procedures
in matters of food safety. Consumer and environmental NGOs are even asking
for further legislation in the area of transparency. For instance, the Dutch
consumer organisation Consumentenbond stresses the need of and lobbies for
an International Consumer Right-to-Know Act, comparable to the Freedom of
Information Act in many countries (Peters, 2004 ; for a proposed draft of such
an act, see http://www.consumentenbond.nl, accessed April 2006).