The Politics of Food Labeling and Certification - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 635

products is likely to be limited by social norms and by income. Disagreements about
how stringent standards should be will continue to drive the proliferation of labels,
increasingly challenging consumers' already limited ability to distinguish between
strong and weak standards. The logistical and structural challenges to effective monitor-
ing of private standards by certification agents are likely to persist, making violations at
the farm level difficult to detect and thus rendering perfect compliance elusive.
Our review of existing evidence points to five key issues as likely to affect the trajec-
tory of labeling and certification schemes in the future.
First, all theories of consumer motivation suggest that social norms drive demand.
The size of the market for ethical goods will be constrained by the extent to which pro-
ponents of labeling initiatives can recruit consumers beyond a narrow demographic,
economic, and ideological base. The more broadly norms are spread, the more they are
likely to affect individual consumers' decisions to buy ethically labeled goods.
Second, while we know little about how these norms are spread, new communities
are unlikely to start conversations about food ethics if certification remains limited to a
narrow set of products and retailers. Thus the extent of demand may be affected by the
outcome of the depth-versus-breadth debate.
Third, if breadth strategies increase consumer demand and depth strategies deepen
farmer impact, the debate between the two may be counterproductive because it sug-
gests a false choice. Rather than choosing between a system of lenient standards that are
accessible to a broad range of products and a system of strict standards that will likely
remain a niche market, labels like LEED certification and the GlobalGAP program have
developed unified certification systems with incremental standards that range from the
baseline to the aspirational. If this type of tiered system of food certification is more
broadly adopted across the ethical food market, giving merit points both for certifica-
tion at high levels and for improvements at any level, it would likely moderate label pro-
liferation and accommodate a range of companies by rewarding both excellence and
improvement.
Fourth, our discussion of certification watchdogs suggests a pivotal role for jour-
nalists in determining whether standards remain credible. Similar to the role of inde-
pendent media in safeguarding a democratic political system in which voters have
limited information, journalists are in the position to step into the role of “watchdog
to the watchdogs,” helping consumers wade through the marketing materials of each
standard-setting organization and flagging certifiers whose transparency clouds or
whose standards slip.
Finally, although geographic dispersion of certified farms, poor transportation infra-
structure, and complex supply-chain structures will continue to pose a challenge to
transparency in international supply chains, traceability initiatives that have been dis-
missed as too complicated in the past will become increasingly within reach with the
continued spread of mobile telecommunications technology. The impact of certification
schemes on farmers and farms and the credibility of those schemes in the eyes of the
public will, in part, depend on the ability of certification organizations to leverage rap-
idly evolving technology to continue to improve monitoring efforts.