Food chain

Abstract: We assess whether consumers' attitudes towards sustainability are reflected in their food choices. Using an online survey, we elicit from 20,000 consumers in ten European countries the main motives when purchasing food, front-of-pack elements that signal differences in sustainability and purchase decisions. At the aggregated level, our results show that self-declared purchase motives translate into consumer choices, albeit in a divergent manner for the health and environmental components of sustainability. The findings can help policymakers and businesses to learn about the gap between attitudes and purchase behaviour and help them develop appropriate policies and strategies to promote sustainable food purchases.

Abstract: The digitalisation of the EU agricultural sector is an essential part of the broader EU Digital Agenda and the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) aiming to promote competitiveness, sustainability, and resilience in agriculture through digital transformation. This report analyses the current state of digitalisation in EU agriculture, covering the adoption of general IT and software tools and farm-specific technologies, key drivers and barriers, perceived sustainability aspects, and farm-level practices in data collection, management and sharing. The analysis is based on farm survey data from 1 444 respondents in nine EU Member States – Germany, Ireland, Greece, Spain, France, Italy, Lithuania, Hungary and Poland – collected between June and October 2024. The results show that while general IT and software tools are widely used, more expensive technologies specific to crop or livestock production have been less widely adopted. Adoption rates are higher among larger farms, those with better internet connectivity and those with specialised training. Key drivers of adoption include efficiency gains, cost savings, regulatory pressures and improved quality of life, while high costs and limited skills remain notable barriers. Farmers expect digital technologies to have positive economic, environmental and social impacts. Farm-level data collection is still largely manual or based on basic digital tools, which increases the administrative burden on farmers. Farmers appear to take a selective approach to data sharing, mainly due to concerns about privacy, security and data control. Promoting transparent data policies, ensuring farmers benefit from sharing and adopting a targeted policy approach for advanced technologies can help build trust and support wider digital adoption.

Abstract: Marketing food products with slightly different compositions as identical across countries is a common practice in the food industry. While food companies argue that different versions reflect taste preferences, some Central and Eastern European consumers allege that multinational companies sell lower quality products using the same brand name and packaging as in Western European countries. The political attention gathered by this practice, exemplified by the dual food quality (DFQ) debate in the European Union (EU), has largely neglected how the presence of DFQ affects consumers’ purchase decisions. This study aims to help fill this gap. Additionally, it examines the impact of a policy intervention consisting of a ‘made for’ claim and the role of the brand name on consumer choices. Through online discrete-choice experiments and laboratory tasting and rating experiments in six EU countries, no systematic support is found for either the industry’s or the consumers’ arguments. Results also indicate that a policy requiring consumers to be informed about the destination market of different versions would increase consumers’ valuation of domestic products, while at the same time improving transparency and avoiding misleading consumers.

Abstract: The objective of this paper is to analyse the changes in the occurrence of the Differences in Composition of Seemingly Identical, branded food Products (DC-SIP) – also known as “dual food quality” – in the EU and the role of the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive (UCPD) in affecting the food industry’s packaging and recipe formulation choices of branded food products. The occurrence of DC-SIP has decreased from 31 % in 2018/2019 to 24 % in 2021. Our regression results show that companies are more likely to alter the front packaging rather than the composition of the products to address DC-SIP issues. The likelihood that changes in recipe reformulations and front packaging are introduced simultaneously is statistically significant but not all recipe reformulations are introduced jointly with changes in front packaging. Our results provide evidence that the UCPD regulation plays a role in companies reformulating recipes or/and changing the product packaging, but it is not a main driver. Companies often justify the composition differences in DC-SIP by differences in market conditions across Member States. The DC SIP provisions in the UCPD give companies several options for addressing DC-SIP. For this reason, it is not a significant factor in impacting the companies’ choices to reformulate or change the packaging of products.

Abstract: Livestock production is responsible for most of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from European agriculture. To achieve the climate targets in the European Union, reducing emissions from the food chain, and within that from livestock production, is imperative. Along with structural changes, management and technological improvements on farms have an important role in reducing GHG emissions. However, our understanding of the uptake of low-GHG practices is limited, with uneven evidence across countries and practices. This report adds to the evidence base on the uptake of mitigation practices by presenting the results of two surveys, one done with dairy farmers in Poland about the use of breeding indices, and the other with pig producers in France about multi-phase feeding. The results provide evidence of the importance of farm size and specialisation in practice uptake, while also pointing to the role of the processors in the case of milk production. The most common barriers are high cost, low return on investment and a perception that the farm is too small to implement such practices. Adopters mentioned the benefits of improved milk yield and genetics and also better knowledge of the herd in the case of the breeding index, and reduced feed costs and nitrogen excretion with multi-phase feeding. Simulations of greenhouse gas emissions associated with the adopters’ and non-adopters’ farming systems showed a potential reduction of GHG emission intensity in both cases, namely 9% for milk production with using the breeding index in the herd and 3% for pig meat production with multi-phase feeding.

Abstract: In the context of the policy debate and initiatives to address misleading practices that suggest to consumers that products marketed under the same brand and in the same or similar packaging have the same composition or characteristics across different Member States when this is not the case (often referred to as ‘dual quality’ (DQ)), the European Parliament has emphasised the importance of establishing a permanent monitoring system to track products sold on the single market. This feasibility study aims to explore the effectiveness of a crowdsourcing mobile app (Food-Checker) as a tool to monitor the occurrence of DQ. The app uses artificial intelligence (AI) technology and was tested using an awareness campaign and incentives to motivate users to submit product images. The app was piloted in five Member States (Germany, France, Italy, Poland and Romania) between September 2022 and March 2023. The study results demonstrate that Food-Checker can effectively utilise AI technology for monitoring DQ, particularly for capturing and extracting information from product packaging. Although there was a substantial awareness campaign, users’ engagement with the app was limited. In this regard, monetary rewards were found to be more effective than behavioural interventions. As a result of low user engagement and a small sample size, AI could not be fully trained in certain functions relevant to identifying DQ − such as identifying the same or similar branded products, distinguishing different product versions within a Member State and detecting DQ practices. The app could be a viable solution for monitoring DQ if the AI behind the app is further trained to enhance its performance and effective engagement tools are developed.

Abstract: The European Green Deal and its farm-to-fork strategy have made food system sustainability an EU policy priority, with the aim of making the EU’s current food system fairer, healthier and more environmentally friendly. Notably, the farm-to-fork strategy highlights action areas for food supply chain operators, which give rise to both opportunities and challenges. Innovation in sustainability-enhancing products and practices is playing an increasingly important role in this transition to a sustainable food system; such innovation creates value for both companies and society and gives companies a competitive advantage. However, there is limited information on operator-level sustainability initiatives across the food supply chain. Importantly, to understand how regulations can effectively support this transition, policymakers must understand the drivers of and barriers to innovative sustainability initiatives. They must also be aware of how these initiatives work in practice and the expected implications and trade-offs in terms of the economic, social and environmental sustainability dimensions. This report attempts to bring together evidence on and provide a comparative assessment of sustainability innovation and innovative initiatives adopted by private operators in the EU food supply chain. The report’s analyses are based on microdata collected through an online survey of 426 representatives of EU food chain operators, industry associations and other related organisations. The results show that most of the operators surveyed had put in place a range of sustainability initiatives of different natures, such as process innovations, product innovations, technological/digital innovations, organisational innovations, marketing innovations and logistic process innovations. Impacts in the environmental dimension were the main sustainability improvement expected by respondents, followed by impacts in the social and economic dimensions. Market-related factors (demand and supply requirements) were found to be the main drivers of sustainability initiatives, followed by meeting regulatory requirements. The barriers to developing and implementing sustainability innovations most commonly indicated by respondents were a lack of economic resources, qualified human capital, technical resources, knowledge, a sustainability culture, public policy support, clarity in regulations and recognition by consumers or the market. The majority of the sustainability initiatives introduced relied on internal research and development and vertical collaboration with other actors in the food chain. Many respondents used indicators to measure the performance of sustainability innovations, but the coverage of the sustainability dimensions was heterogeneous. In terms of the performance of the sustainability initiatives adopted, the results indicate that the initiatives generated net-positive sustainability gains. At the same time, there were trade-offs between the sustainability dimensions. While the sustainability initiatives implemented generally had different sustainability impacts, they did not all result in net gains in all sustainability dimensions. Overall, respondents’ most common perception about the transition of the current food system towards sustainability was that this process was just beginning but progressing well.

Abstract: Differences in composition of seemingly identical branded food products (DC-SIP) occur when a good is marketed in one Member State as being identical (same brand labelling and same or similar front-of-pack appearance) to a good marketed in another Member State while that good has a significantly different composition or significantly different characteristics. The Joint Research Centre (JRC) developed a common testing methodology to examine the occurrence of this practice in the European single market. This methodology was applied in the first EU-wide testing campaign in 2018/2019. The objective of this study is to replicate the 2018/2019 testing campaign to provide figures for 2021 on the occurrence of DC-SIP in the European single market and to compare them with the results of the 2018/2019 testing campaign. In addition to the result of this comparison, this report presents the results of a survey of brand owners about their (potential) actions regarding DC-SIP in response to recent regulatory changes, namely the amended Directive 2005/29/EC – the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive (UCPD) – where a specific provision on DC-SIP (Article 6(2)(c)) was introduced by Directive (EU) 2019/2161.

Abstract: The objective of this report is to qualitatively assess the added value of introducing EU marketing standards in the cider sector, and their costs and benefits from socioeconomic, environmental and health perspectives. For this purpose, the report also analyses the current public and private marketing standards that operators in the cider sector apply in different Member States. The analyses in the report are based on semi-structured interviews conducted with stakeholders from the cider sector.

Abstract: This article analyzes the impact of producer organizations (POs) on dairy farmers’ self-assessed experiences of unfair trading practices (UTPs) and negotiation power. We employ an endogenous switching regression (ESR) model using cross-sectional survey data collected in four EU countries: France, Germany, Spain, and Poland. The results show rather mixed impacts of PO membership. PO membership reduces the likelihood of farmers reporting UTPs. On the other hand, PO membership is found to reduce the self-assessed negotiation power of PO members. The estimated impact of PO membership is found to be largest for smaller farms.