Dear Colleagues,  

Food quality and safety are critically important to the economy and public health of all countries.  

With a view to the sustainable development of agriculture and agri-food industries, policies aim to improve their response to society's needs starting from safe, nutritious, and healthy food up to other product attributes related to ethical, environmental, and social concerns.   

Since the 1990s, the agri-food sector has grown rapidly, resulting in producers, processors, retailers, and governments implementing protocols concerning the food safety system, that is, a system ensuring the absence of possible negative impacts on consumer health. Nowadays, each actor in the food chain is subject to national and international requirements that demand the development and implementation of food safety management and assurance systems.   

At the same time, due to the increase in consumer awareness and demand, to help manufacturers achieve and demonstrate consistent quality, industry advisory groups establish quality standards that include good management practices, methods, systems, requirements, and/or specifications.   

It is in the producers' interest to provide safe and quality food, largely to protect their reputation, especially when food-safety problems arise. In this respect, food-chain actors are confronted with major challenges related to crisis and epidemiological situations, lacking and scarce resources, growing competition, and increasing customer expectations. Various external and internal factors influence economic and management performance in an organization, which has a direct impact on how well it is able in maintain its food safety and quality management system.   

The issue of how standards can promote food safety and quality undoubtedly plays a central role not only in the political and entrepreneurial debate but also in the daily life of consumers.  

On the one hand, standards play a primary role in the trust relationship between institutions, producers, and consumers, based largely on the perception of the qualitative aspects of products.  

On the other hand, the adoption of quality and safety standards applied throughout the entire food chain (production, handling, processing, transport, and storage) is increasingly becoming a mandatory choice. The global health emergency has shown, perhaps for the first time, how the components of the agri-food supply chain both interact with and produce impacts on national, regional, and global levels and the need for them to operate harmoniously and supportively in view of a “collective resilience", as well as the need to rethink, expand, and implement public and private standards that address the entire supply chain.  

At present, although there are numerous studies aimed at investigating the role of standards in the food chain to promote safety and quality, several questions still require an answer.   

This Special Issue on “Standards Promoting Food Safety and Quality” welcomes high-quality original research articles, in-depth conceptual papers, or reviews presenting novel findings and filling contemporary knowledge gaps.   

Some of the questions that could tackle the Special Issue theme include, but are not limited to, the following:   

• How do the public and private standards providing food safety and quality promote the achievement of sustainable development and affect the firm's performance?    
• What efforts are to be undertaken by the individual food operators of the food chain and policymakers to encourage the adoption of food safety and quality standards?   
• How and to what extent do food quality and safety standards can affect agriculture and agri-food political strategies and impact on agriculture production?  
• Which barriers can affect company's choice to adopt food safety and quality standards?  
• In what ways has the opening of companies to international markets contributed to the adoption of quality and safety standards?   
• What role do food quality and safety standards play in the current insecurity of the agri-food sector resulting from the pandemic and Ukrainian crisis?  
• How and to what extent do food quality and safety standards contribute to the fight against food loss and waste?   
• What role do food safety and quality audits play in the fight against food fraud and in improving consumer safety when buying food?  
• How and to what extent do reporting standards promote food safety and quality?    
• Within the framework of the consumers' perception of the quality and safety of food, how and to what extent do standards and their proliferation enable consumers to make informed decisions, and how are they positioned to the confidence placed in manufacturer or retailer brands? 

Dr. Brunella Arru
Lucia Briamonte
Dr. Massimo Lucarini
Dr. Filippo Giarratana
Dr. Alessandra Durazzo
Prof. Dr. Ilija Djekic
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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