The new import regulation; More reliability for imported organic products? in The New EU Regulation for organic food and farming: (EC) No 834/2007

The European market for organic products is growing at a dynamic pace. Increasingly, processing and marketing companies are entering this market, which has a very promising future. However, organic farm production at the inter-European level has not increased at the same rate as the market for organic products

Generating Governance Capacity in Infant Industries: The Development of Organic Farming in Denmark and Australia

Organic farming is of increasing interest to policy makers as it has been linked to environmental, rural development and market related outcomes which have high political salience. As such, attention naturally turns to catalysing organic growth. Patterns of growth vary considerably among countries, but existing explanations of variation lack authority. This paper compares the development of organic farming sectors in Australia and Denmark, countries at polar ends of the organic sector development continuum. They provide a good comparison as both countries share key characteristics, such as a history of state-agricultural industry partnerships, an implicit post-1980’s consensus around a market model for agricultural industry development, and the general absence of consumer distrust over food quality. After ruling out a number of well worn explanations for differential growth we focus on the role of governance capacity. We argue that the Danish case, in contrast with Australia, demonstrates that when well-developed associative and state capacities can combine alongside interest intermediation then governance capacity is generated and infant industry development is made possible

Exploring the Potential of Halal Tourism Through Institutional Analysis of Halal Certifiers in the Philippines

This study analyses various institutions’ halal certification and standards in the Philippines and their potential for halal tourism. The demand for halal services and products has been increasing in the Philippines, however, the major halal certifiers in the country uphold different standards, leading to confusion and abuse in halal accreditation and certification. The unification of halal standards is a complex process due to varying interpretations and thus, this research utilised case study methods to analyse the similarities and differences of the three major halal certifiers in the country within the lenses of the Work System Elements Framework and the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework which examine the participants, processes, information needs, and environment. Results show that halal certifiers do not have a common standard in their certification practices. Additionally, there is no national certification scheme or a standard scheme that certifiers can follow. Therefore, each certifying body has its own standard, scheme, and policy regarding halal certification, resulting in a fragmented development of certification schemes. An appropriate halal standard in the Philippines is essential to attract Muslim visitors, as the country initiated a halal programme that aims to increase the arrival of international Muslim travellers. The findings provide implications for developing and managing halal tourism and for diversifying tourism products in the Philippines. Further, this study makes a valuable contribution to the understudied phenomenon of halal certification in a Muslim-minority country that could benefit from incorporating halal tourism in their destinations

Private Agri-food Standards: Contestation, Hybridity and the Politics of Standards

Standards are an omnipresent yet generally taken-for-granted part of our everyday life (Higgins and Larner, 2010a; Timmermans and Epstein, 2010; Busch, 2011). Until recently, standards within the agri-food sector were typically dismissed (if thought of at all) by social scientists as rather benign, technical tools, primarily of interest to specialists concerned with facilitating markets and trade. Over the past decade, however, this assessment has changed considerably and many agri-food scholars now view standards as a useful entry point for analysing and understanding our social and material world. The degree of interest today is reflected in the fact that our call for papers on private agri-food standards attracted so many high-quality submissions that we are publishing this special issues in two parts. In part, this shift in interest reflects the influence of science studies and its concern with studying ‘mundane’ and taken-for-granted objects and practices (Higgins and Larner, 2010b). Here scholars take inanimate objects seriously, to understand, for example, how non-human actors such as standards allow humans to ‘act at a distance’ (Latour, 1987), thereby ordering relations across time and space. Many agri-food researchers are also concerned with the rise of private food standards developed by global retailers and non-government organizations, including understanding the role that these standards might play in coordinating and governing production and consumption relations within the context of globalization (Giovannucci and Ponte, 2005; Hatanaka et al., 2005; Mutersbaugh, 2005; Tallontire et al., 2011)

Forest Certification: Toward Common Standards?

The forestry industry provides a good illustration of the active roles that industry associations, environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), national governments, and international organizations can play in developing and promoting codes of conduct that are formally sanctioned and certified. It also reflects some of the challenges of disseminating codes of conduct in developing countries and ensuring market benefits from certification. We describe the emergence of forest certification standards, outline current certification schemes, and discuss the role of major corporations in creating demand for certified products. We also discuss the limited success of certification and some of the obstacles to its adoption in developing countries. The current diversity of forest certification programs and ecolabeling schemes has created a costly, less-than-transparent system that has been largely ineffective in terms of the initial goals of reducing tropical deforestation and illegal logging. Some steps have been taken toward harmonization of different certification criteria as well as endorsement and mutual recognition among existing forest certification programs. However, it is unlikely that standardization alone can overcome other, more serious barriers to certification in developing countries.forest certification, codes of conduct, Forest Stewardship Council, PEFC, Sustainable Forestry Initiative, sustainable forest management

Transnational private authority in the sphere of education

© Indiana University Maurer School of Law. It seems that an ever-shorter temporal rhythm is gaining ground with the end of the "short twentieth century,"1 challenging the modern temporal horizon. The emerging economy relies on a continuous stream of scientific and technical knowledge closely related to information technology and networks. The increasing compression of both time and space has major consequences for the governance of the economy and the setting of authoritative standards in this sphere. This paper explores the consequences for education and training and its governance, where continuing education has become crucial. It studies the setting of authoritative standards in the field of information and communication technology (ICT) training, which has become vital for the knowledge-based economy. I will show how the standardization of these trainings by way of third-party certifiers establishes a mode of private coordination between companies, sectors, and across national borders. A closer examination of competing claims to authority in this field provides interesting insights into the enabling conditions of this mode of coordination and also brings a geopolitical dimension to the fore.European Research Counci

Creating value(s) by integrating local and extra-local resources in cereal production in the Swiss Alps

This paper explores the long-term prospect of alternative, local food initiatives, taking a particular interest in the development of the embedded local values, understood as economic as well as cultural values. Analysing the case of a cooperative of mountain cereal farmers in Switzerland, we show that sustaining local values-based quality is a dynamic process of linking local and extra-local resources. Our results first show the importance of both proximity and place in constructing the ‘local’ by the cooperative. Second, product flow, knowledge and information exchange, quality control, and innovation are governed by both horizontal and vertical relationships between local and extra-local resources, and these multiple relationships build trust in the network and beyond. This, thirdly, enables the cooperative to continuously reproduce its values by weaving them into a cycle of quality creation. We conclude that we need to understand the characteristic values-based quality of the cooperative’s products as the result of a recurring cycle of local and extra-local knowledge creation and resource exchange

Market, regulation, market, regulation

International audienceThis paper focuses on the European Regulatory system which was settled both for opening the Single Market for products and ensuring the consumers' safety. It claims that the New Approach and Standardization, and the Global Approach to conformity assessment, which suppressed the last technical barriers to trade in Europe, realized the free movement of products by organizing progressively several orders of markets and regulation. Based on historical and institutional documents, on technical publications, and on interviews, this article relates how the European Commission and the Member States had alternatively recourse to markets and to regulations, at the three main levels of the New Approach Directives implementation. The article focuses also more specifically on the Medical Devices sector, not only because this New Approach sector has long been controversial in Europe, and has recently been concerned by an important regulatory failure, but also because it is regulated by totally other means in the United States of America. At a time when the Medical Devices sector is part of TTIP discussions, this article allows a better understanding of the diverse stakeholders and regulators positions in the EU

Distributed graph-based state space generation

LTSMIN provides a framework in which state space generation can be distributed easily over many cores on a single compute node, as well as over multiple compute nodes. The tool works on the basis of a vector representation of the states; the individual cores are assigned the task of computing all successors of states that are sent to them. In this paper we show how this framework can be applied in the case where states are essentially graphs interpreted up to isomorphism, such as the ones we have been studying for GROOVE. This involves developing a suitable vector representation for a canonical form of those graphs. The canonical forms are computed using a third tool called BLISS. We combined the three tools to form a system for distributed state space generation based on graph grammars. We show that the time performance of the resulting system scales well (i.e., close to linear) with the number of cores. We also report surprising statistics on the memory\ud consumption, which imply that the vector representation used to store graphs in LTSMIN is more compact than the representation used in GROOVE

A New Governance Recipe for Food Safety Regulation

Although food safety is a significant and increasing global health concern, international economic law does not adequately address today’s global food safety needs. While most countries rely on a collection of formalized legal rules to protect food safety, these rules too often fall short. As fiscal constraints impede raising the number of border inspections, formal international commitments (treaties) frequently limit governmental efforts to raise food safety standards. Private companies, meanwhile, can readily adopt higher standards to meet consumer demands and supply chain needs, thus demonstrating more nimbleness and flexibility in adopting the highest food safety standards available. Can countries learn from private motivations in overseeing supply chains while staying true to their formal commitments? This Article documents a novel legal concept—the growing use of private standards to ensure food safety—reinforced by recent legislation in the United States and elsewhere. While this “New Governance” strategy allows countries to institutionalize the types of steps already taken by private actors, this model is not perfect and additional regulatory oversight and guidance will be necessary to ensure that a reformed New Governance works in this context. This Article confronts the motivations, tensions, and controversies that arise with implementing a New Governance model for food safety and provides a roadmap for achieving higher food safety goals