The project aims at contributing to the international debate on food production informed by concerns for ethical issues, quality-related issues and eco-sustainable values. In particular, the project aims at investigating the interface between quality reassurance and consumers’ propension to buy aforementioned types of products. The phenomenon of alternative food networks is burgeoning in US and European rural areas. These networks comprising consumers and producers are proposed as alternatives to the standard/industrial food production and distribution system (Renting et al., 2003) and rely on social and political mobilization oriented towards novel market governance models (Wathmore et al., 2003).
Within these networks, production and consumption of food items are tightly interconnected and close spatially, economically and socially. Currently, literature on these alternative systems is still in its infancy and the project aims specifically at contributing to its growth by looking at the role and potential of innovative labelling systems.
