Consumers' Acceptability and Rejection of Food Traceability Systems, a French-German Cross-Comparison

Food traceability is mandatory since 1st January 2005 in the EU. Traceability of products and activities in the food supply chain is a new factor of competitiveness in agribusiness that connects producers to consumers and is deemed to be an important criterion of perception of food product quality and safety for consumers. Within the food industry, traceability is absolutely essential to provide consumer assurance about the sources and safety of food, to allow identification of the source of infected or substandard product, for disease control and residue monitoring, for support measure verification, and to satisfy the requirements of labelling regulations. Despite growing interest in traceability systems and recognition of the need to act more market oriented, very little research has been done on consumer needs and perception of traceability. Researchers as well as managers have mainly focused on technical solutions. This paper tries to contribute to i) get a deeper understanding of the role of the "ability-to-trace" in consumer decision-making process with respect to food, ii) measure consumers' acceptability for food traceability, iii) check the differences of these matters across France and Germany.