1 Traceability and food safety: public choice and private incentives

In this article we strive to develop some basic “economics ” of traceability in order to demonstrate that beyond its major use as a food safety tool, mandatory traceability strongly affects the organization of food system, as well as its structures and strategies. In some cases organizational effects can even overwhelm the safety assurance effects. The general effect of treaceability on the organization of the food systems is to drive even more national brands towards procurement policies based on the outsourcing. Traceability can heavily affect the nature of relationships along the food supply chain, replacing contractual relationships strongly relied on trust, with highly engineered technological links based on formal short-period contract