Food system transparency

Expand transparency around food system practices and their impacts

If consumers, communities, companies, and governments are going to make decisions that reflect their values and priorities, they need access to accurate, relevant information. This is especially challenging when it comes to food systems, though. Our globalized food chains often make it difficult to glean meaningful information about how and where food is produced, let alone the broader social, health, environmental, equity, and economic implications. As an example, consider the meat aisle at the grocery store—the clean, plastic-wrapped packages tell consumers little about the lives of the animals or the conditions workers faced to get it there. The industrialized food production system has adopted an “out of sight, out of mind” strategy, counting on the fact that if consumers don’t know about a practice or method, they won’t protest it or ask for something different. Ultimately, the less the consumer knows, the less pressure she puts on corporations to change. At the Center, we believe that increased transparency that would make information easy to access, or even unavoidable, is one way to put the wheels of change in motion. But as advocates push for greater transparency, corporations push back with policies intended to diminish transparency, such as “ag-gag laws,” which criminalize whistleblowing in agricultural operations.
Across the continent, food policy councils (FPCs) are bringing food policy to the people at the local level, which increases transparency. Through this democratization of food systems, the Center works to facilitate information-sharing and convening of FPCs and produces many practical resources and guides that can be used by councils to advance their agendas.

Examples of our work in this area:

Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future

Food system transparency

Expand transparency around food system practices and their impacts