Policy roadmap: Governing food system transparency for sustainability, health, and food safety

Bear, Christopher ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7130-515X, Mukherjee, Ananya ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4007-5459, Dahl, Patrik and Weldon, James 2026. Policy roadmap: Governing food system transparency for sustainability, health, and food safety. [Project Report]. Cardiff: TITAN Project. Available at: https://titanproject.eu/wp-content/uploads/D7.4-Po...

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Abstract

European agri-food governance has shifted from the systemic socio-ecological targets of the European Green Deal towards crisis management, administrative simplification, and market competitiveness. In this altered landscape, information disclosure is frequently deployed as a substitute for substantive regulation, widening the delivery gap between legislative ambition and operational reality. Evidence across the TITAN project demonstrates that uncritical transparency mandates fail to resolve power imbalances; instead, they push uncompensated data-collection burdens upstream onto primary producers and small enterprises, while downstream buyers and technology providers capture the analytical and commercial value. This deliverable presents an evidence-based policy roadmap to govern food system transparency across food safety, environmental sustainability, and public health. Synthesising empirical research, multi-stakeholder deliberations, and demonstrator pilots from across the TITAN project, the report diagnoses six cross-cutting structural challenges: conceptual ambiguity, sectoral policy silos, data and power asymmetries, rural digital infrastructure deficits, the limits of voluntary market codes, and the dilution of corporate accountability. To address these systemic frictions, the deliverable establishes eight foundational governance principles and six strategic policy recommendations structured through the Three Horizons Framework to link long-term public-interest visions with practical transition pathways. These pathways are operationalised through a four-tier framework grounded in Dynamic Adaptive Policy Pathways (DAPP) and integrated into the European Commission's Better Regulation Guidelines (SWD(2021) 305 final): • Tier 1 (Foundational Governance): Outlines a route to context-specific statutory definitions of transparency, sets ‘do no harm’ reporting thresholds to protect small enterprises, and establishes regional Food System Participation Hubs to embed non-corporate actors in policy monitoring. • Tier 2 (Semantic Harmonisation): Integrates domain ontologies into a unified EU agri-food data dictionary, validates standardised product descriptors across high-risk commodity chains (e.g. olive oil, honey, wine, fresh produce, seafood), and establishes offline data-buffering protocols for low-connectivity rural areas. • Tier 3 (Sovereign Digital Tooling): Scales low-cost diagnostics (e.g. LAMP and DNA assays) via public-good licensing, co-funds Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) compliance tools with open APIs, and legislates data sovereignty through European Business Wallets (EBWs). • Tier 4 (Market Guardrails & Calibration): Establishes binding regulatory floors for large commercial operators, embeds REFIT triggers to convert ineffective voluntary schemes into statutory standards, and applies Data Act model contract terms alongside Unfair Trading Practices (UTP) rules to prevent unfair data extraction. This roadmap provides EU and national authorities with the statutory and technical mechanisms required to mobilise transparency as a transformative driver of food safety, environmental sustainability, and public health.

Item Type:	Report (Project Report)
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Geography and Planning (GEOPL)
Subjects:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > G Geography (General) J Political Science > JN Political institutions (Europe)
Publisher:	TITAN Project
Funders:	Innovate UK, European Commission
Projects:	Enabling transparency in food supply chains by implementing innovative solutions to boost health, sustainability, and food safety (TITAN)
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	11 September 2026
Last Modified:	11 Sep 2026 15:37
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/189536

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