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Food supply chains and the antimicrobial resistance challenge:: on the framing, accomplishments, and limitations of corporate responsibility

Food supply chains and the antimicrobial resistance challenge:: on the framing, accomplishments, and limitations of corporate responsibility
Food supply chains and the antimicrobial resistance challenge:: on the framing, accomplishments, and limitations of corporate responsibility
This paper presents a critique of supply chain responses to a particular global wicked problem –antimicrobial resistance (AMR). It evaluates the understanding of AMR (and drug-resistant infections) as a food system challenge and critically explores how responsibility for addressing it is framed and implemented. We place the spotlight on the AMR strategies applied in UK retailers’ domestic poultry and pork supply chains. This provides a timely analysis of corporate engagement with AMR in light of the 2016 O’Neill report on Tackling Drug Resistant Infections Globally, which positioned supermarket chains, processors, and regulators as holding key responsibilities. Research included interviews with retailers, industry bodies, policy makers, farmers, processors, consultants, and campaigners. We evaluate how strategy for tackling AMR in the food system is focused on antimicrobial stewardship, particularly targets for reducing antibiotic use in domestic food production. The Global Value Chain notion of multipolar governance, where influence derives from multiple nodes both inside and outside the supply chain, is blended with more-than-human assemblage perspectives to capture the implementation of targets. This conceptual fusion grasps how supply chain responsibility and influence works through both a distributed group of stakeholders and the ecological complexity of the AMR challenge. The paper demonstrates in turn: how the targets for reducing antibiotic use in domestic meat production represent a particular and narrowly-defined strategic focus; how those targets have been met through distributed agency in the UK supply chain; and the geographical and biological limitations of the targets in tackling AMR as a wicked problem.

Antimicrobial resistance, corporate food retailers, multipolar governance, global value chains, distributed agency
0308-518X
1373-1390
Hughes, Alex
3aaf22e9-cb6e-477c-b3cb-43d110715aa9
Roe, Emma
f7579e4e-3721-4046-a2d4-d6395f61c675
Hocknell, Suzanne
b8ed1819-bdcd-4454-a1e9-cea72df5c6e6
Hughes, Alex
3aaf22e9-cb6e-477c-b3cb-43d110715aa9
Roe, Emma
f7579e4e-3721-4046-a2d4-d6395f61c675
Hocknell, Suzanne
b8ed1819-bdcd-4454-a1e9-cea72df5c6e6

Hughes, Alex, Roe, Emma and Hocknell, Suzanne (2021) Food supply chains and the antimicrobial resistance challenge:: on the framing, accomplishments, and limitations of corporate responsibility. Environment and Planning A, 53 (6), 1373-1390. (doi:10.1177/0308518X211015255).

Record type: Article

Abstract

This paper presents a critique of supply chain responses to a particular global wicked problem –antimicrobial resistance (AMR). It evaluates the understanding of AMR (and drug-resistant infections) as a food system challenge and critically explores how responsibility for addressing it is framed and implemented. We place the spotlight on the AMR strategies applied in UK retailers’ domestic poultry and pork supply chains. This provides a timely analysis of corporate engagement with AMR in light of the 2016 O’Neill report on Tackling Drug Resistant Infections Globally, which positioned supermarket chains, processors, and regulators as holding key responsibilities. Research included interviews with retailers, industry bodies, policy makers, farmers, processors, consultants, and campaigners. We evaluate how strategy for tackling AMR in the food system is focused on antimicrobial stewardship, particularly targets for reducing antibiotic use in domestic food production. The Global Value Chain notion of multipolar governance, where influence derives from multiple nodes both inside and outside the supply chain, is blended with more-than-human assemblage perspectives to capture the implementation of targets. This conceptual fusion grasps how supply chain responsibility and influence works through both a distributed group of stakeholders and the ecological complexity of the AMR challenge. The paper demonstrates in turn: how the targets for reducing antibiotic use in domestic meat production represent a particular and narrowly-defined strategic focus; how those targets have been met through distributed agency in the UK supply chain; and the geographical and biological limitations of the targets in tackling AMR as a wicked problem.

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Accepted/In Press date: 15 April 2021
Published date: September 2021
Additional Information: Funding Information: We are grateful for the ESRC Award ES/P011586/1 funding the research and to three anonymous reviewers, Henry Yeung as editor, and Fraser Broadfoot at the Veterinary Medicines Directorate for their very helpful comments on earlier drafts of the paper. Thanks also go to Neil Wrigley, Bill Keevil, Michelle Lowe and Tim Leighton at the University of Southampton and Steve Wearne at the Food Standards Agency for supporting the research and providing advice. We are grateful to Charles Scott for coordinating the interviews with farms and to Carmen Hubbard at Newcastle University for advice on facilitating this. The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (grant number ES/P011586/1). Funding Information: The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (grant number ES/P011586/1). Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2021.
Keywords: Antimicrobial resistance, corporate food retailers, multipolar governance, global value chains, distributed agency

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 448395
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/448395
ISSN: 0308-518X
PURE UUID: 41371273-b962-4c34-ab56-37c008f5ac37
ORCID for Emma Roe: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0003-4674-2133

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Date deposited: 21 Apr 2021 16:33
Last modified: 06 Jun 2024 01:45

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Contributors

Author: Alex Hughes
Author: Emma Roe ORCID iD
Author: Suzanne Hocknell

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