Management of sanitary and phytosanitary risks in the apple value chain: the Sustain' Apple project

In France, apples are the leading fruit in terms of both consumption and exports. The value chain is under high surveillance from a sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) standpoint due to national and European regulations, private residue standards, phytosanitary barriers in certain emerging countries and the sometimes critical perceptions of consumers. The French ANR-funded Sustain'Apple project, the initial findings of which are presented in this paper, aims to shed light on the organizational and institutional solutions that may be implemented at all stages of the national value chains (short and long chains) and at the international level with a focus on certain crucial players (China, Chile, Italy). Priority has been given to improving the sustainability of the organizational and institutional solutions because while they are tightly interlinked with technical solutions, they have yet to receive much attention in the academic and empirical literature. Sustain'Apple also evaluates the impact of certain organizational and institutional solutions on consumer perceptions of the sanitary risk, international trade and environment. The consortium brings together all the capabilities necessary to address these sustainable apple chain issues, with INRA, CIRAD, IRSTEA and Montpellier Supagro involved on the research side examining the following scientific disciplines: organization and institutional economics, international economics, consumer economics, strategic management, international law, agronomy, landscape ecology and life cycle assessments. On the expertise side, the main contributions come from CTIFL on supermarkets, consumers, postharvest technologies and production systems, from GRAB on short organic chains and from ANPP on a detailed and global understanding of the apple production and export industry.