Postgraduate Course: Sustainability in Food Supply Chains: Law and Policy (LAWS11511)
Course Outline
| School | School of Law |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course considers legal, regulatory and policy questions relating to food supply chains. There will be a particular focus on food supply chain sustainability, including measures to counteract power asymmetries in the wider context of food security, supply chain regulation and food & agricultural policies.
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| Course description |
This course examines the legal organization of food supply chains, through the lens of commercial law and food policy in their local regional and global settings and impact on sustainability and food security.
The course will consider food supply chains against the following context:
With the world's population rising, the amount of food needed is increasing. Climate change is upsetting, if not destroying, established production patterns. Conflict, pandemics and animal diseases are disrupting or destroying established food sources and supply lines. The environmental impact of food supply and farming practices is clear and climate goals require change to minimize the harm caused by our current food system.
Multinational companies have taken control over most of the food retail chain and food manufacturing. They purchase directly or through intermediaries from farmers and growers, sometimes via
complex global value chains. These contractual relationships typically suffer from significant power asymmetry, most acutely but not exclusively in the context of small-scale suppliers.
Policy responses to tackle food security and imbalanced power structures specific to food supply chains have not had sufficient impact. More needs to be done. There is a need to inform public
policy and emerging regulations to address the challenges in food supply chains and food systems.
This course aims to engage student in the debate on policy and regulatory issues, to investigate solutions, assess the current framework and proposals for new measures. Where appropriate, the topics will be informed by a comparative analysis of relevant instruments applicable in the UK, the EU and worldwide.
In addition to exploring the legal and policy frameworks of food supply chains, the course helps students acquire the skills and tools to assess and address issues of power asymmetry in commercial
and supply chain contracting and measures to enhance sustainability of food supply.
The course provides students with a critical perspective on the challenges and limitations of commercial contracting and instruments regulating unfair trading practices and sustainability goals and corporate sustainability initiatives.
The course will employ a mixture of staff-led teaching and direct students to engage in their own student-led research projects. The course will culminate in a student conference, with individual presentations from all students on the course.
The course will cover a selection of the following range of topics and issues, depending on availability of staff and student interest:
- Commercial contracting and power imbalance in the food supply chain, systemic issues in supply chain contracting
- 'Sustainability' contracting: product requirements, certification schemes, environmental clauses and enforceability
- Approaches to addressing power asymmetry: Regulation of Unfair Trading Practices and Corporate Due Diligence
- Food Supply Chains in light of UN Sustainable Development Goals, esp. No.2 Zero Hunger and No.12 Responsible Consumption and Production
- Public Procurement of food and sustainability goals
- Competition law and monopsony in the food system
- Legal geography, policymaking and food value chains
- Business and human rights framework relating to food
- Food supply chains, food loss and food waste
- Agriculture policies, food production and climate goals
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2024/25, Not available to visiting students (SS1)
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Quota: 25 |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 20,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
176 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
The Summative Assessment will consist of the following elements:«br /»
1. Presentation and Participation in student conference as final teaching event of the course (week 10 or 11); the assessment will consist of «br /»
a) Oral presentation of 15- 20 minutes followed by 5 minutes of discussion (worth 60% of the mark)«br /»
b) Engagement in Q&A and/or acting as session chairs (10% of mark, awarded as pass/fail)«br /»
2. Submission of a literature review on the topic of the student's presentation of up to 2.000 words (30% of the mark) with submission deadline by end of week 9. |
| Feedback |
Students will receive feedback during teaching sessions in response to their participation performance.
Week 5: individual feedback opportunity on presentation topic selection. Students will be provided with an opportunity of gaining formal feedback to a formative assessment exercise on a task relevant to the summative assessment (likely timeframe is weeks 6-8).
Students will engage in peer feedback (week 7).
Feedback on the summative assessment will be provided in written form via Learn, the University of Edinburgh's Virtual Learning Environment (VLE)
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| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the current legal framework and food policy in relation to food supply chains and food supply contracts at domestic, EU and international level.
- Analyse complex cases and theoretical questions on a number of the following: policies, laws, and scholarship in the wider area of food supply contracting, supply chain sustainability, power asymmetries and monopsony, food security and food & agricultural policies.
- Critically evaluate the current provisions of the law and proposals for reform in the areas explored.
- Independently research relevant policies, laws, and scholarship in the wider area of food supply contracting, supply chain sustainability, power asymmetries and monopsony, food security and food & agricultural policies and apply this research to in-class discussions, debates, and presentations.
- Effectively use the acquired knowledge to structure, develop and support arguments and communicate these effectively, orally and in writing.
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Reading List
Books - selected chapters of:
- I Lianos, A Ivanov & D Davis, Global Food Value Chains and Competition Law (CUP, 2022)
- Tim Lang, Feeding Britain: Our Food Problems and How to Fix Them (2021, Pelican Books)
- Lyn Tjon Soei Len, Minimum Contract Justice. A Capabilities Perspective on Sweatshop and Consumer Contracts (2017, Hart Publishing) (https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/minimum-contractjustice-9781782257110/)
- Andreas Rühmkorf Corporate social responsibility, private law and global supply chains (2015, Edward Elgar)
- Ufbeck, V et al (editors) Law and Responsible Supply Chain Management: Contract and Tort Interplay and Overlap (2019 Routledge)
- Martin Caraher, Sinéad Furey, Rebecca Wells, Food Policy in the United Kingdom, An Introduction (2023, Routledge) (Chapters 7 & 8)
- Beate Sjafjell, Anja Wiesbrook (eds), Sustainable Public Procurement under EU Law; New Perspectives on the State as Stakeholder (CUP, 2015)
Journal Articles or selected chapters of edited collections :
- Fabrizio Cafaggi, Paola Iamiceli, The limits of contract laws. The control of contractual power in trade practices and the preservation of freedom of contract within agrifood global supply chains, Ch 3 in F. Gomez Pomar Ignacio Fernandez Chacon Estudios de Derecho Contractual Europeo, (Editorial Aranzadi 2022).
- Lyn Tjon Soei Len, 'Hermeneutical Injustice, Contract Law, and Global Value Chains' (2020) ERCL 139
- Vibe Ulfbeck and Ole Hansen, Sustainability Clauses in an unsustainable Contract Law, ERCL 2020; 16(1): 186-205
- Fabrizio Cafaggi & Paola Iamiceli, "Unfair Trading Practices in Food Supply Chains. Regulatory Responses and Institutional Alternatives in the Light of the New EU Directive", European Review of Private Law 5 (2019) pp1075-1114.
- Carrie Bradshaw, "England's fresh approach to food waste: problem frames in the Resources and Waste Strategy", (2020) Legal Studies 40, 321-343
Websites and blogs from the following:
City University : Centre for food Policy https://www.city.ac.uk/research/centres/food-policy
Grocery Code Adjudicator: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/groceries-code-adjudicator
Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming: https://www.sustainweb.org/
Nourish Scotland: https://www.nourishscotland.org/
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Critical and reflective thinking
Students will engage with different sources, different perspectives, and legal fields to understand how food supply contracts/chains and food policy interact with numerous fields such as contract law, unfair trade practices regulation, corporate due diligence and accountability, competition law, human rights law and what the key issues are.
Passion to engage locally and globally
This course will encourage students to engage with policy on food supply and security; to engage with the accountability gap in the law regarding value chains as relevant to food supply chains and to discuss their impact on food security, agri-food policies and their impact on climate goals.
The course seeks to identify salient issues and encourage reflection and engagement in assessing the legal and regulatory framework and envisaging solutions or promoting new policy goals.
Outlook and engagement
This course encourages students to study different fields of law (including some of the following: commercial law, contract law, tort law, corporate law, international law and governance, EU law) and how these intersect with issues surrounding food supply contracts and food supply chains. This helps to establish an understanding on these issues through different perspectives and lenses to ensure a comprehensive outlook on the field.
Research and enquiry
The students will be able to conduct independent research into legal and policy questions relating to food supply chains through the study of key primary and secondary sources, and critically evaluating these sources. |
| Keywords | Food supply,food security,food supply chain,food policy,Commercial contracting,sustainability |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Simone Lamont-Black
Tel: (0131 6)50 2060
Email: simone.lamont-black@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Hannah Ackroyd
Tel: (0131 6)50 2008
Email: hackroyd@ed.ac.uk |
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