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Abstract
The food sector is the largest economic sector in the European Union (CIAA, 2005). It consists
of a complex, global and dynamically changing network of trade streams, food supply network
relations and related product flows (Fritz, Schiefer, 2008a). Food supply networks are subject
to dynamically changing circumstances, which include fluctuations at primary production due
to changes in weather or climate, impacting supply and demand and prices, and also impacting
the quality of raw material, variations in food consumption due to seasonality or the westernization
of diets in Asia (see e.g. OECD-FAO, 2006, Pingali, 2006), the development of alternative
uses of raw material such as bio-fuel, and, not the least, from changing attitudes of society
towards the consequences of the food system’s activities for environmental, social and economic
issues, captured in the term of “sustainability” (Aiking, de Boer, 2004).