Why increasing predictability cannot do the job alone when we aim to establish trust in the agri-food sector

in spite of all attention to the safety and quality of food, public trust in food is still subject to discussion. A common way to address the public hesitance to trust the parties within the food sector is a strong focus on increasing predictability. This mainly results in measures that aim to increase transparency and provide information. The argument that underlies this focus is that the real problem of trust is a lack of predictability and a need for possibilities of a trustor to anticipate on what will happen when one trusts. Without denying the relevance of explicating routines and patterns in the sector, I argue in this paper that predictability is not a sufficient condition if the aim is to build public trust in the agri-food sector. For this claim I present three arguments. First, the current food sector faces us with the problem that patterns and routines are not simply elements that are present and only have to be revealed with the help of sufficient information. This has implications for the scope of transparency, which is elaborated in my second argument. Transparency cannot be restricted to mere openness. It has to include more fundamental assumptions that underlie actions and policy. Finally, trustful expectations are not only based upon predictable patterns, but also on anthropological or moral assumptions. These assumptions enable us to trust even when predictable patterns fail or are conflicting with each other. Hence they are an essential addition to the emphasis on trust and predictability.