The horsemeat scandal brought the issue of transparency in the food chain into the public eye, fuelling growing discontent as well as political debate. As the UK's Labour party points out in its recent food policy review, no one has been prosecuted yet and questions about the transparency of food chains remain unanswered. Could ways of shortening food chains prevent this from happening again?

Short food chains are not only of interest to policymakers, but also community groups, farmers and campaigners. In fact, the revolution in food chains is being driven from the bottom up, by groups such as innovative farmers diversifying into direct sales and urban community groups who want to take control of where their food comes from.

A common misconception is that a short food chain equals local food. While this is an important factor, the concept is broader than just food being locally produced; it measures the number of links between producer and consumer, in theory meaning that a producer selling food directly via a global website can also be part of a short food chain. Short food chains can be spatially proximate or spatially extended, but they keep the number of links in the chain to a minimum. The definition of this term is also much more transparent and less open to dispute than local food. You may buy a homemade strawberry jam from your local farm shop, but although the strawberries are grown locally, the sugar used will not be, so critics would say that this cannot be considered 100% local.

The European Commission, in light of reforms to the Common Agricultural Policy, has short food chains high on its agenda. This is mainly because there is a good business case, especially for Europe's estimated 11 million small-scale farmers. The benefit is namely that producers reduce the profit lost through selling via intermediaries. Research from Coventry University's Centre for Agroecology and Food Security also suggests that consumers have far higher levels of trust in producers when buying directly from them, leading to long-term relationships and stability for both parties. In addition, products from short food chains also reach the consumer packed with information about where they have come from and who made them.

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