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Modern supply chains collect and deliver products worldwide and link vendors and consumers over thousands of miles. In the food industry, the quality of products is affected by manufacturing/processing and logistics activities, such as transportation and packaging. Specifically, transportation is likely the most critical step throughout the “food journey” from farm to fork because of the potential stresses that affect the products during shipment and storage activities. The purpose of this paper is to present and apply an original assessment of quality, safety and environmental effects due to the international distribution of food products via different container solutions. A case study that examines the shipment of edible oils from Italy to Canada demonstrates that the quality of a product at the place of consumption can be significantly affected by the use of different containers.

A simulation-based quality assessment, combined with a life cycle and environmental analysis, supports the logistic manager in the decision-making process in order to guarantee the highest level of product quality at the place of consumption.

The proposed approach and the illustrated case study demonstrate the importance of conducting safety and quality assessment combined with environmental analyses of sustainable food supply chains.

This paper highlights the interdependency of implications and decisions on food quality and environmental sustainability of supply chain processes and activities.

This chapter provides some concluding reflections on the different experiences of structural change encountered by the TARGET partners. The various TARGET partners had different roles in the structural change processes: seven organisations designed, implemented and monitored gender equality plans (GEPs) for the first time, two organisations provided tailored support to implementing institutions and one organisation evaluated GEP implementation. This edited volume provides an account of these diverse experiences of engaging with and catalysing structural change in very different research organisations operating in extremely different contexts both within the EU and beyond. The volume thus contributes to the growing body of literature generated from structural change projects by offering a specific focus on the TARGET approach. The TARGET process of structural change – undertaken through the development and implementation of tailored, evidence-based GEPs – was found to be strengthened through formal top management commitment and by taking a reflexive approach that was powered by communities of practice and supported by financial resources, gender expertise as well as gender and organisational change competences. Engaged institutions thus managed to overcome unfavourable conditions and implement tailor-made, context-specific interventions, some of them in areas at the cutting edge of topics and issues linked to gender equality in research and innovation such as tackling sexual harassment, sustainability and integrating the gender dimension into research content and curricula.