Constraints and Limitations to the Design and Implementation or Origin and Quality Assurance Systems for Argentine Beef

This paper examines the current status of quality beef trade in Argentina together with production and marketing value-adding alternatives. Origin and quality assurance systems for beef have been developed as a way of differentiating products designed to satisfy increasingly demanding European and North American consumers. This led to gaining new markets and obtaining higher prices and profit margins. Such systems are based on institutional, organisational and technological innovations that are ultimately co-innovations, since they derive from generally accepted collective action processes. In Argentina, the strong influence of path dependency, particularly within informal institutional and organizational environments, threatens any possibility of widely applying and developing the new designs, thus turning the argentine livestock sector into an irremediable sector.