THE FOOD-INDUSTRY - STILL A CRAFT INDUSTRY

The faculty of the food industry to adapt to different technical and e conomic contexts rests less on an aptitude for radically reviewing exi sting processes, products or knowledge than on a capacity for maintain ing them so as to combine them. In this way it is able to meet the cha llenge of new social functions or marketing strategies. This rational control of its craft traditions is particularly marked in the European food industry. It manifests itself less by ruptures than by the affir mation of certain continuity that profoundly markets industrial strate gies and R&D policies.