We discuss in this paper, the corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategies that food firms have chosen in order to address societal concerns regarding the healthiness and safety of food. We examine why certain strategies are frequently adopted, to what extent these strategies interact with public initiatives, to what extent these approaches are credible from an economic perspective and whether they reduce the risk of failure in the final market. We argue that private initiatives to promote healthy and safe food to a large extent are influenced by the problem of differentiating products along such characteristics and by the need for vertical coordination of the supply chain.