This volume presents to the international world of learning the first fruits of a project launched by the European Science Foundation (ESF) in 1977. Tribute should be paid to the late Professor Aleck Chloros, Judge in the Court of the Euro- pean Community, whose belief in the European ideal and enthusiasm for European co9peration and the comparative study oflegal problems made him an eloquent ad- vocate of a large-scale ESF venture into the field of comparative law. Judge Chloros had envisaged the creation of a permanent, sizable and well-equipped European in- stitute for comparative legal studies. The successive working parties convoked by the Executive Council of the ESF, which I had the honour of heading from the be- ginning, came to the conclusion that this ambitious vision could not be realized im- mediately; the financial situation of the member organizations of the ESF also de- teriorated, making a cautious approach a necessary virtue. The solution ultimately adopted by the last of the working parties - the Ad Hoc Committee for Compara- tive Law - and submitted to the General Assembly of the ESF in 1979 called for the launching of four pilot projects. In November 1980, the Assembly approved de- tailed plans for two of these projects, the first of which concerned medical respon- sibility - the subject of this volume. A Steering Committee was set up to monitor the projects. The organisation of the study was entrusted to Professor Dr.

The decision-making process in agriculture rests squarely on information available to farmers, entrepreneurs and policy-makers. Information can best be considered as a productive resource, potentially limiting and influencing the efficiency of production, marketing, processing and administration. Yet it is not an aspect of agriculture which has been isolated as an autonomous study area. Indeed, at the production level, the role of information hardly has been defined and in practice the processing of raw data to provide useful information is informal and crude. Exceptions do exist, however, and at all levels in the industry it is possible to detect a ground swell of demand for improvement. Even where serious and successful attempts have been made to establish formal information systems, as, for example, in the case of the agricultural economics profession in the 1920s and 1930s for national policy-making purposes, obsolescence has occurred, making the systems inefficient. Information systems are expensive to establish and to operate, and where, owing to development of the industry or change in the type of decision which must be made or advances in the technology of information systems, inefficiencies have become obvious, re-evaluation is a matter of urgent concern. The concern is the greater as agriculture develops and control of production and marketing becomes more critical: under these conditions, appropriate decision-support through formal information systems becomes the keystone for a viable enterprise.