Suchergebnisse

This paper argues that discussion of new food-safety governance should be framed by the realization that the dominant food system within which food-safety governance is designed to makes food safe is itself a structural and systemic sources of food un-safety, poor health and a future of food insecurity for many. For some, an appropriate policy response lies in addressing the connections between the food system and diseases such as heart disease, obesity and diabetes. For others it means subsuming food-safety governance within food security governance. For yet others, safe food implies food sovereignty governance and the primacy of a climate change resilient food system. Conventional approaches to food-safety governance are typically framed within a liability model of responsibility that has limited usefulness for addressing institutional, structural or systemic sources of harm such as those critics increasingly attribute to the dominant food system and which are not amenable to remedy by food-safety governance as it is widely understood. One cannot identify critical hazard points where risk is to be managed. These are food-system safety challenges. Because food-safety governance is so deeply political there needs to be greater attention to issues of governance rather than the more usual focus on the technologies of food-safety. Feminist political theorists have much to contribute to re-thinking food-safety governance in the context of diversity and the complexities of power. One could usefully start with the simple questions, "what food is to be kept-safe, for whom and who is the subject of food-safety governance in a post-Westphalian political economic order?" These questions can help unpack both the narrow parochialism and the misleading universalism of food-safety talk. This paper answers that neither the citizens of a particular state (or network of states) nor the falsely universalizing identity of 'the consumer' are adequate answers to these questions about 'who' and 'what'. Answering these questions about who and what with respect to food-safety governance brings issues of justice, ecology, public health and the legitimacy and nature of governance itself into the heart of food-safety discussions.

L'auteure assure que subsister, se suffire, pour les paysans, c'est une transgression face aux arrangements économiques et politiques dominants qui sont banalisés et même déclarés morts. Mais ils serviront à nous garder vivants.

"There are efforts by a variety of social movements and civil society organizations
to encourage the development of alternative agri-food networks that are socially just,
ecological, humane and which ensure food security and food sovereignty. Many activists
focus their critiques on the role of large multinational corporations in restructuring and
globalizing the agri-food system. They offer in its place a vision of locally oriented,
small scale ecological farming. Drawing on the gendered experience of small scale
women farmers on Vancouver Island, BC, Canada who are developing local markets for
their farm products and the impact of new Provincial food safety regulations, this paper
argues if such social change initiatives are to be successful, one will need to look at how
food safety regulations accomplish outcomes that have relatively little to do with food
safety but effectively close the possibilities for more ecologically grounded and locally
focused food production and distribution. That is, food safety regulations seem inevitably
to close off to farmers the possibility of economic alternatives to the globalizing agri food
system. There will be 'no alternatives'. Paradoxically, consumer led food and food
security movements can undermine the very changes they wish to see happen." (author's abstract)