Cultural Politics of Food Safety - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 561

public outrage witnessed in other nations. Labeling is not required in national law, and
despite a surge in state-level attempts in the 2010s to introduce mandatory labeling via
ballot initiatives and bills, no state has yet established labeling requirements (as of July
2013).
These divergences in both policy and public responses are particularly intriguing
because these countries shared liberal regulatory approaches and similar public uncer-
tainty before GMOs entered food markets in the mid-1990s. Distinct national policy
frameworks and public attitudes developed between the late 1990s and the early 2000s,
and for the most part they remain intact.
From analysis of these divergent national trajectories, this chapter illustrates three
important dynamics in the politics of food safety. First, how food safety became politi-
cized differed across cases. The sequences, timing, and actors who mobilized the issue
differed widely. Second, other aspects of the safety and desirability of genetic engineer-
ing in agriculture became intertwined with the politics of food safety. We cannot really
understand food safety outcomes in isolation from the context in which other aspects—
such as environmental concerns—were politicized. Third, the meaning of GM food itself
in policy and public discourse—its salience and definition—mattered to divergence of
national approaches to food safety. The boundaries between GM and non-GM food are
not self-evident, but they are variable over time and across contexts (Sato 2007). As a
result, labeling policy and practices becomes a contested site where specific boundaries
are drawn and manifested (see Clough, this volume).
How GM food developed as a category—through eminently cultural and political
processes—resonates with a distinctive tradition of anthropological inquiry: the same
food—whether pork, dog meat, or rice—is often categorized in radically different ways
across contexts (e.g., Douglas 1966; Harris 1985; Ohnuki-Tierney 1993). Without falling
prey to the perils of cultural essentialism, we can still discern how each social collectiv-
ity develops its own ways of classifying a specific food item. Classification matters politi-
cally as well. In her comparative analysis of biotechnology regulation, Jasanoff (1995;
2005) notes that scientifically measurable characteristics of the final product have con-
sistently been the basis for regulatory decisions in the product-oriented US framework,
whereas the use of genetic engineering itself has served as a criterion for a special regula-
tory category in the UK's process -oriented approach. In contrast, German debates came
down to the entire programmatic relationship between technology, society, and the state.
Regulatory frameworks generate categories; biotechnology regulations have created not
only new bio-legal entities, but also a series of administrative practices and technical
instruments around such entities (Lezaun 2006). In the cases that follow, we analyze the
politicization and institutionalization of food safety in each country by situating them in
the development of “GM food” as a cultural category.
This framework offers an alternative to dominant approaches. The most common
approaches explain differences in food-safety policy by looking at (a) political conflicts
among actors with different material interest and resources ( political realism ); (b) differ-
ent norms and values ( culturism ); (c) the different degrees to which the public under-
stands the science of risk and safety ( public understanding of science ); and (d) specific