78 The Global Food System
Food on Transnational Arenas
Food is increasingly involved in controversies at a transnational level. The global
politics of food involves not only the unequal distribution of access and rigged
producer markets, but also moral and political engagements in relation to what is
seen by many as a single global environment (Franklin et al, 2000). In this way, the
politics of food is also politics at a distance, as exemplified by consumer boycotts,
internet petitions and other examples of global-environmental activism. Several
factors constitute the background for this development. First, although the long-
distance transport of food is far from new (cf. Pelto and Pelto, 1983; Mintz, 1985),
the delocalization of food has become more significant during the last decades,
leading to what some scholars refer to as the ‘globalization of food and nutrition
systems’ (Sobal, 1999). Using the terminology of Held et al (1999) one may rea-
sonably argue with regard to food that we have witnessed an increase both in the
extensity of global networks, in the intensity and impact of global interconnected-
ness, and in the velocity of global flows. This implies that the potential impact of
local events on distant affairs have become even more significant. This imbues
some affluent consumers with a sense of responsibility for relations that are not
only distant, but also extremely complex and hard to grasp, and thus brings world
politics into the shopping cart. At the same time, as global consumers, we are vul-
nerable to shifts in practices, regulations and routines that take place in distant
regions of the world. Negligence, fraud and adulteration represent sources of risk
to most of us, even if they happen elsewhere, just as corporate decisions that are
made in New York, or policy decisions made in Brussels, may have dramatic con-
sequences for the access to food and livelihood in rural India.
This is just another way of saying that as food systems are globalized, food
becomes entangled in complex webs of political significance. It does not, by itself,
make food a political object, but it vastly increases the number of diverse interests,
relations and regulatory frameworks that are enrolled as each food item makes its
way from production through to consumption (Fine and Leopold, 1993). Hence,
the potential for interests to diverge and come into conflict also rises exponentially,
even if only a few of these conflicts ever surface on the political agenda of the pub-
lic media.
In the case of food, therefore, its socio-political relations of production are
always more significant than the food item itself might reveal. What appears to be
a carrot or a piece of meat is indeed a product with a history and implications more
complex and profound than most of us even want to think about. This gap between
what we actually know about the food we eat and what we could potentially know
(and even act upon), makes transparency a key issue. Thus, the politics of food is
also a politics of silence and exposure, a quest for the power to control what will be
declared, what will be the focus of public debate and what will remain unspoken
(Nestlé, 2002). This issue has been in the forefront of the debate concerning GM
food in Europe, where the issue of explicit and exhaustive labelling has brought
European governments into conflict with the US. Transparency is also a key theme