The Politics of Food: An Introduction 77coverage, had the ability to ‘strike back’. Thus, in the case of BSE, the political
implications of a food scandal have had significant and far-reaching consequences,
even if the implications for human health are still being debated, as the number of
people directly affected by vCJD is still relatively low (Zwanenberg and Millstone,
2003).
The BSE scandal came in the wake of other scandals, such as salmonella and
dioxins in chicken, so that the 1990s may be seen to represent a historical water-
shed with regard to the way food is thought about, talked about and handled.
Food is no longer simply a much-needed material resource; its purchase is now
linked to the need for consumers to balance monetary concerns with issues of risk
and distrust. What could previously be left to food safety authorities and nutrition
expertise hit the headlines of the news media and became a topic of expert contro-
versy and public debate. Where policy measures used to be dominant, a complex
interplay of food producers, food control, state policies, news media and the pub-
lic is now involved in defining food safety. As a result, ‘what’s for dinner?’ has
become an issue of considerable concern, demonstrated yet again in the most
recent food scare about carcinogens in salmon sparked by a food safety report pub-
lished in the US (see http://www.foodstandards.gov.uk/news/pressreleases/sciencesahiion)..)
Food is politicized, not only as a commodity for consumption, but all the way into
the kitchen and the dinner table, with implications for cooking and family care.
Genetic modification of food, which again hit the headlines in the 1990s, has
meant that many of our most common foodstuffs can no longer be taken for
granted. Since the emergence of GMOs on the food market, the material proper-
ties of food itself have become the subject of controversy. Some argue that genetic
modification represents only a faster method of plant cultivation, and one with
immediate benefits. Critics maintain that speed makes a difference, as it collapses
qualitatively significant material changes into a time span of a few years that would
previously only be noticeable over several generations. Such changes expose the
malleability of edible substances, and force us to realize that the foods we eat are
the result of human manipulation, often with unintended consequences. No
longer trapped in a ‘black box’ of conventional (agri-) cultural practices (Latour,
1987), food is thus exposed as a hybrid phenomenon. As such, it immediately
enters the battlefield of conflicting agendas and interests. In this way, the politics
of food has come to be implicated in the very notion of food itself, what food is
and what it should be.
Genetic engineering has implications far beyond its actual implementation.
Even in Norway, where GMO foods are still marginal and essentially banned,
public awareness of the options inherent in genetic engineering has opened the
food debate toward new problem areas, and has thus politicized the very substance
of food, even though our tomatoes are still more or less the same. In this way, the
politics of food is no longer confined to policy making within the nation state, but
closely connected to innovations and discourses that take place on the transna-
tional arenas of science, technology and trade.