Copyright Sociological Research Online, 1999

 

Reidar Almas (1999) 'Food Trust, Ethics and Safety in Risk Society.'
Sociological Research Online, vol. 4, no. 3, <http://www.socresonline.org.uk/4/3/almas.html>

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Received: 17/9/1999      Accepted: 28/9/1999     Published: 30/9/1999

Abstract

We are living in the age of mad cow disease. Through large scale bulletins in the media, we have learned about food scandals that threaten both our health and our environment. This has raised problems like: Who can we trust? And what type of food production can be regarded as ethically defensible in our day and age? And finally, how does the precautionary principle apply to the way we evaluate food and risk. The likelihood of becoming sick from the next meal has probably never been less than it is today. Yet at the same time, we know less than ever about the long-term consequences of today's food production. Ulrich Beck argued more than 10 years ago that we are moving from "industrial society" to "risk society". While industrial society was structured through social classes, risk society is individualised. Beck's individualisation thesis is central to being able to understand how individuals handle risks through composing their own risk identity profile. Because the different experts "dump their contradictions and conflicts at the feet of the individual" (Beck 1992:137), he or she has to find biographical solutions to handle risks. Where to live, what to eat, where to take a vacation, what clothes to wear, with whom to mingle and to have sex with is up to the individual. And it is not like in simple modernity anymore, when the regulatory authorities took care of the risks and kept the foods you should not eat out of the country. The reflexive burden is placed upon the shoulders of the individual. So is also the case when it comes to genetic modified foods and debates around this. Even if these new foods are labelled, the consumer has to choose which experts to believe before to buy and eat. It is not the case any more that all experts agree and that the public food control institutions will tell you what to do. In the future there will be new food scandals in Europe that will threaten health and the environment. Such food scandals will be a central feature in what people experience as "risk society". Expertise in the social sciences will gradually be given a new role as "experts on peoples' concerns".
Keywords:
Environment.; Food Scandals; Genetic Modified Foods; Health; Individualisation; Precautionary Principle; Reflexive Modernity; Regulation; Risk Society; Trust

Introduction

1.1
We are living in the age of mad cow disease. Through large scale bulletins in the media, we have learned about food scandals that threaten both our health and our environment. The precautionary principle, "better safe than sorry", implies that all nations take part in a debate regarding our values concerning food, health and environment. A new food scandal has recently rolled across Europe: feed concentrate poisoned with dioxins has been used in the production of eggs, chicken, pork, beef and dairy products. The ministers who tried to keep this secret were forced to resign. With today's media, the era of bureaucratic secrecy has passed.

1.2
But this has raised new problems: Who can we trust? And what type of food production can be regarded as ethically defensible in our day and age? And finally, how does the precautionary principle apply to the way we evaluate food, ethics and risk (Almas 1997)?

1.3
The likelihood of becoming sick from the next meal has probably never been less than it is today. Yet at the same time, we know less than ever about the long-term consequences of today's food production. Take, for example, the well-known, but controversial additives with E-numbers. These additives have been subjected to risk analysis one at a time, but as far as I know, any testing of the interaction between them has yet to be done. All of us who eat "normal" food products consume a cocktail of E's every day. This is a gigantic, uncontrolled large scale experiment for which the long-term effect will first appear after a long time. No expert today can tell us what the effects of the interaction may be. The same way of thinking will be relevant when genetically engineered foods come on the market; in the laboratory, each of the products has been tested separately, but in your body and mine they will be tested as an uncontrolled "mix". Or am I way off track? I would be more that happy if our expertise in nutrition and risk analysis could convince me I'm wrong before the market is inundated with genetically engineered additives. One additive, soyalecitin, is included in more than 50% of all foods, and the industry is under continuous pressure to approve genetically engineered soya for use in its production.

1.4
There are strong indications that humanity's innate need to be safe instead of sorry has saved many a life throughout our development. At the same time, there have been many situations in which it has been necessary to take a risk in eating in order to survive at all. Our curiosity for tasting the products of nature - fruits and animals - as well as to process and cook them has given us our daily bread as well as our gourmet pleasures. The line between experiencing gourmet food and experiencing food poisoning is very fine; this can be confirmed by those who love French cheeses and tender meat. But Darwin's theory of development must lead us to understand that among our predecessors there were those who demonstrated too much curiosity and willingness to take risks with new and unknown foods, and they had to pay with their lives, thereby reducing their genes' chances to carry on. The principle of "better safe than sorry" is thus nothing new, but has been acquired through experience bought dearly. The proof of this lies, so to speak, in our genes.

1.5
Prior to the recent Belgian food scandal, the EU commission had already decided to make the precautionary principle part of all relevant EU-directives. Thus, all EU countries, as well as those countries that are included in the European Economic Space area, must apply this principle. But this does not mean that all the problems have been solved. For example, what will this principle mean in concrete terms with regard to approving a product or planting a new plant in free land? Who is to carry the burden of proof - the one who applies for approval for a product, the one who makes the request to plant, or those who fear the risk? And how long can the "better safe than sorry" principle be invoked regarding health, environment and safety before it is questioned whether the motives are something other than health and environment? Can the full consequences be recognised and understood in seven years - or ten years?

1.6
In many cases, multinational companies are moving forward faster than legislation on both national and supranational levels. One example of this is Unilever, who process and sell every third fish caught in the world, and who are now co-operating with the World Wildlife Fund to give its products environment labels. Unilever is doing this not because it is controlled by friendly, "green" champions of the environment who are trying to be safe instead of sorry, but because Unilever understands that many consumers are going to want to buy products that have environment labels. With all respect for the World Wildlife Fund, from a social perspective it seems dubious that a private company should have a hand in controlling an environment label. Strategists in the European fishing industry predict that the next major case regarding ethics and fish products will be about the method of killing fish. The environmental strategists believe that within the next few years, ethically and environmentally minded consumers in Europe will not allow fish to be left to die lying in trawl nets or in holds in boats. This will be good news for small coastal fishermen - those who kill the fish in a humane manner will have a competitive advantage! As consumers, we can only be grateful for the thought of how much better the quality of fish will be if all fish are bled.

1.7
In many European countries, for example in Great Britain, there is currently a discussion about "Frankenstein food" and "super weeds" in which the prime minister and the heir to the throne are among the prominent participants. Super weeds may be expected to spread when genetically engineered plants are planted on free land. It could happen that weeds "steal" some characteristics from the genetically modified plants, so that they become resistant to any kind of damage or they become more effective than their natural competitors. Theoretically, one can picture weeds that develop and spread in an uncontrolled manner, either as a transfer of genes from cultivated plants closely related to the weeds, or from genetic transfer via micro-organisms as mediating hosts. Up until now, the industry has belittled the idea of such possibilities.

1.8
There is also a discussion going on in the USA about genetic research on the so-called terminator technology. Several of the biotechnology companies, among them the multinational Monsanto, are working with such genetically engineered organisms. Very briefly, terminator technology is being able to "turn off" a plant's ability to seed after the plant has produced. The reason the plant's producer develops this genetically engineered plant is to keep the farmer from being able to get free seeds for his next crop. The ethical argument that genetic technology is being developed to serve in the crusade for eliminating hunger in the world seems rather worn. One environmental argument for terminator technology has been that this is a way to prevent unwanted genes from spreading. But such an argument is also a confession that planting genetically engineered plants implies a risk.

1.9
The minister of health in the Netherlands has now advised women who breast feed to discontinue this after three months. This is because of the disturbingly high levels of cancerogenic dioxin found in breast milk. The reason the Netherlands are having this problem is partly due to the fact that much waste is burned in central heating plants. Dioxin is released into the atmosphere, is returned to the earth with the rain and, after becoming part of the ground water, is drunk and stored in the fatty tissue in animals and humans. The response to the question of whether it is just as dangerous to drink milk from cows is that the life span of milking cows is not long enough for cows to store dioxin at dangerous levels. This illustrates that the interrelationships in the ecosystem first become apparent after a long period of time, and that it is not sufficient to regard a risk as limited unless we are able to think in the terms of ecosystems and total effects. It has been interesting to note that it is women who respond most spontaneously and negatively to information about health and environment. This has been apparent in a pattern of opinions demonstrated by the Europabarometer, where women appear to be more concerned than men about food, ethics and risk.

1.10
There are many who find consolation in the fact that risk analyses will be carried out when Novel Foods are to be put on the market, and when genetically engineered organisms will be planted in nature. The risk is then defined as the likelihood of damage times the consequences of damage. If both the likelihood and the consequences were known, then this would be a fine way to analyse risk - in the same way we analyse the risk of flying in an airplane. But when both the likelihood and the consequences are unknown, it is not so fine. In come cases we see that those who analyse risk hide behind the term "negligible", and negligible times negligible equals negligible; that's a mathematical fact. But is this a scientific way of evaluating risk? Shouldn't we be talking about uncertainty instead of risk? Those who carry out risk analyses run the risk of legitimising a violation of the principle of the precautionary principle - especially in the area of genetic technology. Is it possible that this type of "scientific" method will lead to a lack of respect for science itself? As social scientists we have a responsibility of our own to follow up and look into our theoretical toolbox for possible explanations to the present food scares.

1.11
I am writing this article from a perspective of being Norwegian. Norway has a history of strict food regulation, and the Norwegian gene technology law of 1991 was one of the toughest in Europe. One Norway said no to join the European Union in 1994, the question if the Union could guaranty safe food, was one important conflict issue. As the only country in Western Europe, meat consumption has not decreased after the BSE crisis, probably because Norwegian consumers trust its food industry and regulators more than most Europeans. However, in the era of globalisation, national control of the food control and distribution is challenged. Even though most Norwegian food consumption is produced in this country, Norwegian consumers have to face increased imports and new risks.

Ulrich Beck and "Risikogesellschaft"

2.1
Ulrich Beck (1992:4), in his sociology best-seller (60,000 copies in five years from when it was published in 1986), defined "risk society", or "Risikogesellschaft" as probabilities of physical harm due to given technological or other processes. He argued then that we are moving from "industrial society" to "risk society". Industrial society was, according to Beck, characterised by the following aspects:

2.2
Risk society on the other hand is characterised by the following:

2.3
Beck distinguishes between three phases of modernity: pre-modernity, simple modernity, that coincides with industrial society, and then the phase of reflexive modernity. This reflexive phase of modernity is also an industrial society but at the same time a risk society. Reflexivity in risk society means, among other things, that lay people are losing their sense of trust in science and expertise, because they feel betrayed. Modernity's institutions did not live up to the claims that they were managing and controlling the escalating risk.

2.4
New arenas and new institutions must be built where various experts and lay people may meet to negotiate questions such as "What are the risks?" and "What should be done?". The hegemony of scientism from simple modernity is over; new sciences and social movements demand to be heard. In later works, Beck et al (1994:16-23) speaks about sub politics, which is this new field of social and political contest where social movements (green groups, consumer organisations, farmers' organisations, etc.), scientists, industries, regulators, politicians and others meet to reflect upon the new risk issues and fight for legitimacy and political solutions. Beck also calls this new field of politics "life-and death" politics, so we understand that it is more than safe food. It is in a way "big politics" including questions regarding the ozone layer, global warming and bio-diversity.

2.5
Central in risk society theory is also Beck's thesis of individualisation. While industrial society was structured through social classes, risk society is individualised. Beck ([1986] 1992:144) proposes a triple model of individualisation:

  1. removal from historically prescribed social forms and commitments ("liberating dimension")
  2. ( the loss of traditional security with respect to practical knowledge, faith and guiding norms ("disenchantment dimension")
  3. re-embedding, a new type of social commitment and social control in the welfare state ("reintegration dimension")

2.6
This three-factor model is criticised by Beck for being a-historical, and he adds another dimension of two factors. Two dimensions are then criss-crossed, to get six combinations.
  1. (objective) life situation
  2. consciousness (identity, biography, personalization)

2.7
I come back to Beck's individualisation thesis because it is central to being able to understand how individuals handle risks through composing their own identity and biography. Because the different experts "dump their contradictions and conflicts at the feet of the individual" (Beck 1992:137), he or she has to find biographical solutions to handle risks. Where to live, what to eat, where to take a vacation, what clothes to wear, with whom to mingle and to have sex with is up to the individual. And it is not like in simple modernity anymore, when the social democrats took care of the risks and kept the foods you should not eat out of the country. The reflexive burden is placed upon the shoulders of the individual.

2.8
So is also the case when it comes to genetic modified foods and debates around this. Even if these new foods are labelled, the consumer has to choose which experts to believe before to buy and eat. It is not the case any more that all experts agree and that the public food control institutions will tell you what to do. Beck's ideas of reflexivity also enable us to question what a 'producer' and a 'consumer' is. Producer and consumer groups become much more varied than before in the process of individualisation. This means that rather than belonging to organised social groups supporting stable institutions, modern producers and consumers have to carve out their own niches. Rather than listening to one group of experts, they have to reflect upon their own situation and biography, and from that find out what to think and whom to believe.

2.9
After this sketchy exposure of the concepts "risk society" and "reflexive modernity", I am going to discuss and deconstruct two other key concepts in this article: "the producer" and "the consumer".

What is a producer?

3.1
What is a producer? If we look at primary production in agriculture, we find a spectrum from the organic farmer, via the producer doing integrated farming to the industrial farmer. There is also the local farmer, who hardly does anything risky in anyone's eye, to the big farmers in foreign countries who, with the aid of EU subsidies and transnational food companies, are pushing their contaminated foods into our supermarkets.

3.2
So my message is that a farmer is not a farmer is not a farmer. As a consumer with my values I tend to be sympathetic to the sheep farmer on the hillside, while I am highly sceptical of the industrial chicken farmer who is using fodder contaminated by dioxin. With you it may be the other way around. We see the farmers we imagine we see, according to our mental pictures of national and international agriculture.

3.3
As a result of the transformation of fordist and productivist agriculture into a more flexible specialised agriculture, the farmer has also become reflexive. But here again, my country Norway has just recently become modern. Until ten years ago, Norwegian agriculture was managed according to the principles of simple modernity, the farmer produced, the co-operatives took care of the products and sold them in bulk quantities to the consumers, while the government protected the national markets. Government experts also took care of the risks, and we all believed in what they said. Then came Chernobyl (1986), Gunnhild Øyangen (Minister of Agriculture 1990-1996), BSE and scrapie. After that, both farmers and consumers became more sceptical towards experts, even though we in Norway still have the population in Europe that has the highest level of confidence in experts.

3.4
As a consequence of different processes, of which increased risk in modern farming is just one, the farmer has become more reflexive, and hence the differentiation within the farming population has increased. You will now find farmers that are risk-prone, those who want to jump on the biotechnology bandwagon as fast as possible, as well as cautious farmers who want to wait and see. Compared to other countries of Europe, the Norwegian farming population still keeps in mind the adage "better safe than sorry", both in their attitudes and in their actions.

3.5
So what about the consumer?

What is a consumer?

4.1
Who is today's consumer? Is she the Macdonaldised consumer?

4.2
According to Ritzer (1996), the development of fast food eating habits is a part of the rationalisation process observed by Weber and other sociologists as a central feature of modern society.

4.3
But we have also heard about the political consumer, who is that?

4.4
What about the health-conscious consumer? She, because I guess she is mostly a she, reacts much faster than the consumer organisations. This consciousness affects her choices the day after she has heard something scary in the evening news. She may also smoke, and that may be much scarier in objective terms. But cigarettes have been around for a long time, the risk of dying from lung cancer is known, but it won't happen to her. And besides, you are going to die from something anyway, so why bother to quit smoking? Better then to pursue "SAFE FOOD", whatever that is.

4.5
Gabriel and Lang (1995) distinguish between 9 ways of being a consumer in contemporary consumerism: the consumer as chooser, as communicator, as explorer, as identity seeker, as hedonist or artist, as victim, as rebel, as activist, and the consumer as citizen. From this categorisation we understand that the reflexive consumer as a concept is highly complex and fleeting. In order to construct "the consumer" and segment markets, the employees at the marketing departments are filled with feelings of doubt. According to Marianne Lien (1995), this feeling of doubt may be seen as a typically modern way of dealing with ambiguity. This is a special form of ambivalence in the twilight zone between that which may be "scientifically" known on the one hand, and the realm of intuitive knowledge on the other. In dealing with food safety and risks, industrial managers and marketing departments must make decisions in the "twilight zone" between rational logic and intuitive creativity

Risks, experts and individualisation

5.1
I am now going back again to discuss the role of the expert in risk management. There are real risks that neither the experts nor the public are aware of. There are also such risks connected to novel foods. There are also risks that the public see, which turn out to be harmless, imagined or groundless. These potential risks may kill many products before they reach the shelves of the supermarket. Why bother? As W.I. Thomas (1928) taught us, things are real if they are real in their consequences. If people think they are real, they are real, whatever the reasons.

5.2
One of Ulrich Beck's points is that the increasing individualisation and "setting free" of the individual not only leads to greater freedom, but to difficulties of choosing. Central in his work is the (contested) individualisation thesis, which states that there has been a freeing of the individual from the bonds of class, family and relatives, and hence an erosion of traditional values. More choices mean more individualised life courses, more pluralised life forms and de-standardisation. This means for the individual not more but less freedom, because making choices is compulsory.

5.3
When you believe in your elders, the chiefs or the experts, you don't need to choose for yourself in difficult situations. They choose for you; you follow them and feel safe. When the individual leaves that state, she enters a state of not indefinite, but of increased choice.

5.4
So even if the real risk is decreasing, the perceived risk is increasing because there is a greater range of choice. In the same manner as you may have a hundred cheeses or twenty beers to choose from, you may have fifty experts. You end up shopping around for experts you believe in. As a reflexive individual, you end up by constructing your own expert panel, in the same way as you have your own cheese of choice, beer of choice, etc. This "expert of choice" situation wouldn't be possible without the media. You even have to make the choice of your preferred media, based on some kind of "media expert" recommendation.

5.5
In this situation of "new modernity" the regulators have a new role as well. Their role has changed, partly because of internalisation and globalisation. In Norway, as several issues of the Eurobarometer show, we believe experts and government more than people do in other European countries. Can that be because we are the least modern country of Europe in this respect? We were never modern argues Latour (1993), and I would add, at least not the Norwegians.

5.6
In "simple modernity", according to Giddens (1990, 1994) lay people trusted the experts more or less automatically, while in "reflexive modernity" they actively calculate and choose whom to invest their trust in. Margareta Wandel and Annechen Bugge (Wandel and Bugge 1994) found in their study that more reliable food control and more environmentally sound production methods in Norway were important arguments for those who wanted to buy Norwegian food. This motive is not any weaker after the discovery of the BSE Creuzfeldt-Jacob's disease connection.

5.7
According to Mary Douglas (1992) there are 3 basic ways of explaining people's misfortune, which are to be found in all cultures:

5.8
We can now see all those three reactions to the BSE/CJD scare and GMO foods, although in different portions from country to country. In continental Europe, we saw tendencies to blame UK food production ("the rival") and food regulation during the BSE/CJD crisis . When it comes to GMO foods, the US ("the enemy") is blamed, while we also see tendencies to blame the consumer ("the victim"). Labelling may be seen as giving the responsibility to the consumer, but it may also be seen as blaming the consumer if anything goes wrong. This is even more apparent when it comes to labelling of tobacco ("you were told that it was dangerous, and if you get ill, you have yourself to blame").

5.9
In lay reactions we also see that people have a different view on how nature is constituted when it comes to risk. Also here Douglas (1986) has proposed a fruitful conceptualisation:

  1. The myth of a capricious nature as a ball, rolling anywhere on a flat plane (the fatalist dictum «what will be, will be»)
  2. The myth of a fragile nature, as a ball on a top of a mound, poised in a delicate equilibrium («eleventh hour»-ideology)
  3. The myth of nature as robust, like a ball in the bottom of bowl, where it always rolls back in the middle position («invisible hand» school of thought)
  4. Nature is robust, as a ball in a dip between two hillocks; it can roll within specific limits and be expected to come back safely («an interventionist approach» of the Brundtland Report type)

5.10
These four myths compete in lay people's minds, and are also seen very clearly in public debates where experts are taking part.

Conclusions and final remarks

6.1
After following the current debate about food safety on the European continent, my conclusions are as follows:

  1. There will be new food scandals in Europe that will threaten health and the environment. Such food scandals will be a central feature in what people experience as "risk society".
  2. Most of the scandals will involve more than one country. In the present era of globalisation, it is hardly possible to use border control as a means of preventing food scandals. However, once they happen, countries go back to "nationalistic" ways of dealing with food safety.
  3. There will be attempts at keeping the scandals secret. However, not least because food scandals sell very well in the tabloid press, these efforts will be in vain.
  4. The media will pay great attention to these scandals, and responsible politicians will have to resign. Political authorities is going to use large resources on food safety issues, but they will have to face distrust and scepticism from consumers.
  5. Experts and authorities will disagree both on causes and measures to be taken.
  6. Subsequently, trust in the authorities and the food producers will be weakened. Departments, universities and schools will fight for funding, prestige and influence.
  7. Due to the reduction in consumption, there will be significant, negative consequences for business. As meat consumption is dropping significantly after the BSE crisis, other foods will follow.
  8. The precautionary principle will gradually be incorporated in international agreements that are concerned with food, health and the environment. The European Union is already doing so, and will take this point of view to other international negotiations, for instance the millenium round in WTO.
  9. The debate about food, ethics and risk has developed unevenly from country to country. As it accelerates with regional food scandals, it is also influenced by political culture, religious beliefs and economic interests.
  10. Expertise in the social sciences will gradually be given a new role as "experts on peoples' concerns". This new field of social science will not be exempted from point 6 above.

References

ALMAS, Reidar (1997): Social Construction of Safe Food. Proceedings from an International Workshop 14-16. April, Trondheim: Centre for Rural Research.

BECK, Ulrich ([1986] 1992): Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage.

BECK Ulrich, Giddens, Anthony and Lash, Scott (1994): Reflexive Modernization.Cambridge: Polity Press, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

DOUGLAS, Mary (1992): Risk and Blame. Essays in Cultural Theory. London Routledge.

GABRIEL, Yannis and Lang, Tim (1995): The Unmanageable Consumer. Contemporary Consumption and its Fragmentations.London: Sage.

GIDDENS, Anthony (1990): The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.

LATOUR, B. (1993): Science In Action. How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society. Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press.

LIEN, Marianne (1995): Food products in the making. An ethnography of marketing practice. PhD thesis, University of Oslo, Department of Anthropology.

RITZER, George (1996): The McDonaldization of Society. Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press.

THOMAS, W.I. og D.S. Thomas (1928): The Child in America. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

WANDEL, Margareta and Bugge, Annechen(1994): Til Bords Med Forbrukerne. Forbrukernes"Ø"nsker Og Prioriteringer På Matområdet I 90-Årene. SIFO-rapport nr. 2/94.

Copyright Sociological Research Online, 1999