• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Redefining the Moral Responsibilities for Food Safety: The Case of Red Meat in New Zealand*

Posted on: Tuesday, 20 December 2005, 06:00 CST

By Tanaka, Keiko

ABSTRACT

Food safety governance is shaped by social relationships among the state, the industry, and the public in the food system in a given country. This paper examines the contestation among actors in New Zealand's red meat chain over the implementation of the Animal Product Act of 1999 (APA), which became a cornerstone in the reform of food safety governance. The discussion focuses on the APA's impact on three types of social relations in the red meat chain, those between: (a) the state and the industry; (b) consumers and citizens; and (c) New Zealand and "offshore." This paper argues that food safety governance is an important element of the moral economy in a given country and poses both policy and ethical challenges in balancing conflicting needs between the global and local agrofood systems.

Introduction

In the last two decades, a series of food scares and crises that threatened public health (e.g., bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, and E. coti O^sub 157^:H^sub 7^) and the viability of the farming sector (e.g., avian influenza and foot-and-mouth disease, or FMD) beyond national boundaries have heightened public concerns about the safety of food and institutional processes as well as practices to produce and circulate meat products. Those crises provoked national and international authorities to reform the institutional structures and procedures of existing food safety governance (Buzby 2003; Buzby and Mitchell 2003). Moreover, the pressure to harmonize regulatory requirements under two agreements of the World Trade Organization (WTO), namely the Agreements on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS) and on the Technical Barriers to Trade Agreement (TBT), also compelled national governments to reform food safety governance.

According to Roberts and Unnevehr (2003:28), identifiable trends emerged in food safety governance reform in industrialized countries during the 1990s, including: (a) the reliance on risk analysis; (b) the protection of public health as the primary goal for food safety regulation; (c) the emphasis on a "farm-to-table" approach in dealing with potential hazards; (d) the adoption of the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP) system as a basis for risk management; and (e) the distribution of better information so consumers could make informed choices about food. Yet, specific institutional landscapes of food safety governance vary enormously among nations.

Using the contestation in New Zealand's red meat chain over the introduction of the Animal Product Act of 1999 (APA), this paper argues that food safety governance reform is an important space for repositioning the state, the industry, and the public in the food system. The reform of food safety governance involves the reassignment of moral responsibilities and ethical obligations among diverse actors for the protection of public health and safety on the one hand, and the promotion of stable trade and commerce on the other. This case study will contribute to the growing literature of food safety governance reform which is currently concentrated in the case studies of European countries (e.g., Draper and Green 2002; Dunn 2003; Hamilton, Sunding, and Zilberman 2003; Millstone and van Zwanenberg 2002).

New Zealand is a small island country where the agricultural and food (agrofood for short) sector in the nation gready relies on an overseas market. In 2002, the value of merchandise (as opposed to service) exports was 25 percent of the nation's gross domestic product (Statistics NZ 2004); the value of agricultural-based exports in 2003 exceeded 50 percent of the total value of the nation's exports (NZMAF 2004).

In the global red meat chain, New Zealand ranks third in the world for mutton and lamb production, after China and Australia (FAO 2004), and thirteenth for beef and veal production (USDA-FAS 2003). It ranks first in the world for mutton and lamb export and fifth for beef export (USDA-FAS 2003). What makes the case of New Zealand unique is that consumers of New Zealand's red meat chain largely come from numerous foreign countries. Domestic consumers are treated as a "spill-over" of the export market because the size of the domestic market in New Zealand is considerably smaller than that in major meatexporting countries. Approximately 90 percent of the nation's lamb is consumed in more than 100 countries (Meat NZ 2003c), and about 80 percent of its beef is consumed in more than 80 different countries (Meat NZ 2003b). In 2003, New Zealand exports of meat and meat products were worth NZ$4 billion, or approximately 29 percent of the nation's total agricultural exports (NZMAF 2004). This successful red meat chain of New Zealand is supported by the relatively decentralized meat industry that consists of small companies owned by private New Zealand individuals or sheep/cattle farmer cooperatives (see Table 1). Tlie Business of New Zealand Meat lists 58 companies licensed to process meat for export, 78 exporter companies, and 15 abattoirs without export licenses (Meat NZ 2003a).

Table 1. Top Five Meat Processor-Exporters in New Zealand, 2000- 2001

Furthermore, there is a crucial difference between New Zealand and other countries in the impetus for food governance reform. Unlike its trade partners across the globe, which incorporated science-based risk analysis into food safety governance in the 1990s, New Zealand has not experienced any major food safety crises. The nation has been free of BSE and FMD; there has never been an outbreak of E. coli Oli7:H7. In short, food safety governance reform in New Zealand for the last several years did not aim to address its own domestic food safety issues, per se. Rather than using food safety governance reform as a de facto strategy for trade protectionism like in many other industrialized countries (Leuck, Haley, and Harvey 2004), this paper will show that the introduction of the APA and the subsequent reform in food safety governance in New Zealand have been seen by both the government and the red meat industry as a strategy to improve New Zealand's position in the global agrofood market.

In the first section of this paper, I will situate this case study in the existing literature on food safety regulatory reform. I will argue that food safety governance reform is about the reordering of moral relations among the state, the industry, and the public, and that it is a critical element of shaping moral economy. The second section will discuss methods used for this study and their limitations. Discussion in the third section will focus on how various actors in the process of developing and implementing the new regulatory regime contested three types of social relations surrounding the red meat chain, including those between: (a) the state and the industry; (b) consumers and citizens; and (c) New Zealand and "offshore" (an expression commonly preferred by our interviewees). I will conclude in this paper that a more inclusive process is needed in making food safety policy decisions.

Food Safety Regulation: State, Industry, and Public

In the context of the rapid globalization of the agrofood system, the state, the industry, and the public become elusive categories, largely because both producers and consumers come from across the globe, and the state represents both the industry and the public to engage in trade negotiations. The liberalization of capital flows and the harmonization of regulatory requirements over agrofood trade make it more complex to define what and who constitute these three social institutions and what the responsibilities are of each in food safety governance. On the one hand, science-based food safety governance may be viewed by the state as a powerful tool to create social order in the industry and the public both within and outside its jurisdiction through administrative routines (e.g., 1996 Pathogen Reduction/HACCP Act of the U.S.; EU's moratorium of genetically modified crops and food). On the other hand, the traditional role of the state as regulator of food production and consumption may have eroded in the last decade or so as more privatized and differentiated forms of rights to food provision have increased (Marsden, Flynn, and Harrison 2000).

Indeed, case studies on the reform of food safety governance (e.g., Draper and Green 2002; Dunn 2003; Le Heron 2000; Millstone and van Zwanenberg 2002; Tanaka, Ransom, and Bain 2003) suggest that in these public-private and production-consumption nexuses, the state, the industry, and the public are constructed in various ways to justify particular actions, policy measures, and perspectives of diverse actors in the agrofood system, each of whom has specific economic needs and political interests in food safety governance. Both ideological and institutional approaches to food safety governance reform are embedded in the social and historical specificities of how the agrofood system in a given country is organized, as well as what public concerns have been raised about food safety, health, the environment, and animal welfare in that country. Then, food safety governance reform in a given country is a site for social scientists to examine the dynamic of the global "force" to harmonize the rules o\f agrofood trade being interpreted and negotiated by key actors in that country's agrofood system and eventually incorporated into their activities and practices. In this paper, I conceptualize food safely reform as a process of creating and maintaining a social order in the agrofood system.

James C. Scott's discussion on standardization ( 1998:4) suggests that food safety governance can be seen as "statecraft," an effort to effectively administer both nature and society as the subject of the state based on a "high-modernist ideology." Under high modernism, a greater faith in the legitimacy of science and technology helps create a micro-order in the agrofood system by reducing the heterogeneity of both the behaviors of human actors such as farmers or processors who handle food products in a given country (society) and the characteristics of nonhuman actors such as agricultural commodities, food products, or pathogens, which are circulated across the globe (nature).

Indeed, the reliance on science and technology to assess, manage, and control potential food safely risks (nature) has become an important element of food safety governance reform in European countries (Draper and Green 2002; Dunii 2003; Millstone and van Zwanenberg 2002), the U.S. ( Juska et al. 2000), and Japan (Tanaka 2004). The SPS and TBT Agreements of the WTO mandate thai trade disputes over the difference in food safety standards between two or more countries be resolved by the evaluation of scientific evidence for these standards alone. During an era where inconspicuous microbes can cause serious social disorder in the agrofood system, it is not surprising that many industrialized countries lend Io enthusiastically embrace the idea of relying on science to manage food safety risks. New science-based food safety measures attempi lo change the behaviors of human actors who handle food products from the farm gate Io the dinner table- so as to minimize food safely risks by controlling the behaviors of nonhuman actors, such as microbes which are regarded as "risks" to human health and economic stability. In short, science has come to be accepted not only as a powerful knowledge system, but also as an important tool to order the modern agrofood system.

As statecraft, reforming lhe food safely governance in a given country reconstructs the social spare, or "the scaled field of power" (Kelly 2003:2280), by classifying people (e.g., "farmers,""retailers"), organizations (e.g., "Ministry of Food,""Food Safely Inspection Service"), equipment (e.g., "meat recovery equipment"), tools (e.g., "butcher knife"), plants (e.g., "grain plants"), and animals (e.g., "meal animals") into distinctive actors in the agrofood system, each with assigned roles. Individual humans in a given classification are further differentiated into scaled categories based on the financial, technical, and moral capacity to adhere to food safety regulations and guidelines, whether mandated by the state or the industry. Individual nonhumans in a given classification (e.g., cows, meat processing equipment) are also differentiated based on the capacity to allow humans actors to adhere to these regulations and guidelines (e.g., young vs. older cows, state-of-the-art vs. outdated equipment).

As an activity of classification and differentiation, food safety governance therefore becomes what Foucault (1979) refers to as the spatialization process and "minute power" of discipline and surveillance to manage social order in the agrofood system. Then, through the creation and implementation of food safety regulations, the food safety regime functions as a "disciplinary institution" which distributes power among various actors in the food system.

At the same time, there is a moral dimension to food safety governance (e.g., Brom 2000; Goga and dementi 2002). As Busch (2000) argues, the moral economy is constantly reproduced through the negotiation of food standards. Whether public or private, agricultural and food standards (including those concerning food safety) define what constitutes good (or bad) qualities in actors in the food system (e.g., what is a proper way of handling X; what is an acceptable level of Y) to maintain the goodness of food products. Those actors in the industry who fail to achieve the desired goodness are disciplined by the state accordingly (Busch and Tanaka 1996). As seen in the globalized food safety scares of BSE and FMD, when a set of food regulations failed to create and maintain public trust in food in a given country, the state is disciplined for its failure to properly regulate the industry. That is, a set of institutional measures, mechanisms, and procedures (e.g., laws, regulations, and agencies), which are seen as bad (or inadequate), must be reorganized to allow the state to effectively monitor the industry and to protect public interests.

The moral economy of food becomes a site of contestation because food is not only an economic object and basic necessity for humans, but also "part of a physiological, psycho-sensorial, social and symbolic environment" (Bessiere 1998:23). Particular food items and practices to produce, circulate, and consume them often become an important metaphor of "self and part of the epistemology of a given social group (see Ohnuki-Tierney 1993 for the example of rice for the Japanese). This epistemology situates individual group members in a network of social relations (e.g., Japanese, consumers, mothers), distributes a set of responsibilities among different individual and corporate actors (e.g., oppose rice imports, buy quality rice, cook rice in a tasty way), and creates meanings and values in actions (e.g., good Japanese, good consumers, good mothers).

That is why consumer concerns surrounding food are not merely about "the good life we want to live," but also about "the good society (or world) we want to live in" (Brom 2000:130). Consumers are often encouraged to transcend the material world and to participate in the discourse of public concerns surrounding food. For example, Draper and Green (2002) point out that the post-BSE food safety policy in the U.K. reframes the public as "consumer- citizens" who are the subject for policy-making processes, instead of consumers who need freedom from want (prevalent in food policy in the postwar policy) or freedom of food choice (prevalent in food policy before the BSE crisis) through regulation. This new policy redefines citizenship and assigns moral obligations to consumers to actively respond (e.g., access information provided by the government) and contribute (e.g., submit feedback to the government) to food safety policy intervention in order to rationally assess potential food safety risks and make the right choices for themselves and their families. In this model, "the role of the state is to shape this self-governance, rather than to manage risks on behalf of the population" (Draper and Green 2002:623).

In sum, in the negotiation of food safety governance reform, the state, the industry, and the public emerge as distinctive entities with a set of moral responsibilities and ethical obligations for shaping "our" food production, circulation, and consumption practices. In the food system, diverse actors raise the question of what constitutes safe food. The answer to this question is closely linked to our moral values and ethics with regard to the basic relationships between the state and the public and the role of the state in shaping the industry. But it is important for us to ask whose moral value of the goodness in food the reform tries to integrate and whose trust the reform tries to regain. Let us examine the case of New Zealand to understand how the moral relationships between the state, the industry, and the public are contested in food safety governance reform.

Methods

Fieldwork for this study was conducted between January 1999 and March 2001, during the transition period between the enactment and implementation of the APA. The discussion below is based on the analysis of various government and industry documents concerning the APA up to March 2001 and interviews with key stakeholders in the red meat chain in New Zealand who engage in production, circulation, consumption, and governance of red meat products.

A total of 41 semi-structured face-to-face interviews were completed with individuals representing 25 organizations, including seven meat companies, eight governmental organizations, eight industry associations, and two other types of organizations (see Table 2). These organizations were selected because the APA-related documents listed them as key actors or other interviewees identified them as key actors in the negotiation of the APA. The interview questions focused on the role of these organizations in the development of the APA, the impact of the APA on their activities, and their concerns with the implementation of the APA. On average, an interview lasted about 60 minutes. Each interview was carried out by either myself, my research assistant, or both of us. All interviews were transcribed by my assistant.

Table 2. Interviewees in the Red Meat Chain, 1999-20011

Some limitations of this study must be noted. First, all participants except three were interviewed as "representatives" to present the official views of their organizations, although organizations tend to privilege the perspectives of certain individual members and to ignore those of others. second, this sample represents only those located in and around the major urban centers to which this study allowed us to travel. For these reasons, the participants in this study may not have been representative of all the members of a given actor category (e.g., "farmers,""meat companies").

The network of the red meat chain in New Zealand is very small. Few competing associations exist to represent a particular actor category in the red meat chain; individual leaders in various \organixations often know each other intimately. To protect the confidentiality of the interviewees (except elected officials), I therefore use pseudonyms for the interviewees and exclude the names of, or key information about, the participating organizations in this paper. However, in order to preserve their voices, I use the first names of the assigned pseudonyms to quote their words.

The following interpretive analysis emerged from the author's reading and hand-coding of the 41 interviews as well as her interpretation of the documents concerning the enactment and implementation of the APA. The narrative below is not definitive, but one of many possibilities.

Redefining Social Relations Surrounding Red Meat

The red meat chain in New Zealand consists of three interrelated, but distinctive, food networks, namely: (a) export-dependent, (b) domesticcommercial, and (c) domestic-informal. Although the majority of farmers, meat processing companies, abattoirs, and trade associations belong to both the export and domestic-commercial networks, there are farmers who choose not to, or who are unable to, participate in a quality management program to raise cattle for export-quality meat. Similarly, there are small-scale abattoirs that specialize in slaughtering cattle for the domestic market. In rural areas, the informal network also continues to operate in the form of direct marketing at roadside markets and farm-stay operations, selling "home-kill" meat products to their customers. Many rural butchers are "dual-operators" who sell both regulated (i.e., meat slaughtered by licensed processors) and unregulated meat (i.e., meat slaughtered on premises). More importantly, meat products produced and circulated in-these three networks are differentiated through various mechanisms by the state and the industry, such as "export quality" labels.

According to our interviewees, historically only the export- dependent network has been tightly regulated. The national government ensures that the export requirements of diverse countries are met. Under the mandates of the U.S. and EU governments and of their own business clients overseas, meat companies and farmers in this network have been voluntarily implementing their own risk management plans (RMPs) for several years (Cutt 1998).

Table 3. Distribution of Tasks, Obligations, and Responsibilities between the Government and the Red Meat Industry under the Animal Products Act of 1999

The APA regime differs from the previous one under the Meat Act of 1981 and the Apiaries Act of 1969 in three aspects. First, the new system requires all primary and secondary processors of meat with or without an export license to register their own RMPs under HACCP principles by November 1, 2002 (APA 1999). second, as shown in Table 3, the primary responsibility for monitoring red meat safety shifted from the hands of the government to those of meat companies (NZMAF Regulatory Authority 1999). Finally, under the APA the tasks of traditionally government-led regulatory activities, such as evaluating and verifying RMPs and meat inspection, have become contestable by third party entities accredited by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) (NZMAF 200Ob).

These changes came about partly as New Zealand's response to the SPS and TBT Agreements of the WTO and partly as the nation's strategy to further promote trade (NZMAF Regulatory Authority 1999). However, interviews with various key actors in the red meat network during the period of transition to the APA reveal contestations about how to distribute responsibilities for food safety between the state and the red meat industry as well as about who will benefit from the new regime. Moreover, such contestations were framed in the discourse of who constitutes this public that is to be protected from potential food safety risks, and what it means to be New Zealanders (commonly referred to as "Kiwis").

State vs. Industry

The APA regime reflects high-modernist ideology by relying on science to create micro-order in the production and circulation of meal and meat products. It also incorporates a new set of ideas defining the ethical relationships between the state and the industry and the moral responsibilities of the government toward the various actors in New Zealand's red meat chain.

The new regulatory regime mandates that those actors involved in the domestic-commercial or informal networks be like their counterparts in the export network (Southland Times 1999). Under the APA, small abattoirs and rural butchers who are "dual-operators" are required to develop and implement their own RMPs (Bristow 1999; Southland Times 2000). This means that these domestic actors may need to upgrade their facilities, hire consultants to write their RMPs, and/or incorporate extra measures into their daily operations; otherwise, they will likely be absorbed by larger companies as seen in other countries (Ollinger, Moore, and Chandran 2004).

Most of the MAF officials we interviewed did not find any moral objections to further consolidation in the red meat chain as the result of the implementation of the APA. They justified their stance by staling this would be "inevilable" and "necessary" Io make lhe export network of the red meat chain more efficient. The state's moral responsibility for food safety was described as building offshore consumers' trusl in New Zealand red meal products by disciplining those aclors who have not been able to produce meat "good" enough for export markets, so that the export nelwork would perform well and redislribule ils economic benefiis through the chain to farmers and meal workers.

Moreover, as various interviewees in this study pointed out, the APA legitimizes a shift over the last decade in the relationship between the slate and the red meal industry from whai ihey described as a "paternal" to a more "maternal" relationship where the state plays a more nurturing rather than "cornmand-and-control" role. Under the APA, the MAF establishes risk management outcomes and an overview of the whole risk management system, rather than prescribing the processes in which businesses deliver acceptable food products (NZMAF 2000b; 2000c).

The introduction of "third-party con testability" in this new regime provides meat processors and exporters with more autonomy to treat food safety assurance as a business activity by allowing them to select their own RMP evaluator and verifier as long as they are accredited by the MAF and they are different individuals. In the new regime, Assure New Zealand, a state-owned enterprise which has been performing meat inspection for the government since 1998 and is one of many accredited third-party entities, becomes a business competitor and the MAF becomes a business partner who champions the New Zealand meat industry in international trade negotiations. In this sense, the boundary between the state and the industry has become blurred by the introduction of "diird-party contestability."

Yet, a large gulf exists between policy formation and implementation, and between economic theory and practice. As Randall at Meat Company Y explained, the APA in theory allows meat companies to have more control over their business by tailoring RMPs to suit their needs and, therefore, getting a competitive advantage out of the new regime. In reality, however, "prescriptions" reappeared in regulations (NZMAF 200Oc), codes of practices (e.g., NZMAF 1999), and specifications (NZMAF 200Oa) issued by the MAF months after the enactment of the APA. Jack and Susan, officials of the MAF, contended that they were not "prescriptions" but "guidance," and that these documents would be flexible since amendments to them would not require extensive legislative processes. However, these documents detail point-by-point how the MAF interprets the APA. For actors in the red meat chain, such as Randall, these documents are, therefore, "the real guts of the Act" that symbolize the power of the state over the industry. In other words, the new meat safety governance regime is for the state to regain control by reordering the industry through its own surveillance and disciplinary measures rather than those of public and private entities overseas.

Curiously, the APA's intended changes will not become possible unless export countries accept New Zealand's new regulatory framework for risk management and recognize it as "equivalent" to theirs. The largest export countries (e.g., the U.K., the U.S., Japan) require ante- and post-mortem inspections be done by a government agency (i.e., Assure New Zealand), not by a government- accredited third-party. Jack and Susan emphasized that although important trade partners currently may not accept third-party contestability, they would be moving to that direction. Their conviction comes from the experience and observations of a few MAF personnel who attended bilateral and multilateral trade negotiations as New Zealand delegates. Based on day-to-day contacts with business partners overseas, most meat companies and industry associations rejected the MAF's assumption that third-party contestability would be on the horizon. Instead, these actors called the concept of third- party contestability a "pipe dream" or a "notional concept" of the MAF because, as Randall explained:

There is a difference between the right thing to do from a philosophical point of view and what's real and practical in the world. And this is the big debate in New Zealand, whether to cut tariffs, open our economy when the rest of the world is not going that way.

For cattle farmers, meat workers, and meat inspectors who work with both export-dependent and domestic-only meat companies, the APA represents nothing more than another effort of the MAF to "build their empire" where export-dependent meat companies are allowed to pursue "cost-cutting exercises" at the expense of these workers. These actors at farms and factories areasked to perform extra tasks without extra remuneration and are also expected to manage a larger number of sheep and catde killed per season, which is becoming increasingly shorter. Shannon at a farmers' association told us that, "Farmers accept the need to give assurances to the export market. ... But there is no way for them to know if the extra measures are necessary for the overseas market or just for the MAF."

According to Jack and Susan at the MAF, a consultation requirement in the APA even at the level of specifications would likely allow these marginalized actors in the red meat chain to play a greater role in shaping food safety governance. Certainly, most industry actors in the three networks of the red meat chain praised how the MAF was inclusive in consultation and negotiation with them before and after the enactment of the APA. However, according to Thomas at an industry association (emphasis added), many industry actors also criticized that MAF officials "ignored everybody ... and still went ahead and did exactly what they wanted to do anyway; they basically dished up what we wanted [to hear]."

As Le Heron and Roche (1999:204) emphasize, although the new food safety regime places a greater emphasis on the economic autonomy of the market, it involves a qualitatively different type of political intervention of the state and "is not simply a rolling back of the state." New Zealand's red meat chain consists of a large number of relatively small-scale companies at the global level. As Peter repeatedly emphasized, the welfare of the entire chain depends on the MAF's credibility in the world trade negotiations and its capacity to convince trading partners to accept New Zealand's regulatory regime as equivalent to theirs. In reality, therefore, the APA has legitimized the MAF's role as the unchallenged captain of the red meat chain and has strengthened the industry's dependence on the state.

The Public: Consumers vs. Citizens

The case of New Zealand suggests another very important dimension of contestations in food safety regulatory reform between consumers and citizens in the increasingly globalized agrofood system. In theory, governments are responsive only to their own citizens. New Zealand's red meat chain delivers products across the globe, however, and therefore affects the lives of those beyond its national boundaries. Both the government and the industry argue that the ultimate beneficiary of the new food safety regulatory regime is consumers. Yet, who are the consumers?

Unlike the category of producers, by which our interviewees uniformly meant New Zealand sheep and cattle farmers and the meat industry, the categories of consumers and citizens were used very differently among actors in the three food networks. Each actor strategically used these categories to justify his/her perspective and position on the APA. The representatives of major meat companies often excluded New Zealanders from the category of consumers. They often responded to our questions on consumers by describing the differences among the EU, the U.S., and Japan in food safety and quality requirements and explaining the benefits of the new food governance system for their customers or clients (rather than consumers).

Because the prosperity of the nation depends on the performance of the meat sector, our interviewees assumed that what was good for the sector would be good for New Zealand citizens, even though they may not be the most important consumers. During our interview, a Member of the Parliament (MP) from the Alliance Party and the Minister of Consumer Affairs, Phillida Bunkle, justified the establishment of a new food safety agency by saying: "It's incredibly important to get this right for New Zealand [citizens], especially in terms of getting our quality assurance right for our markets" (emphasis added).

None of the elected officials or regulators we interviewed seemed to care much about the concern raised by Sam, a meat inspector, that domestic meat products had not been as extensively regulated as export meat products. Tina, at a consumer organization, pointed out that "ELACCP plans and these kinds of food safety plans often do not deal with the kind of food safety issues that [New Zealand] consumers are most concerned about, such as hormone growth promotants, pesticide residues, GM [genetically modified] " food. In short, the reform of the meat safety regulatory regime was driven not by the desire or need to protect domestic consumers or address domestic public concerns. Then the public as the object of the state's as well as the industry's protection from potential food safety risks was conceptualized as overseas consumers and customers.

Nonetheless, both government and industry actors expressed the need to include domestic consumer representatives in the process of negotiating food safety governance reform. As Emily at the MAF pointed out, "It is quite a good healthy relationship between camps, but we have to be careful not to forget the other side-the consumers- so we can't look like we have been siding up with industry."

David Russell at the Consumers' Institute was appointed to be an exofficio member of the Meat Industry Standards Council, a cross sectional forum that develops and approves industry standards and codes of industry practice. "This was a deliberate move" of MAF officials, as Philip at an industry association explained, so that "if something goes wrong they [the MAF] believe they have 'consumers' on our [the meat industry] side." However, the consumer activists we interviewed expressed the need for wider representation of New Zealand consumers in any legal and regulatory reforms in the agrofood sector.

There is a strong expectation that New Zealand citizens should support any policies that would help the nation's economy and political power grow in the global arena, as evident in Bunkle's comment: "We are food producers and we are all consumers, so we had better get it together if we are going to protect New Zealand's future." This protection of the nation's future and pride situates the New Zealand public in the realm of citizenship, rather than consumption. It becomes the responsibility of New Zealanders, then, to select their political representatives carefully and participate in the processes of policy decision-making. By doing so, New Zealanders are, though indirecdy, shaping how various actors in the New Zealand red meat chain participate in the global market and what kind of images of the nation are presented by these actors to the world.

New Zealand vs. Offshore

As if they were a chorus, the phrases "innovative,""creative," and "forward-thinking" were used to describe the New Zealand people and nation by every interviewee we met. This strong national pride was important in understanding how actors interpret and respond to the restructuring of the red meat chain for their survival. Although the contestation between the MAF and the red meat industry over the implementation of the APA was often fierce, most interviewees agreed that the relationship between the two parties was far more trusting than they had seen offshore. Regardless of one's perspective on the APA, the discourse was shaped by constant deconstruction and reconstruction of "us, Kiwis" (i.e., New Zealanders) versus "them, offshore" (i.e., North Americans, Europeans, and Asians), stressing differences between "our" and "their" economic organizations, political mechanisms, ideology, and cultural understandings. Thus, the APA development became a space for reevaluating what it means to be "Kiwis" and where "our nation" is located in relation to other countries in the world. In this sense, as McMichael (1996) has suggested, "local" and "global" emerged as theoretical and empirical constructs in the minds of numerous economic and political actors in the red meat chain because this local-global nexus situated them, and then allowed them, to act and justify their actions.

For the state, the enactment of the APA allows New Zealand to follow the U.S. and other countries in legislating a science-based food safety governance, while leading them in the direction of deregulating the government's regulatory function, as shown in Luxton's speech (1998: 14632) in the parliamentary debate on December 15, 1999: "To achieve the full advantage, New Zealand must continue to try to persuade foreign governments of the benefits of the regulatory approach taken here, while government involvement is continued where required for that market access."

For actors in the red meat chain, the APA confirmed to their trading partners and to the world that they are innovative and forward thinking. They believed that this confirmation would help to lend credibility to the image of New Zealand as a clean-and-green country and to the marketing claim that its grass-fed red meat products are natural, safe, and healthy.

Thus, the APA is an economic strategy for making the nation's meat industry more competitive in the global market on the one hand. It is also a political strategy to put this new regulatory approach on the table for international trade negotiations. Even if overseas governments may not accept the idea of "third-party contestability" in the immediate future, the nation's reputation as unique, innovative, and forward thinking will be maintained, and even strengthened, by successfully enacting and implementing this act. Moreover, the APA affirms the advantages of a small country with close-knit relationships between the government and the industry. As Emily at the MAF said:

You look at codes and regulations or something [written by offshore governments], it is all descriptive, "we don't trust you" sort of way it is written. I think us staying "true to our strategy" is really important, and to not let people try and make us become like overseas. We have worked hard enough to get away from being like overseas.

Although \food safety governance is not about "being different" from offshore countries for the sake of "being different," this case highlights how the APA is justified to the public as a tool for maintaining and improving New Zealand's national and cultural identity as an economic and political leader in the global arena. To use Ohnuki-Tierney's (1993) expression, Knn-self is constructed through the discourse of differences between New Zealand and offshore in the institutional landscape and cultural practices surrounding red meat production and consumption: our grass-fed meat vs. their grain-fed meat; our pastureraised cattle/sheep vs. their industrial farm-raised cattle/sheep; our small-scale, decentralized industry vs. their large-scale, highly concentrated industry. This collective identity becomes an integral part of individual actor's epistemology to evaluate the efficacy of the APA and reflect its impact on his/her activities in the red meat chain.

Conclusion

Like its trade partners and competitors, New Zealand too adopts the high-modernist ideology of science as "reliable, decisive, and as the sole determining factor in the decision-making process" for food safety governance (Millstone and van Zwanenberg 2002:600). In both the documents and interviews used for this study, the question of whether science should play a greater role in meat safety governance in New Zealand was rarely asked, compared to that of how it should be used.

Indeed, the discourse surrounding the second question suggested the problematic nature of the high-modernist tendency in food safety governance reform. In this case study, the power to answer the question of how to use science in meat safety governance was not equally distributed among actors from the three networks of the red meat chain as well as between economic actors who represent the industry and political actors who represent the state and the public. What became clearer in the development of the APA is the priority of moral responsibilities that the state is willing to maintain or relinquish. In short, meat safety governance reform has changed an important element of the moral economy where asymmetries among the three networks became a legitimate part of neo-liberal market economy, outside the realm of state interventions.

Although a greater emphasis on self-regulation by economic actors using science-based risk management becomes the mande of the APA, the dominance of the state in reordering the relationships among the state, the industry, and the public in the agrofood system remains intact. Despite the "rolling-back-the state" approach to food safety governance, New Zealand's unique geographical and resource limitations, as well as the institutional landscape of the red meat chain, have paradoxically increased the economic actors' dependence on the state, rather than the other way around, for success in the global red meat market. This trend has become particularly important in the period when devastating food safety crises such as BSE and FMD threaten the free movement of meat products across the globe, and could potentially destroy New Zealand's small red meat chain overnight. Unfortunately, at the time of this study it was too early to evaluate the impact of the APA implementation on the three networks of the red meat chain. Such evaluation would contribute to improving our understanding of how the creation of micro-order, through science-based risk management in agrofood production, and circulation, actually affects the concentration of the agrofood system and the state's role in facilitating such transformation.

In a given nation, the agrofood system is often differentiated between overseas versus domestic networks; production (e.g., farming, processing, retailing) and consumption are often separated from citizenship. The high-modernist faith in science for food safety conceals how "nonscientific considerations such as assumptions about benefits and social judgments of acceptability" of risk are indeed incorporated into the policy formation (Millstone and van Zwanenberg 2002:600), and, more importandy, "steers focus away from the social and economic costs of the agro-industrial restructuring" (Dunn 2003:1501).

To balance conflicting needs between the global and local agrofood systems, we, as producers, consumers, and citizens, must first realize that science cannot answer the questions of who the consumers and the producers to be benefited from food safety governance reform are and how responsibilities for food safety protection should be distributed among diverse actors in the state, the industry, and the public. These are moral questions with important ethical implications that need to be answered collectively. In an era when food safety regulations are rapidly changing, our challenge as social scientists, is therefore, to help diverse actors put dieir perspectives, interests, and values on the table for negotiating new food safety measures so as to ensure more equitable distribution of their benefits.

* This research was supported by the Faculty Research Gram of the University of Canterbury. The author thanks Ciirmen Bain for her diligent work for this research project; Patrick Mooney, Deborah Witham, and anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on the previous versions of the manuscript. Direct correspondence to: Keiko Tanaka, Department of Community and l-eailership Development, University of Kentucky, 500 Garrigus Building, Lexington, KY 40546- 0215; e-mail: ktanaka@uky.edu

References

APA (Animal Products Act) 1999. Public Act 1999 No. 93. Enacted on September 8, 1999. Wellington: New Zealand Government Printer.

Bessiere, J. 1998. "Local Development and Heritage: Traditional Food and Cuisine as Tourist Attractions in Rural Areas." Sociologia Ruratis 38:21-34.

Brislow, R. 1999. "New I .aw Heaps Major Costs on Oxford Abbatoir." The Press, October 6, Edition 1, p. 4.

Broin, F.W.A. 2000. "Food, Consumer Concerns, and Trust: Food Ethics for a Globalizing Market." Journal of Agricultural & Environmental Ethics 12:127-139.

Busch, L. 2000. "The Moral Economy of Grades and Standards." Journal of Rural Studies 16:273-283.

Busch, L. and K. Taiiaka. 1996. "Rites of Passage: The Negotiation of Quality in a Commodity Subsector." Science, Technology and Human Values 21:3-27.

Buzby, J.C. 2003. Internal Trade and food Safely. ESR-828, US Department of Agriculture. Washington, DCi US Goveniment Printing Office.

Buzby, J.C. and L. MiU hell. 2003. "Food Safety and Trade: Regulations, Risks, and Reconciliation." Amber Waves 1:14-21.

Cutt,J. 1998. "Replacement of 1981 Meat Act Welcomed." The Southland Times, Edition 1, p. 21.

Draper, A. and J. Green. 2002. "Food Safety and Consumers: Constructions of Choice and Risk." Social Policy and Administration 36:610-625.

Dunn, E.G. 2003. "Trojan Pig: Paradoxes of Food Safety Regulation." Environment and Planning A 35:1493-1511.

Dyck, J.H. and K.E. Nelson. 2003. Structure of the CMaI Markets for Meal. ESR-785, U.S. Department of Agriculture. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.

FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization). 2004. "FAOSTAT Agriculture Data." Retrieved July 15, 2004 (http://apps.fao.org/ faostat/form?coIlection=Productioii.Livestock.

ary&Domain=froduction&servlel=l&hasbulk=0&version=ext&langiiage=EN).

Foucault, M. 1979. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books.

Goga, B.T.C. and F. dementi. 2002. "Safety Assurance of Food: Risk Management Depends on Good Science But it is Not a Science Activity." Journal of Agricultural and Emiironment Ethics 15:305- 313.

Hamilton, S.F., D.L. Sunding, and D. Zilberman. 2003. "Public Goods and the Value of Product Quality Regulation: The case of Food Safety." Journal of Public Economics 87:799-817.

Juska, A., L. Gouvcia,J. Gabriel, and S. Koneck. 2000. "Negotiating Bacteriological Meat Contamination Standards in the US: The case of E.coli O157:H7." Sociologia Ruralis 40:249-271.

Kelly, S.E. 2003. "Biocthics and Rural Health: Theorizing Place, Space, and Subjects." Social Science and Medicine 36:2277-2288.

Le Heron, R. 2000. "Creating Food Futures: Reflections on Food Governance Issues in New Zealand's Agri-Food sector." Journal of Rural Studies 19:111-125.

Le Heron, K. and M. Roche. 1999. "Rapid Rercgiilation, Agricultural Restructuring, and the Reimaging of Agriculture in New Zealand." Rural Sociology 64:203-218.

Leuck, D., M. Haley. and D. Harvey. 2004. LS 2003 and 2004 Livestock and Poultry Trade Influenced by Animal Disease and Trade Restrictions. LDPM-120-01. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture. Retrieved September 2, 2004 (http://www.crs.usda.gov/ publicalions/LDP/JUL04/LDPM12001/).

Luxton. J. 1998. "Animal Products Bill, second Reading." Pp. 14631-14633 in MTO Zealand's Parliamentary Debates (Hansard), vol. 35. Wellington: New Zealand Government Printer.

Marsdcn, T, A. Flynn, and M. Harrison. 2000. Consuming Interests: The Social Provision of Foods. London: L1CL Press.

Mt Michael, P. 1996. "Clobalizalion: Myths and Realities." Rural Sociology 61:25-55.

Meat NZ (Meat New Zealand). 2003a. The Business of New Xealand Meat, February 2003. Wellington: Meat New Zealand.

_____. 2003b. "New Zealand Beef." Retrieved August 19, 2003 (http://www.nzmeat.co. nz/wdbctx/beefus/becfus.homc).

_____. 2003c. "New Zealand Lamb." Retrieved August 19, 2003 (http://www.nzmeat.co. lu/wdbctx/lambus/lambus.home).

Millstone, E. and P. van Zwanenberg. 2002. "The Evolution of Food Safety Policy-Making Institutions in the UK, EU and Codex Alimentarius." Social Policy and Administration 36:593-609.

NZMAF (New Zealand Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry). 1999. Animal Product Act 1999: Guide for Exporters. MAF Public Information Paper No. 30. Wellington: New Zealand Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry.

_____. 200Oa. Animal Product Act 1999: Draft Risk Management Programme Manual, Volume 1. Wellington: New Zealand Ministry ofAgriculture and Forestry.

_____. 200Ob. Proposed Competency Slumlords for Recognised Agencies and Accredited Persons under the Animal Products Act 1999. MAF Public Discussion Paper No. 18. Wellington: New Zealand Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry.

_____. 200Oc. Proposed Regulations under the Animal Products Act 1999. MAF Public Discussion Paper No. 17. Wellington: NZMAF.

_____. 2004. "Exports of Agricultural Products from New Zealand." Retrieved July 15, 2004 (http://www.maf.govLnz/statistics/ intemationaltrade/agriculture/agriculture. xls).

NZMAF Regulatory Authority. 1999. Risk Management Programmes under the Animal Products Bill 1998. MAF Public Information Paper No. 26. Wellington: NZMAF.

Ohnuki-Tierney, E. 1993. Rice as Self: Japanese Identities Through Time. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Ollinger, M., D. Moore, and R. Chandran. 2004. Meat and Poultry Plants' Food Safety Investments: Survey Findings. ERS-1911, U.S. Department of Agriculture. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Prepared Foods. 2002. "The Top 100-and then Some. (2003 Source Book)." Prepared Foods, December. Retrieved January 25, 2004 (http:/ /www.preparedfoods.com/pf/cda/ articleinformation/features/ bnp_features item/0.114838.00+en-uss Oldbc.html).

Roberts, D. and L. Unnevehr. 2003. "Resolving Trade Arising from Trends in Food Safety Regulation: The Role of the Multilateral Governance Framework." Pp. 28-47 in International Trade and Food Safety: Economic Theory and case Studies, ESR-828, U.S. Department of Agriculture, edited by J. G. Buzby. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office.

Scott, J.C. 1998. seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Conditions Have Failed. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Southland Times, T. 1999. "New Act Will Save Millions-MAF." 7'Ae Southland Times, November 4, Edition 1, p. 16.

_____. 2000. "Slaughter Deadline Arrives in Two Weeks." The Southland Times, April 15, Edition 1, p. 22.

Statistics NZ (Statistics New Zealand). 2004. "The New Zealand Broad Economic Category (NZBEC) Classification System." Key Statistics-May 2003. Retrieved July 15, 2004 (http:// www.stats.govt.n7./domino/external/web/prod_serv.nsf/ 874ea91cl42289384c2567a80081308e/clee9a01f7711875cc256d2800107bb7/ $FILE/ May-03.pdf).

Tanaka, K. 2004. ""Protecting Our Food': The Reform of the Food Safety Regulatory Regime in Japan." Presented at The XI World Congress of Rural Sociology, July 25-31, Trondheim, Norway.

Tanaka, K., E. Ransom, and C. Bain. 2003. "Network of Actions, Agency of Networks." Presented at The Mini-Conference of the Research Committee on Food and Agriculture at the Joint Meetings of Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society, and the Association for the Study of Food and Society, June 4, Austin, TX.

USDA-FAS (United States Department of Agriculture Foreign Agricultural Service). 2003. "Meat Beef and Veal." PSD On-Line. Retrieved August 19, 2003 (http://www.ias.usda. gov/psd/ completeJiles/LP-011 lOOO.csv)

Keiko Tanaka

Department of Community and Leadership Development

University of Kentucky

Appendix A. List of Acronyms

Copyright Rural Sociological Society Dec 2005

Source: Rural Sociology

More News in this Category