Sensing Food Safety at the Border

• In Event: Sensing Beyond Borders

Abstract

Growing interest in specialty foods is generating a post-industrial, artisanal foodscape in which many food safety standards, presuming and promoting industrial methods and equipment, are becoming outmoded. This paper looks at recent regulatory actions taken by government officials at US ports of entry, such as issuing import refusals to European cheeses on the basis of visual inspections and bureaucratic evaluations that suggest product contamination (by “filth” or opportunistic infection) or adulteration (by an unapproved ingredient). Where regulators perceive risk to domestic agricultural industries or the health of an eating public, artisan producers and specialty importers may sense threat to customary practices of foodmaking and commerce. What can we learn with and about the sensory politics of edibility and food safety by tracking potential impedances in the global circulation of foods as they (attempt to) across international borders?

Author

• Heather Paxson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)