Adulteration and Food Law, 1899-1939

Contemporary concerns about food safety and regulation haveimportant historical antecedents in the Victorian debate aboutfood adulteration which led to the 1875 Sale of Food and DrugsAct, the basis of British food law until 1955. This articlereconsiders the optimistic historiographical view of the Victorianfood legislation, emphasizing its limited impact on the generalprocess of food production and distribution before the SecondWorld War. In the 1930s adulteration was still a significantcommercial ploy. The analysis centres on State-business relations,drawing comparative perspectives from the manner in which bigfood companies shaped the regulatory framework in the USA. InBritain the government assumed a limited regulatory role, persuadedin the 1920s and 1930s that market forces and the commitmentof large producers to quality and scientific research were betterguarantees of safety than statutory legislation. But this wasa risky strategy: big producers were only responsible for aminority of overall output, and the State made no effort toexamine wider manufacturing conditions. ^*This article has been written with the assistance of a grantfrom the Leverhulme Trust.     

Welfare Convergence,Bureaucracy, and Moral Distancing at the Food Bank

This paper seeks to extend geographic thinking on the changing constitution of the UK welfare state, suggesting the need to supplement ideas of the “shadow state” with an analysis of the blurring of the bureaucratic practices through which welfare is now delivered by public, private and third sector providers alike. Focusing on the growing convergence of the bureaucratic practices of benefits officials and food bank organisations, we interrogate the production of moral distance that characterise both. We reveal the ideological values embedded in voucher and referral systems used by many food banks, and the ways in which these systems further stigmatise and exclude people in need of support. Contrasting these practices with those of a variety of “ethical insurgents”, we suggest that food banks are sites of both the further cementing and of challenge to the injustices of Britain's new welfare apparatus.     

Sustainable Food Systems Cluster,Vermont Style

Vermont, as one of the most rural and independent states in the U.S., has always relied heavily on agriculture and its natural environment to underpin its economy. This article examines the state's agricultural economy as a sustainable food systems cluster and how it is adapting to the global economy, corporate agriculture, and environmental concerns. It describes the scale and concentration of the cluster, its support structure, and the ways it impact other sectors of the economy, including energy, tourism, and the arts. It also explains how a cluster of largely small-scale and artisan enterprises that often represent lifestyle rather than economic choices can be innovative, collectively create a wealth-producing and branded cluster, and the implications of the new agricultural model for the state's educational system.     

Food Security in India: Measures,Norms and Issues

Although assessments by conventional macro measures show considerable improvement in food security in India, the levels of cereal consumption and calorie intake of even the general population are still below the normative threshold limits. This article brings out the dynamics of changes in institutional and production conditions and their implications for consumption patterns and food security at the micro level. The article uses empirical evidence to raise a number of issues, and calls for emphasis on investment in human capital by way of improvements in food and calorie intake for efficiency and economic growth.     

Scientific Information, Elite Attitudes, and the Public Debate Over Food Safety

Why do consumers often react with alarm to food technologies (such as irradiation, genetic engineering, artificial hormones, and chemical pesticides) that scientists regard as essentially safe? We examine the attitudes toward food safety of three types of elites who serve as providers of scientific information regarding food safety to the United States public. Previous research suggests that journalists are likely to exaggerate risks associated with emerging food technologies, while minimizing risks associated with natural pathogens. This bias is hypothesized to be political in origin. By and large, our sample of newspaper editors was only slightly more concerned than were United States government policymakers and a sample of scientists. The expected pattern of alarm occurs clearly only in the case of irradiation. In addition, modest correlations of ideology to safety assessments were found for all three types of elites.     

The Food Remains from Casselden Place, Melbourne, Australia

This paper discusses the faunal, shell, and botanical remains from Casselden Place with the aim of investigating consumption and dietary patterns at the site during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Each of the major food sources are discussed in detail with reference to historical records regarding the price of various supplies and their availability at the time.     

Food, feed, fuel: transforming the competition for grains

Critical changes are underway in the domain of grain utilization. With the large‐scale diversion of corn for the manufacture of ethanol, the bulk of it in the USA, there has been a transformation of the food–feed competition that emerged in the twentieth century and characterized the world's grain consumption after World War II. Concerns have already been expressed in several quarters regarding the role of corn‐based ethanol in the recent food price spike and the global food crisis. In this context, this article attempts to outline the theoretical tenets of a food–feed–fuel competition in the domain of grain consumption. The study focuses on developments in the US economy from 1980 onwards, when the earliest initiatives on bio‐fuel promotion were undertaken. The transformation of the erstwhile food–feed competition with the introduction of fuel as a further use for grains has caused a new dynamics of adjustments between the different uses of grains. This tilts the distribution of cereal consumption drastically against the low‐income classes and poses tougher challenges in the fight against global hunger.     

Food and culture research

Brown, Linda Keller, and Kay Mussell, eds. Ethnic and Regional Foodways in the United States: The Performance of Group Identity. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984. viii + 271 pp. including chapter notes and references, photographs, selected bibliography, list of contributors, and index. $12.95 paper.

Douglas, Mary, ed. Food in the Social Order: Studies of Food and Festivities in Three American Communities. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1984. xi + 292 pp. including list of contributors, chapter references, and index. $27.50 cloth.     

Food and complex societies

In complex societies individuals from distinct social, economic, gender, or age groups often consume different foods because of various economic, political, and ideological factors. The food system not only involves what is consumed but includes the labor and technology that goes into the production and preparation of food as well as how certain foods are distributed and eventually discarded. Food systems within and among complex societies are thus tightly intertwined with social differentiation and the political economy and participate in defining and maintaining differential social relations.     

On Food,Pots, Gender,Iron, and Archaeological Theory: Interview with Professor Randi Haaland

African Archaeological Review - Professor Randi Haaland is a Norwegian archaeologist with a distinctive anthropological approach and global research interests. In this conversation, Randi Haaland...