Metabolising Risk: Food Scares and the Un/Re-Making of Belgian Beef

• Published in: Environment and planning. A Vol. 35; no. 3; pp. 449 - 462
• Main Authors: Stassart, Pierre, Whatmore, Sarah J
• Format: Journal Article Web Resource
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.03.2003; Pion Ltd, London; SAGE
• Series: Environment and Planning A
• Subjects: Agroecology; Beef; Belgium; Consumption; Environment; Food; Food Risk; Food safety; Food System; Knowledge Practices; Meat; Production; Risk; Sciences sociales & comportementales, psychologie; Social & behavioral sciences, psychology; Sociologie & sciences sociales; Sociology & social sciences; Sustainable production and consumption; Transition
• ISSN: 0308-518X; 1472-3409; 1472-3409
• DOI: 10.1068/a3513

In this paper we explore the event of foodscares as an example of what Callon calls ‘hot situations’, in which the landscape of competing knowledge claims is at its most molten, and alternative production and consumption practices galvanise new modes of sense-making against the market and state-sanctioned rationalities of industrialisation. Through a case study of the Belgian cooperative Coprosain and its meat products, we examine the ‘stuff’ of food as a ready messenger of connectedness and affectivity in which ‘risk’ is transacted as a property both of the growing distance between the spaces of production and consumption and of the enduring metabolic intimacies between human and nonhuman bodies.