International Lecture Series DPAS | Lecture Christine Parker | Food labelling

Abstract

Consumers in both Australia and the EU are encouraged to “vote with their fork” and “say no” to unhealthy, unsustainable or unfair food. Activists and social entrepreneurs also use the creation and contestation of label claims as a mechanism for transparency, debate and transformation of the whole food chain. In this talk, Professor Christine Parker will critically investigate the role of food labelling and its contestation as a governance pathway towards healthy, sustainable, fair food systems, using the results of two empirical socio-legal research projects examining respectively higher animal welfare labelling and exotic acai berry “superfood” label claims.

In Australia higher welfare and free range labels now dominate the market for egg, pig and chicken products and have become the subject of extraordinary levels of public attention and concern. Moreover, the Australian government lags behind the EU in keeping up with the challenge of managing the complex issues arising from animal welfare science, citizen concern and interrelated environmental and health and safety impacts of intense animal agriculture.

Yet the EU also relies on labels to a large degree to resolve complex issues about animal welfare. Exotic “superfood” label claims by contrast are popular in both Australia and the US but rare in the EU. They typically include a range of extravagant claims that appeal to consumers’ concerns about their own health, claim to be based on traditional indigenous food ways and at the same time promise to resolve global environmental problems (through sustainable production) and international trade inequities (by being fair trade). This paper uses the example of exotic acai berry products from the Amazon (made popular by Oprah Winfrey as an anti-ageing food.) 

Her lecture will show how the creation and contestation of food label claims can expand the range of voices and actors involved in governing the food system thus potentially expanding democratic capacity via networked governance. Yet at the same time it can also over simplify, de-contextualise and sentimentalise or individualise particular issues, thus decreasing the potential for holistic consideration of multiple complex ethical, environmental, health and welfare dimensions of food production and supply. Parker suggests that the critical examination of the food label as a governance pathway can help us identify the ways in which the food system is currently governed by a network of actors (government, business, civil society…) and the gaps in governance that should be addressed if we are to address the challenge of creating a healthy, sustainable, fair food system.