Food Trust, Ethics and Safety in Risk Society

We are living in the age of mad cow disease. Through large scale bulletins in the media, we have learned about food scandals that threaten both our health and our environment. This has raised problems like: Who can we trust? And what type of food production can be regarded as ethically defensible in our day and age? And finally, how does the precautionary principle apply to the way we evaluate food and risk. The likelihood of becoming sick from the next meal has probably never been less than it is today. Yet at the same time, we know less than ever about the long-term consequences of today's food production. Ulrich Beck argued more than 10 years ago that we are moving from “industrial society†to “risk society†. While industrial society was structured through social classes, risk society is individualised. Beck's individualisation thesis is central to being able to understand how individuals handle risks through composing their own risk identity profile. Because the different experts “dump their contradictions and conflicts at the feet of the individual†(Beck 1992:137), he or she has to find biographical solutions to handle risks. Where to live, what to eat, where to take a vacation, what clothes to wear, with whom to mingle and to have sex with is up to the individual. And it is not like in simple modernity anymore, when the regulatory authorities took care of the risks and kept the foods you should not eat out of the country. The reflexive burden is placed upon the shoulders of the individual. So is also the case when it comes to genetic modified foods and debates around this. Even if these new foods are labelled, the consumer has to choose which experts to believe before to buy and eat. It is not the case any more that all experts agree and that the public food control institutions will tell you what to do. In the future there will be new food scandals in Europe that will threaten health and the environment. Such food scandals will be a central feature in what people experience as “risk society†. Expertise in the social sciences will gradually be given a new role as “experts on peoples’ concerns†.