IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/agrhuv/v25y2008i4p567-580.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Seven samurai to protect “our” food: the reform of the food safety regulatory system in Japan after the BSE crisis of 2001

Author

Listed:
  • Keiko Tanaka

Abstract

Using the case of food safety governance reform in Japan between 2001 and 2003, this paper examines the relationship between science and trust. The paper explains how the discovery of the first BSE positive cow and consequent food safety scandals in 2001 politicized the role of science in protecting the safety of the food supply. The analysis of the Parliamentary debate focuses on the contestation among legislators and other participants over three dimensions of risk science, including “knowledge,” “objects,” and “beneficiaries.” The metaphor of “seven samurai” and the relationally situated roles of “samurai,” “bandits,” and “beneficiaries” are used to show that in the process of policy making certain moral and ethical expectations on a new expert institution for food safety were contested and negotiated to frame responsibilities and commitments of social actors for creating the food system based on trust. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008

Suggested Citation

  • Keiko Tanaka, 2008. "Seven samurai to protect “our” food: the reform of the food safety regulatory system in Japan after the BSE crisis of 2001," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 25(4), pages 567-580, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:25:y:2008:i:4:p:567-580
    DOI: 10.1007/s10460-008-9152-y
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10460-008-9152-y
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10460-008-9152-y?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ladina Caduff & Thomas Bernauer, 2006. "Managing Risk and Regulation in European Food Safety Governance," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 23(1), pages 153-168, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Diana Stuart & Michelle Worosz, 2012. "Risk, anti-reflexivity, and ethical neutralization in industrial food processing," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 29(3), pages 287-301, September.
    2. Jones, Kevin Edson & Davidson, Debra J., 2014. "Adapting to food safety crises: Interpreting success and failure in the Canadian response to BSE," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(P1), pages 250-258.
    3. Aya Kimura, 2011. "Food education as food literacy: privatized and gendered food knowledge in contemporary Japan," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 28(4), pages 465-482, December.
    4. Marcia Barcellos & Klaus Grunert & Yanfeng Zhou & Wim Verbeke & F. Perez-Cueto & Athanasios Krystallis, 2013. "Consumer attitudes to different pig production systems: a study from mainland China," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 30(3), pages 443-455, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Papadopoulos, Andrew & Sargeant, Jan M. & Majowicz, Shannon E. & Sheldrick, Byron & McKeen, Carolyn & Wilson, Jeff & Dewey, Catherine E., 2012. "Enhancing public trust in the food safety regulatory system," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 107(1), pages 98-103.
    2. Deepananda Herath & Spencer Henson, 2010. "Barriers to HACCP implementation: evidence from the food processing sector in Ontario, Canada," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(2), pages 265-279.
    3. Linhai Wu & Pingping Liu & Yuxin Lv & Xiujuan Chen & Fu-Sheng Tsai, 2018. "Social Co-Governance for Food Safety Risks," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(11), pages 1-14, November.
    4. Kirezieva, Klementina & Jacxsens, Liesbeth & Hagelaar, Geoffrey J.L.F. & van Boekel, Martinus A.J.S. & Uyttendaele, Mieke & Luning, Pieternel A., 2015. "Exploring the influence of context on food safety management: Case studies of leafy greens production in Europe," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 158-170.
    5. Anxia Wan & Xuan Zhao & Xin Sheng & Benhong Peng, 2023. "Influence mechanisms of drug safety: Government regulation and corporate social responsibility perspectives," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 44(2), pages 978-987, March.
    6. Adam Thorn, 2018. "Issue definition and conflict expansion: the role of risk to human health as an issue definition strategy in an environmental conflict," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 51(1), pages 59-76, March.
    7. repec:elg:eechap:16365_1 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Julie Henderson & Loreen Mamerow & Anne W. Taylor & Paul R. Ward & Samantha B. Meyer & John Coveney, 2013. "The Importance Placed on the Monitoring of Food Safety and Quality by Australian Consumers," Laws, MDPI, vol. 2(2), pages 1-16, May.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:25:y:2008:i:4:p:567-580. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.