. 4.?“

,5.
w;

I" m... wNwmmWw

eimusuw
, . . .1

n5»

 

 

 

 

 

‘ - 3.2.4. ,
2%. .3. Jawéﬂwﬂxé t.” : , 5nd... )ﬁwﬁ

0% up... . A

 

THEsis

7r; ';

s»b

£0er 0W3 3.

This is to certify that the
dissertation entitled

SETTING THE STANDARD: COMPETING VALUES IN THE
SOUTH AFRICAN RED MEAT INDUSTRY

presented by
ELIZABETH RANSOM

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for the

degree in Sociology

 

 

’ﬂ/
Major Prof r’Signature
/L/§ 55

Date

 

MSU is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution

— .-o-o—o-.-—.-o-o-o-o-u-o-o-a-o—u-0-o—u-o—o—o-o-o-0-0-0-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-u-o-o-

 

 

LIBRARY
Michigan State
University

 

 

 

PLACE IN RETURN Box to remove this checkout from your record.
To AVOID FINES return on or before date due.
MAY BE RECALLED with earlier due date if requested.

 

DATE DUE DATE DUE DATE DUE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6/01 cJCIRC/DateDuepﬁS-DJS

SE1 ['1 ING THE STANDARD:
COMPETING VALUES IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN RED MEAT INDUSTRY

By

Elizabeth Ransom

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University

in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Sociology

2003

CORN
and)

“ll“

a“

Work
red II

ABSTRACT

SETTTING THE STANDARD:
COMPETING VALUES IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN RED MEAT INDUSTRY

By

Elizabeth Ransom

Viewed as one means to achieve a more predictable and efﬁcient trade system, standards
and standardization are increasingly important for global agriculture and food (agri-food)
trade. Despite their increasing importance, standards are often overlooked by social
scientists as merely technical details. Using theoretical insights from the Sociology of
Agriculture and Food, Social Studies of Science and Technology, and the diverse
scholarly literature focusing on standards, this dissertation explores a range of cultural,
economic, political and ethical issues surrounding the adoption of standards for the
purposes of global trade. Qualitative methodology is utilized to study the entire South
Africa red meat commodity network (e. g., producers, processors, and consumers) and the
consequences that speciﬁc standards have on diverse actors within the network. An
analysis of food safety and quality standards in the South African red meat industry
within the context of global trade reveals the ways in which standards encourage and
discourage the participation of more marginalized actors within the agri-food network. In
addition, despite the marginal status of a large number of South African consumers, this
work reveals that consumers play an integral part in shaping the future of South Africa’s
red meat industry. This dissertation contributes to a broader understanding of the politics

of standards and the ways in which standards shape local and global agri-food networks.

Copyright by
ELIZABETH RANSOM
2003

To my mom and dad, my husband, and my sister.

iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Countless people and organizations have contributed to my successful completion
of this research project. Thanks to my mother and father, Marge and Bill Ransom, and
my sister, Dr. Mary Medlin for all that they have given to me. My family believed in my
ability to complete this process and they served as a constant source of emotional,
spiritual, and ﬁnancial support. Similarly, my husband Matt was a steadfast source of
support and encouragement. Matt has been with me throughout this entire process. He
read countless drafts of my grant proposals and my dissertation and Matt stood near
during times when I shed tears of joy and sadness. In large part it was my family and
Matt’s willingness to pitch in when I needed them that allowed me to live in South Africa
for the duration of my research.

My friends, both new and old, have no idea how much their friendship has
assisted and enabled me to reach this point. Max and Amy Boswell, Joy Davis, Jill
Lewis, Susan Milarn, Susie Mayhom and all of my friends from the WCU cross country
team played an integral part in this process. Special thanks also go to graduate school
friends including: Carmen Bain, Brad Carl, Mike Cichello, Heather Holtzclaw, Gerad
Middendorf, Mike Skladany, Teri Swezey, Keiko Tanaka, Merideth Trahan, Michelle
Worosz, Tomiko Yamaguchi. In addition, thanks to all my friends at Habitat for
Humanity/Lansing and the friends that I made on the MI basketball courts.

Of course, none of this would have been possible without the immense assistance
from my advisor and mentor, Dr. Lawrence Busch. His humor and his insight have
assisted me in innumerable ways. Larry always supported my intellectual interests and

he is truly an intellectual inspiration for me. I am also greatly indebted to my committee

members, Dr. Rita Gallin, Dr. Ruth Hamilton, and Dr. Toby Ten Eyck. Rita Gallin
taught me the importance of WID/WAD/GAD and I only wish I could have someone like
Rita to read and edit everything I write. Ruth Hamilton encouraged me to think critically
about race and ethnicity around the globe. I am thankful I had the opportunity to learn
from her. Toby Ten Eyck has set an amazing example of how to move beyond graduate
school and become a successful scholar and mentor. In addition, thank you to Dr. James
Bingen from the Department of Resource Development. I am indebted to Jim for his
willingness to read and provide valuable comments on the earliest draft of my
dissertation grant proposal and again at the conclusion of my dissertation. Finally, I
appreciate the assistance of everyone in The Department of Sociology at Michigan State
University.

I want to express tremendous appreciation to the South African Meat Industry
Council (SAMIC) for their assistance. In particularly, special thanks go to Boet Venter
who gave me the initial invitation back in 1998 to return to SAMIC and study the
industry, Dr. Gerrit Bruwer who provided a tremendous support in helping me better
understand the industry and standards relevant to the industry, and Heneriette Wagner
who provided both professional and personal support while I was in South Africa. Special
thanks also go to Louis Visagie at the Red Meat Abattoir Association (RMAA) and
Aggrey Mahanjana at the National Emergent Red Meat Producers’ Organisation
(NERPO). Thanks to Mike Morris and the staff in the School of Development Studies
(SODS) at the University of Natal, Durban. I would also like to say thanks to all those in
South Africa who gave me their time and energy either by allowing me to interview

them, or by assisting me in ﬁnding data or articles. I am especially indebted to the

vi

families that opened their homes to me, the Knoesen’s and the Hofmeyr’s, and to Paul
Felix for lending me his car, which I hope I did not damage too much!

Funding in support of this research was made possible by a Doctoral Dissertation
Research Improvement Grant from the National Science Foundation, Societal
Dimensions of Engineering, Science and Technology: Ethics and Values Studies,
Research on Science and Technology under Grant Number SES-OO80335. In addition,
funding was provided by the College of Social Science at Michigan State University.
Any opinions, ﬁndings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material
are those of the author and do not necessarily reﬂect the views of the National Science
Foundation, Michigan State University, or any of the South African organizations that

assisted me.

vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES .............................................................................................................. x
LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................... xi
CHAPTER 1 — Introduction ................................................................................................. 1
The Context ......................................................................................................................... 3
Standards and Standardization ............................................................................................. 5
What Do Standards Do? ....................................................................................................... 8
Political Economy of Agriculture ...................................................................................... 12
Social Studies of Science and Technology ........................................................................ 16
Liberationist SSST ............................................................................................................. 20
Overview of Chapters ........................................................................................................ 23
CHAPTER 2 — Global Trade and South Africa’s Red Meat Industry ............................... 25
Global Perspective ............................................................................................................. 26
International Institutional Arrangements ........................................................................... 29
Developing Countries and Critiques of International Institutional Arrangements ............ 30
Current Issues in the South African Red Meat Industry .................................................... 36
Three Networks .................................................................................................................. 44
Private and Public Standards Setting ................................................................................. 49
CHAPTER 3 -- Methodology ............................................................................................. 52
The Research Experience ................................................................................................... 52
Methodology ...................................................................................................................... 56
Entry into the Field and Fieldwork Issues ......................................................................... 59
Race, Gender, and Citizenship ........................................................................................... 61
Data Collection and Analysis ............................................................................................. 64
Interviews ............................................................................................................... 64
Participant Observation ......................................................................................... 68
Documents and Statistics ....................................................................................... 69
Ethical Considerations ........................................................................................... 70
A Final Note ....................................................................................................................... 71
CHAPTER 4 - Global Steaks: Meat Tenderness and Hygiene Standards in Commercial
Red Meat Products ............................................................................................................ 74
Industrial Meat Production — Science in Action ................................................................ 74
The Quest for Tender Meat ................................................................................................ 76
The Importance of Hygiene ............................................................................................... 92
Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 1 10
CHAPTER 5 —- Deﬁning Consumers in a Changing Industry ......................................... 113
Literature Review ............................................................................................................ 115

viii

Methodological Comment ............................................................................................... 120

Categorizing Consumers .................................................................................................. 122
Consumers in Need of Education .................................................................................... 124
Educated Consumers ........................................................................................................ 126
Race and the Consumer ................................................................................................... 127
Ambivalent Consumer? ................................................................................................... 129
Interpretation of the Consumer ........................................................................................ 131
Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 137
CHAPTER 6 — Conclusion .............................................................................................. 141
Making the Global Local ................................................................................................. 145
Relevance and Generalizability ....................................................................................... 149
Final Words ...................................................................................................................... 151
WORKS CITED .............................................................................................................. 153
APPENDICES ................................................................................................................. 167

ix

LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1: Per capita consumption of meat products (kg) ................................................. 28
Table 3.1: Number of People Interviewed by Category .................................................... 66
Table 3.2: Gender and Racial Composition of Interviewees ............................................. 68

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2.1: International trade and the WTO ..................................................................... 29
Figure 4.1: Comparison of HACCP Implementation Between Five Countries ................. 95
Figure 5.1: Woman’s Body Labeled as Different Cuts of Meat ..................................... 174
Figure 5.2: Separate Parts of Woman’s Body Labeled as Meat Cuts ............................. 175
Figure 5.3: Meat Label .................................................................................................... 176

xi

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Standards for agriculture, food, and other goods and services are increasingly
important due to the overall increase in global agri-food trade. The importance of
standards has been ampliﬁed by the advent of the World Trade Organization (W TC.) in
1996, which effectively increased the level of organizational authority in settling trade
disputes between countries. Standards are viewed as one means to achieve a more
predictable and efﬁcient trade system. Standards make possible the location of
production around the globe by ensuring compatible products and processes (Busch et al.
1998). Despite their growing importance, standards for agriculture and food (hygiene,
food safety, and other product attributes, e.g., quality) have often been overlooked and
appear as mere technical details. Therefore, standards are rarely examined as a site of
contestation of social and political realities. By ignoring standards, the negotiations that
surround their creation and implementation, and their outcomes, scholars have
overlooked a fertile arena to understand important aspects of the global transformation of
agricultural production, distribution and consumption. More broadly scholars who have
ignored an analysis of standards have missed an opportunity to understand the impact of
globalization on individual actors. Sociological studies have revealed that globalization
is a fragmented, incomplete, and often contradictory process (Guillen 2001). In an effort
to gain a more nuanced understanding of a progressively global agri-food network and
the consequences for a diverse group of actors, this dissertation examines standards in the

red meat industry in South Africa.

As a speciﬁc commodity or object is traded globally, the standards related to that
commodity become more uniform, regardless of the culture or nation within which the
object originates (Tanaka and Busch 2003). These progressively uniform standards
originate from many sources; however, the Codex Alimentarius Committee (Codex) has
played an increasingly important role in standard setting in recent years.1 When Codex
sets standards, these have a tendency to become de facto mandatory standards. This is
because the W.T.O. refers to Codex standards when it settles trade disputes (FAO 2001).
As a developing country with limited resources, South Africa standard setting
organizations refer to the Codex as a guideline for setting national government
standards.2 By referring to the Codex South Africa’s government simultaneously assures
itself that national standards are in compliance with international standards and it reduces
some of the costs associated with setting standards. Due to the increasing importance of
standards and the increasing standardization of standards, it is critical for scholars to
examine the fact that standards are not mere “technical details.” Instead, standards infuse
particular values into the globalized agri-food network and, therefore, need to be viewed
as more than the creation of objective scientists. As South African markets move from
protected to open markets within a global economy, South Africans must respond to new
actors with differing standards. The juxtaposition of South African standards (which are
quite diverse) and international market standards create a perfect arena to investigate the

implications of conﬂicting values, the negotiations that occur, and the outcomes of

 

’ Appendix A contains a more complete list of international bodies involved with standards for agriculture
and food.

2 All terms used to refer to distinctions between developed and developing societies are problematic due to
linguistic associations that imply rank ordering, with “developed” countries viewed as ahead of or better
than “developing” countries. Other problematic terms include First/Third World, North/South, and
industrialized/indusu’ializing. For the purposes of this discussion the terms developed and developing are
used.

implementing speciﬁc standards. Through an analysis of the red meat commodity
network in South Africa, this work seeks to address two fundamental questions. First,
how do international standards impact a primarily domestic market? Second, how do
standards, both international and domestic, interact with markets that are segmented by

race, class and gender?

The Context

With an expanding global market agri-food products travel longer and longer
distances from point of production to point of destinationf’ This changing landscape of
production, trade, and consumption has a number of implications. First, products do not
move without assistance. Therefore, companies, technologies, and standards are endlessly
utilized to accommodate longer food networks. Second, local concerns become global
concerns. For example, in 2000, I was aboard a commercial international airline en route
to South Africa when an announcement was made that “due to the outbreak of FMD
(foot and mouth disease) in parts of Europe and other health concerns related to red meat,
we will only be serving poultry or ﬁsh on this flight.” Diseases such as FMD and BSE
(bovine spongiform encephalopathy, also known as “mad cow disease”) become a
concern for people (producers, processors, and consumers) throughout the world and not
simply in the area where an initial occurrence is identiﬁed. Other increasingly global

concerns related to the agri-food system include environmental consequences of

 

3 While there is tremendous disagreement on when exactly globalization began (Held 1991; Guillen 2001),
within agri-food studies the conclusion of World War II is generally seen as the beginning of a qualitatively
different era of global agrifood networks (McMichael 1996). The difference between global agrifood trade
of previous eras was the quantity, quality, and interdependence of commodity networks, with an increasing
concentration of a limited number of corporations involved with agrifood production, processing, and
distribution.

industrialized agriculture, corporate control over the food supply, and the simultaneous
increase in the amount of food produced and the number of people suffering from
inadequate diets.

An issue more closely aligned to the focus of this work is the increasing
importance and relevance of standards in the agri-food system. This begs the questions:
What is a good standard? Whose standards are the “best” standards? Why are some
standards important, such as ensuring a food safety standard does not cause barriers to
trade, but other standards are not considered legitimate, such as ensuring environmentally
sustainable production?

These questions are addressed by utilizing two distinct, yet complementary areas
of literature as theoretical lenses to assess the South Africa red meat industry. These two
areas are: (1) political economy of agriculture and food and (2) social studies of science
and technology (SSST), including what is called “liberationist” discussions of science
and technology, a literature that has erratically been connected with SSST. 4 This work
also incorporates the emergent literature on standards and standardization.

The standards literature originates from a range of disciplines and maintains little
theoretical consistency. However, this literature is important for providing a basic
understanding of standards and standardization. This diverse literature also provides
justiﬁcation of the importance of the study of standards. The political economy of
agriculture literature assists this analysis in terms of recognizing and critically analyzing
the structure of agriculture globally and the position of South African agriculture within

this global context. However, focusing solely on a political economic perspective would

 

’ For the purposes of brevity I am calling all third world, feminist and racial/ethnic SSST scholars
“liberationist” SSST scholars. Rouse (1987) uses the term liberationist accounts of science to describe
critiques of scientiﬁc practices and their political impact from the perspective of oppressed groups.

fail to uncover the technical aspects of standards. As such, the SSST literature enables
one to recognize the human and the non-human actors participating in commodity
networks. This further aids in deconstructing the multitude of relationships within an
industry. Further, using liberationist SSST calls attention to the role of standards in
translating and transforming power relationships within South African red meat
networks. Together, the political economy of agriculture and the SSST literature allow
for a better theoretical understanding of the impact of standards and standardization. Let
us turn to a brief discussion of these three areas of literature, with more elaboration on
how each contributes to a better understanding of standards in the global agri-food

system in the chapters that follow.

Standards and Standardization

Standards are ubiquitous. They are all around us and shape our daily lives, yet the
vast majority of standards exist without our giving much thought to them (Busch 2000;
Bowker and Star 1999). Hence, unless something occurs which makes us aware of a
standard (e.g., when a standard is not met and negative consequences ensue), standards
generally exist without being noticed.

Standards can exist for a product (e. g., canned meat) and a process (e. g., slaughter
speciﬁcations) (Busch 1997; US. House of Representatives 2000). In an era that is
marked by increasing global trade, competition, and the restructuring of economics from
planned to market driven, standards have gained in importance (Busch 1998; Roberts
2001). In a global market economy, Busch et a1. (1998, 1) note that standards deﬁne

what is to be traded (e. g., meat standards), establish agreed upon practices to structure

production processes (e.g., food safety regulations), “ﬁx levels of consistent product
quality (though not always the highest quality),” and, as mentioned previously “make
possible the location of production around the globe by ensuring compatible products and
processes” (e.g., cuts of meat and cold storage requirements).

There are two general categories of standards that can be applied to product,
process, and service standards and are especially well suited to a discussion of standards
in the red meat industry. First, there are standards for hygiene and food safety and
second, there are standards related to other product attributes (Roberts 2001 ). Other
product attributes include standards concemin g meat tenderness, animal welfare, and all
products that make speciﬁc claims, such as organic or hormone free meat. Of course, the
differences between safety and product attributes are not always separate categories. For
example, better animal handling at abattoirs has long been associated with contributing to
more tender meat post-mortem (Belk et a1. 2002).5

Brunsson and Jacobson (2000) provide a taxonomy for standards, by asserting
that standards are one of three types of rules found in society.6 The two other categories
of rules are social norms and directives. Social norms are described as rarely appearing
in written form, but yet are pervasive concepts that structure our actions within societies
to which we belong. Directives can be described as what we generally associate as laws,
in that directives are generally mandatory rules either within an organization or in

society, and they are enforced by authority.

 

5 Originating from the French, abattoir means slaughterhouse. South Africans refer to slaughter facilities as
abattoirs.

6 The National Research Council (1995) report also uses this taxonomy without using the same language
(for example see Chapter 1: Introduction).

Similar to directives, Brunsson and Jacobson (Ibid) propose that standards are
also found in written form. They are explicit and they have an evident source, but
generally standards adherence is voluntary rather than enforced by authority. In practice,
these three categories often become blurred and change occurs overtime. For example,
what was once a voluntary standard, might become a directive within a particular
industry.

Brunsson and Jacobson leave their deﬁnition of standards deliberately vague, not
only because standards and standardization tend to be variable in character, rather than
constant, but also because they see their work as only a beginning to a topic that has thus
far received limited social science attention. Similarly, other works that have dealt with
the topic of standards have also been critiqued for failing to provide a clear deﬁnition of
standards (see for example, Watson’s (1998) critique of Krislov (1997)). In part, this is
attributable to the fact that a study of standards and standardization can reveal many
things to many different audiences. A short list of possible sociological topics include:
an examination of standard setting and enforcing groups as a means to aid our
understanding of organizations and bureaucracies; how standards become reiﬁed into
facts about the natural world; and how standards become symbols by which groups’
identities are formed (W alzer 1983; Watson 1998). Cited in a report by the United
States’ National Research Council (1995, 9) a broad deﬁnition of a standard is “a set of
characteristics or quantities that describes features of a product, process, service,
interface, or material.”

This work focuses solely on red meat standards, and related agriculture and food

standards. Some of the standards are voluntary, while others are what Brunsson and

Jacobson identify as directives, or laws. Within red meat standards, the focus is on food
safety (e.g., hygienic meat processing) and product attribute (e.g., electrical stimulation
for tender meat) standards. The discussion is not directly focused on environmental and
labor standards. However, mention of these standards enters into the discussion

indirectly.7

What Do Standards Do?

As economists note, standards help reduce transaction costs, increase the
predictability of a product, and in general, simplify what could be a very tedious and
complicated process. With the increasing importance of standards, however, a shift has
occurred from the use of standards as technical tools for market homogeneity to the use
of standards as strategic tools for accessing markets, coordinating systems, enhancing
quality and safety assurance, product branding, and creating niche markets (Giovannucci
and Reardon 2000; Reardon et a1. 2001). As a part of market strategy standards may
beneﬁt the industry as a whole and/or may be used as a means to distribute beneﬁts
unevenly in the industry.

As the agri-food system becomes more globalized, there is a tendency for
standardization of standards to take place. As part of modern capitalist societies, more
things tend to become commodities at some point in their “lives” and standards for a

given thing tend to become more uniform across nations and cultures (T anaka and Busch

 

7 Environmental and labor standards were not the primary focus of this research. Therefore, they are
largely absent from the research data. Researching the topic of labor standards would have required
interviewing a signiﬁcantly different group of people. Minimal attention has been given to environmental
standards within South Africa’s red meat industry.

2003 citing Appadurai 1986). Hence, the global agri-food system has tendencies towards
standardization and homogenization.8

Standards are more than simply technical details or strategic tools used as part of
market strategy. In the past ten years scholars have focused on the ways in which
standards and standardization have ethical and moral implications for the way the world
is because standards and standardization construct the world in certain ways and not
others (Busch 2000; Grindley 1995; Bowker and Star 1999; Brunsson and J acobsson
2000). Linked with an understanding of the ethical and moral implications of standards,
is the idea that standards are one measure by which products, processes, and people are
judged. A standard for a “good” steak also implies what a “good” farmer is and what is a
“good” slaughtering process.

Because standards shape the way the world is and actors throughout the world
shape standards, the determination of standards is often the source of heated debate.
Summarizing from the work of Busch et a1. (1998) the reason for the debates are linked
to issues of negotiations, access and outcomes. Not everyone is included in the
negotiations that lead to the creation, modiﬁcation, implementation or maintenance of
standards. Second, while standards tend towards making markets more transparent, they
may also allow or deny access to particular products or labor markets. In addition, the
type of criteria used to determine access is often based on measures that correlate with
nationality, race, ethnicity or gender. (For example, only persons selected as
representatives of their country or serving as representatives of FAG/WHO recognized

international NGOs (non-govemmental organizations) can attend Codex meetings).

 

8 A good example of standardization and homogenization of food products on a global scale is the
McDonald’s Corporation, which is discussed in Schlosser’s (2001) Fast Food Nation.

Likewise, standards may be used by nation states as non-tariff trade barriers. Finally,
standards may have positive and/or negative outcomes for different interests. Thus,
although newly introduced standards are often extremely political and socially contested,
the use of technical details (the deﬁned technical standard) tends to brush aside the
political and social relevance. This is especially true over time as standards become
“naturalized” so they appear as only technical details (Bowker and Star 1999).9

Recall that one question this work seeks to address is how standards interact with
markets that are segmented by race, class, and gender. Due to South Africa’s legacy of
apartheid, race and ethnicity are the obvious categories of structured inequalities.
However, this work reveals how gender and class are very much present in the current
construction and maintenance of inequality. Standards as a point of study offer the
possibility of helping to understand the ways in which race, class, and gender (among
other categories) are materially maintained, but also can be materially transformed.
Thus, this work explores how standards can contribute to changing and/or maintaining
(in)equitable relationships between participants in the South African red meat industry.

While this research focuses primarily on structures of inequalities internal to
South Africa, this research also reveals how the lines between national and international
inequalities are blurred. Recall that the second question this work seeks to address is how
international standards impact a primarily domestic market. Any effort to reduce
inequalities within an industry in South Africa will require, minimally, an awareness of

the interplay or constraints imposed by other nations and the global marketplace. Wilson

 

9 The use of the term “naturalized” is intentional. Bowker and Star (1999,196) explain that it is only
through our institutions and structures that we can describe and manipulate nature. Therefore contrary to
the image of something that is pure and unsullied by humans, much of what appears “natur ” has actually
been thoroughly integrated into our social structures and institutions so that we can make use of the object
or thing.

10

(2000, 81) writes, “Globalisation does seem to be associated with the building of global
inequality, with the whole process of globalisation placing enormous constraints on what
the South African government can do in terms of policy.” As South Africa moves further
along the path of globalization, which includes the trading of agricultural commodities
like red meat, issues of global inequalities collide with global technoscience. Haraway
(1997, 57) asserts that a person does not have to subscribe to conspiracy theories in order
to recognize and understand that “the technoscientiﬁc agenda for everybody set by the
economically dominant powers, especially the United States, is inescapable.” She
continues (Ibid):

The control of genes means access both to naturally occurring diversity

and to the material, social, and semiotic technology to recraft its riches to

produce beings new to Earth. Which new beings, for whom, and out of

whom seem to me to be pressing questions lying at the heart of

democracy, social justice, economy, agriculture, medicine, labor, and

envrronment.

Therefore, as actors in South Africa’s red meat industry pursue global trade they are
shaped by global forces and by the science and technology that they use in industrial
meat production, much of which has been developed and shaped by more economically
dominant actors involved in the global trade of commodities.

Wilson raises a point that seems to summarize not only the challenge to
globalization, but the challenge to those interested in pursuing commodity networks,
including the trading of red meat, nationally and internationally. He states, “the
challenge is how to build a new solidarity not only within South Africa, but also between

nations. The statistics currently emerging about global inequality are horrendous. The

wealthiest 20 percent of the world’s population as a ratio to the poorest 20 percent was

11

about 3:1 in 1817 . . . and by 1998 it was 85:1. This is the state of the global economy”
(Wilson 2000, 183). Thus, a study of standards and standardization is important because
it can shed light on explaining and understanding how seemingly mundane standards
differentially shape diverse interests and actors.

In order to gain an understanding of the standards and the effects of standards on
actors in the red meat commodity chain, a review of two separate bodies of literature is
conducted. The ﬁrst area of literature, the political economy of agri-food production,
looks at the global transformation of agriculture and food production. The second area of
literature, Social Studies of Science and Technology, investigates how science and

technology are constructed and utilized within agri-food production.

Political Economy of Agriculture

The globalized agri-food system serves as a backdrop to the focus of this study.
Thus, it is important to say more about the agri-food system in order to establish the
larger context within which the red meat industry in South Africa is operating. The agri-
food system is deﬁned as “the production, transportation, and marketing of the inputs to
farming, farming (the physical process of turning inputs like seed, feed, water, fertilizer,
and pesticides into primary products), and the transportation, processing, and marketing
of farm outputs” (adapted from Lewontin in Magdoff et al. 2000, 94-95). Despite an
increasingly global food system (emphasis on the singular), conceptualizing global food
production and trade in terms of agri-food networks (emphasis on the plural) improves
our understanding of global processes. Indeed, a strength and a weakness of the political

economy of agriculture literature is the emphasis on a single agri-food system.

12

The strength of the political economic approach within agricultural studies is that
it reveals the progression of change in industrial agriculture globally as following the
logic of capital. Hence, the political economy of agriculture focuses on how industrial
agriculture endlessly changes as a means to increase productivity and proﬁt and to
minimize costs. Characteristics of industrial agriculture in developing countries include a
decline in subsistence farming and the increasing production of luxury crops for export to
rich countries (Magdoff et. al 2000). Similarly, in developing and developed countries
there continues to be a movement towards concentration within and between industries,
centralization of capital, and a dramatic decline in the number of people farming full-time
(Ibid). In fact, as capital flows more freely, animal production is among the ﬁrst areas of
agriculture to see dramatic increases in concentration, with animals being reared in
progressively larger units (Friedman 1999).lo

Following the logic of capital, the political economic approach also reveals the
emergence of a new international division of labor (Bonanno 1994). The elements of the
new international division of labor include (1) a decline (but not a disappearance) in the
importance of the nation—state, (2) “an international hierarchy of winners and losers that
exists in spaces and population groups throughout the world, not necessarily within
speciﬁc nations,” and (3) globalization of the production processes and markets
(Bonanno 1994, 2). Given the points listed above, and recognizing that industrial

agriculture is endlessly changing to further maximize capital accumulation, we can utilize

 

'0 Some of the largest beef feedlots in the world now have up to 100,000 head of cattle. In South Africa,
the largest beef feedlots have a capacity of 70,000 to 80,000 head of cattle. In the US. twenty feedlots feed
about half of the total cattle (Heffeman 1999). In South Africa there are 53 registered feedlots, and they
provide approximately seventy percent of all commercially slaughtered beef annually (SAMIC 2003).
Poultry and pork follow similar concentration trends.

l3

a political economic framework to study the role of G.A.T.T. (General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade) and the W.T.O.

A brief history of the development of the W.T.O. within a political economic
framework includes the recognition of the role of the key nation-states and big
corporations. From the 19408 until the 19903 the US. followed by the EC. (European
Community) promoted national agricultural production through substantial subsidies to
farmers and overproduction was accommodated through food aid and selling
commodities at artiﬁcially low prices in international markets (Freidmann 1999;
McMichael 2000). Until 1994 in the G.A.T.T. Uruguay Round the US. had insisted that
agriculture be excluded from trade liberalization rules. However, European export
subsidies of agricultural products led to a decline of US. dominance of exports as Europe
increasingly captured international markets (under the European Common Agricultural
Policy (CAP)). Thus, as of the 1994 G.A.T.T. Uruguay Round, the US. encouraged
agriculture to be included in liberalized trade discussions. McMichael (2000, 134) notes:

These trade challenges have not so much rewarded the United States (and

other food exporting nations), as they have strengthened the grip of the

food companies, which beneﬁt from the free trade movement — for

example, 50 percent of US. grain exports in 1994 were shared by two

companies: Cargill and Continental.

The conclusion of the Uruguay Round established the World Trade Organization.
Ofﬁcially, the W.T.O. is the only international organization that engages with rules of
trade between nations. The goal of the W.T.O. is to facilitate trade for producers of
goods and services, importers, and exporters (W .T.O. 2003). However, within the

political economic framework, some researchers see the W.T.O. as institutionalizing

freedom of trade, enterprise and property rights on a world scale (McMichael 2000, 138).

14

Therefore, based on the political economic approach, one is drawn to refer to the
agri-food system as a singular entity. However, only focusing on a singular “system”
obscures the complexity and diversity found in different countries and regions of the
world. Indeed, as Bonnano (1994) notes, the hegemonic aspects of nation-states have
declined, but this decline should not be overstated. In less globally dominant countries,
especially economically poor countries, many farmers are dependent on governments for
the provision of resources to farm and to provide adequate internal infrastructure. In
developed countries, like the US, many farmers still rely heavily on government
subsidies (Becker 2002a). In addition, unlike grains or fruits, red meat production
continues to be demarcated by national or regional ownership, with minimal ownership
by multinational corporations.11 Finally, there are technologies that travel the globe, and
while many agri-food technologies assist in maintaining the status quo, new technologies
offer new possibilities of altering patterns of power within global trade. Hence,
recognizing agri-food networks requires going beyond a political economic construction
of corporate actors and dominant nation states as entities orchestrating global trade.
Rather, agri-food networks open up spaces for exploring the role of human and non-
human actors that may or may not be connected to corporations and nation-states.
Recognizing the role of people and things within global food networks brings us to the

SSST literature, and more speciﬁcally to actor network theory (ANT).

 

1’ This occurs despite increased concentration of production within countries. In part, the slow movement
of multinational corporations into the red meat industry has to do with the costs (uncertainties) of the
product itself - disease, spoilage, and general food safety concerns. Until the potential costs associated
with red meat are reduced it is not likely that MNCs will pursue direct ownership.

15

Social Studies of Science and Technolog

A series of works published in the 19608 and 705 (Kuhn 1962; Merton 1973;
Feyerabend 1978) attempted to reveal the ways in which science and society were linked,
thus exposing science as a social system (Edge 1995). Drawing from these earlier works,
scholars working within the SSK (Sociology of Scientiﬁc Knowledge) tradition began to
critique scientiﬁc thought. Bloor’s (1976) “principle of symmetry” was one of the
invaluable critiques of scientiﬁc thought. Bloor argued that as a methodological
principle, true and false knowledge claims must be treated equally. Bloor correctly noted
that the successes of science tended to receive all the attention, while the failures were
swept under the proverbial rug. By observing both the successes and the failures in
science, Bloor argued that we could gain a more comprehensive understanding of science
as a part of society. However, a weakness of SSK is that it did not effectively capture
what actually occurred in the laboratory or, more generally, in scientiﬁc practice
(Pickering 1992).

As such, science studies turned to focus on gaining access to the technical content
of science through channels other than those of accepted scientiﬁc fact. Laboratory
studies such as Latour and Woolgar’s Laboratory Life (1979) and Knorr-Cetina’s
Manufacturing Knowledge (1981), introduced the concept of studying science in practice.
The authors’ promoted a methodological approach that focused on the study of scientiﬁc
controversies and unﬁnished knowledge (Knorr-Cetina 1995). Scholars working in this
tradition recognized that once knowledge has become ﬁnal, it is much more difﬁcult, if
not impossible, to reveal the previous disputes and the possibilities that existed for

alternative outcomes (Latour 1987; Knorr Cetina 1995; Star 1991). For one group this

16

included the notion of following the actors during knowledge construction or what came
to be known as ANT - Actor Network Theory (Callon and Law 1996; Latour 1997).12

ANT furthered Bloor’s concept of symmetry by arguing that Bloor’s own
discussion was asymmetric because Bloor assumed Society was supposed to explain
Nature (Callon 1986; Latour 1987). Therefore, the principle of generalized symmetry
was established and this symmetry calls for the treatment of subject/society in the same
way as object/nature (Latour 1987, 1992).

Within agri-food studies, a few scholars have attempted to utilize political
economic agri-food studies in combination with ANT (Busch and Juska 1997; Marsden
1997; Murdock et al. 2000; Tanaka and Busch 2003). Busch and Juska (1997, 690)
maintain that ANT is situated firmly within the political economic framework, because
ANT also sees the “extension of production networks proceeding simultaneously with the
process of production and distribution of wealth, status and power among actors engaged
in the commodity production.” While the ANT perspective incorporates traditional
political economic approachesl3 this perspective also expands upon these approaches in
two signiﬁcant ways.

First, ANT attempts to abandon dualistic ways of thinking, particularly the
distinction between macro and micro levels of analysis and action. The extreme of the
macro/micro divide in political economic approaches can be found in Wallerstein’s world

systems theory. Despite covering a wide range of concerns, including international

 

’2 Actor Network Theory/Approach/Method - Actor Network has been identiﬁed as all three of these
things, a theory, an approach, and a method. The methodology section addresses some of the controversies
embedded in these terms.

'3 Traditional approaches refer here to classical political economy and newer political economic
perspectives that are situated within a Marxist framework (see Busch and Juska 1997 for an elaboration on
both).

17

development and racial formation on a global scale, Wallerstein’s discussions make it
seem that individual actors (the micro level) are not present (2000). Though quite
different in their arguments, two seminal works in agri-food studies that have utilized the
macro political economic perspective are Freidmann and McMichael (1989) and
Goodman and Watts (1994). Both of these works allow macro theorizing and empirical
research on agri-food systems. The former draws on Wallerstein’s world systems
approach with an emphasis on nation-states’ policies as linked to international
development and the latter with an emphasis on regulationist theory and how state
practices are shaped by crises in the food system (Buttel 2001). While these works
altered the study of agriculture by engaging in critical accounts of agricultural
development, both works emphasize the structured components of global agriculture to
the detriment of individual actors. However, through combining the theoretical input of
Goodman and Watts with ANT, scholars such as Marsden et al. (1995, 2002) and Busch
and Juska (1997) began to shift agri-food studies away from the macro/micro division.
Through grounding observations and discussions in the day-to-day interactions
and relationships that construct an industry, researchers effectively utilize ANT within
commodity studies. Two concepts that emerge from utilizing network analysis are
relational materiality and performativity. Relational materiality is the notion that all
entities “are produced in relation” to one another and this is applied “to all materials —
and not simply to those that are linguistic” (Law 1999, 4). Therefore, if you follow
networks and recognize the relational materiality of all actors, then you also recognize
that all “entities are performed in, by and through those relations” (Law 1999, 4). The

consequence of recognizing the relational and performed ways that actors exist means

18

that, at least in theory, everything is uncertain and reversible (Ibid). Thus, using ANT
leaves many more opportunities for actors to exhibit agency within agri-food studies than
do the traditional political economic approaches. In addition, ANT lends an explanation
to the way categories are endlessly remade, as opposed to assuming ﬁxed categories. For
example, categories that are endlessly remade in the South African red meat commodity
chain,” include who is considered a producer or a consumer.

This brings us to the second way that ANT furthers political economic
approaches. ANT requires that nature and other non-human actors be taken into account
in structuring actions by not simply viewing them as objects to be used by humans. Thus,
we are better able to understand how a commodity network is produced and extended and
why some commodity networks become stable, while others remain unstable, or never
develop (Tanaka and Busch 2003). All actors (human and non-human) in a commodity
chain operate in relation to one another and the very meaning of the commodity is
constructed in, by, and through these relations. For example, a new company in South
Africa is attempting to market “all-natural” beef (the animals are raised in grass ﬁelds
and no chemicals or antibiotics are used). However, in order to successfully extend this
network, there must be: farmers willing to raise the animals in this manner; the
identiﬁcation of appropriate breeds that thrive in “natural” conditions; facilities with
proper equipment to handle the slaughter, packaging/shipping equipment, and storage

space15 ; stores willing to sell the all-natural beef products; and consumers educated to the

 

’4 The terms “chain” and “network” in reference to commodity production is used interchangeably
throughout this work.

'5 The “all-natural” aging process requires more storage space because the process is slower. Natural aging
requires that the processor have carcasses hanging for a longer period of time (up to twenty-one days),
while industrial processors often hang carcasses for a very short period of time (often only one day) before
they are shipped out of the abattoir.

19

idea that they want this type of meat. The fact that any one of these actors may not
behave as expected, including breeds of cattle not suitable for this type of commodity
production, reveals the fragile and dynamic aspect of a commodity network.

ANT has contributed to a better understanding of science as a social system, and
therefore, as we look at scientiﬁc practices in agriculture, it has contributed to a better
understanding of agri-food studies. However, as with most perspectives, ANT is not
without its critics, especially when standards are focused on in agri-food networks
outside of the United States and Western EurOpe. Bowker and Star (1999, 48) note that
ANT “drew our attention to the importance of the development of standards but did
not look at these in detail.” In addition, they continue on to note that by the very nature
of the method (i.e., following the actors) we shared in the actor’s blindness. Bowker and
Star write (1999, 48), “the actors being followed did not themselves see what was
excluded: they constructed a world in which that exclusion could occur.” The fact that
science studies have only focused on science and technology production in speciﬁc parts
of the world, namely globally dominant countries like the US. and the E.U., raises the
possibility that these works may fail to account for differences between stronger and
weaker nations. Thus, scholars who focus attention on these differences are a valuable

addition to this study.

Liberationist SSS T
While traditional SSST scholars diligently chiseled away the wall that separates
science from politics, these scholars did not see the context within which they chiseled.

This point has been raised by several scholars including Bowker and Star (1999), Harding

20

(1991), Haraway (1997), and Star (1991). They suggest that SSST scholars are not
following just any actors in the world. They are overwhelmingly following white,
western, capitalist and male actors involved in the production of science. Ironically,
through their emphasis on perforrnativity, Latour and Callon opened up the opportunity
to explore how science contributes to the construction of social categories, such as race
and gender, but they failed to take their analysis in this direction. Haraway (1997, 35)
continues:

Either critical scholars in antiracist, feminist cultural studies of science

and technology have not been clear enough about racial formation,

gender-in-the-making, the forging of class, and the discursive production

of sexuality through the constitutive practices of technoscience production

themselves, or the science studies scholars aren’t reading or listening - or

both. (emphasis in the original)

Through the use of relationality and perforrnativity in science studies, Latour
(1987, 174) offered the concept of technoscience to describe the messiness that goes into
the actual production of the ﬁnished products that we call “science and technology.”
Latour sought to expand SSST beyond a simplistic understanding of the scientist working
diligently in the lab, by including all the human and non-human actors that contribute to
the production of science and technology. Latour’s idea of technoscience insisted upon
increasing reﬂexivity among actors’ workings on science and technology. Rather than
envisioning a sole person achieving a scientiﬁc discovery, ANT emphasized how many

actors (human and non-human) collaborate in the production of science and technology. ’6

However, while the concept of technoscience provided an opportunity for further

 

"5 Indeed, Latour discovered that what he viewed as “adding realism” to science was actually seen by
scientists as a threat to science because they viewed it as decreasing a scientist’s ability to make truth
claims and achieve scientiﬁc certainty (Latour 1999).

21

reﬂexivity and identiﬁcation of power within the production of technoscience, this was
not an avenue willingly pursued by many ANT scholars (Law 1991).

Building upon the idea of relationality, Haraway expanded upon Latour’s notion
of technoscience by modifying the concept and deﬁning it as sociotechnical production.
Haraway (1997, 7) deﬁnes sociotechnical production as “the knowledge-power processes
that inscribe and materialize the world in some forms rather than others.” Through the
use of the term sociotechnical production Haraway calls attention to which actors are
involved in technoscience production and for what purposes.

Haraway’s works can be categorized as within liberationist SSST and her work
has remained integral to the broader SSST literature, unlike many other liberationist
SSST scholars. Generally, liberationist SSST scholars have as a general purpose for their
investigations “questions about for whom and for what the semiotic-material apparatuses
of scientiﬁc knowledge production gets built and sustained” (Haraway 1997, 269).
Overall, Haraway has pushed the SSST ﬁeld the furthest by attempting to interrogate and
theorize how science participates in the construction of oppression in the world today.
Speciﬁcally, she has focused much of her attention on race, colonialism/imperialism,
gender, and to a lesser degree, class. Because her work is one of the few SSST works to
have focused on all these areas her work is most relevant to this research.

When discussing standards in the agri-food system, the importance of being able
to investigate science as a social system, and more importantly investigate for what
purposes science and technology are created, is invaluable. This is especially relevant

when the focus is on agri-food standards within the context of a country such as South

22

Africa that is less powerful socially, politically, and economically on a global scale than

other nations.

Overview of Chapters

The following chapter provides an overview of the South African red meat
industry, including the history of South African agriculture and current issues within
South Africa’s agri—food networks. A discussion of the methodology used in the
collection of data for this study is presented in Chapter Three. This includes a
justiﬁcation for why South Africa was chosen for this study and ﬁnally a discussion of
the analysis of the data. Chapters Four and Five present the ﬁndings from this research.
Speciﬁcally, Chapter Four analyzes the standards utilized in South Africa’s commercial
industry to achieve food safety (hygiene) and quality attributes (tender meat). Chapter
Five focuses on the unexpected emphasis that interviewees involved with this study gave
to South African consumers. Thus, Chapter Five seeks to explore and explain the ways
that standards and standardization intersect with both the industry’s perspective of
consumers and consumer interests and concerns. The ﬁnal chapter discusses food
systems of the future, including a discussion of the ways in which political economic
agri-food studies and SSST (including liberationist accounts) scholars overlap in their
critiques, and ultimately in their visions for the future. Therefore, suggestions for change
or future directions proposed by each group have the potential to contribute to a broader
conversation on practices in agri-food networks and science that can contribute to a more

just and equitable global food system.

23

This dissertation should contribute to an understanding of standards and the
impact that standards have at multiple levels (e. g., businesses, nation states). In addition,
this study further demonstrates to policy makers, scientists, and others who participate in
the construction and implementation of standards that despite the seemingly small
changes created by standards, speciﬁc conditions and cultures must be accounted for
when implementing (what was envisioned as antiseptic) standards. Via an exploration
and examination of the complexity created by standards production and implementation
we can begin to address the questions: How do international standards impact a primarily
domestic market? How do standards interact with markets that are segmented by race,

class, and gender?

24

CHAPTER 2

Global Trade and South Africa’s Red Meat Industry

During the apartheid era”, all of South African agriculture was government
directed and marketing boards controlled up to 80 percent of all commercial agriculture.18
The Meat Board had statutory authority to oversee the registration of key participants in
the industry, keep records on the industry, and collect a statutory levy. For example, in
1996 the Board collected more than R57 million in the form of statutory levies (NAMC
2001). In fact, until 1992, the Meat Board acted as the sole importer of red meat.
However, in order to comply with the requirements of the G.A.T.T., import control as
executed by the Meat Board was abolished (NAMC 2001). Prior to the disbanding of all
marketing boards, at least one agricultural economist viewed the Meat Board as in serious
need of major revisions in policy to correct for economic inefﬁciencies (Lubbe 1992).
This economic inefﬁciency was, at least in part, related to the inefﬁciencies of
maintaining an apartheid society (Ibid).

By 1983 at least 2.5 million rural people had been forcibly removed from their
land and driven into the “homelands.” From 1955 to 1969 population densities in
traditionally black rural areas rose from 60 persons per square mile to 110 persons per
square mile (W inberg 1996). Besides promoting overcrowding, and therefore,

degradation of the available natural resources in the homelands, the government also

 

'7 While separation and inequality existed in South Africa from the very early days of Dutch settlement, the
beginning of apartheid ofﬁcially began in 1948 when the Nationalist party was elected to government.
Apartheid was made up of a series of laws that required people be strictly categorized by racial group.
These classiﬁcations were used to determine every aspect of a person’s life, including where a person could
live and work (Bowker and Star 2000; Wylie 2001). '

'8 Commercial is used here to distinguish from the informal sector of South Africa, which for historical
reasons, is very large. Approximately 25 percent of all livestock in South Africa are found in the informal
sector.

25

intervened in ways that undermined black smallholder agricultural production. These
interventions included taxes which were imposed that forced blacks to earn wages in
“white areas” (Lipton 1993). The government, in conjunction with the commercial
agricultural sector, effectively created a two-tier agricultural system, establishing white
farmers as commercial producers and restricting most blacks and “coloureds” to
subsistence farming.19 Today, South Africa is attempting to integrate its dual agricultural
system into one and at the same time, to improve land distribution, agricultural
productivity, and agricultural exports.

In order to understand the complex changes and challenges facing South African
agriculture, and more speciﬁcally the red meat industry, this chapter begins with an
overview of the global red meat industry and an analysis of the international institutional
arrangements involved with standards setting. This is followed by a discussion of current
issues in the South African red meat industry with an explication of the importance of
standards in the industry. Finally, institutional and structural changes occurring within

the industry are discussed.

Global Perspective

Globally, meat production and consumption continue to grow although at
disparate rates depending upon the region. Within developed countries production is
likely to continue to increase. However, the rate of growth for developed countries will
be much slower than in the past and will be slower in comparison to growth rates in

developing countries (Haen, et a1. 1998). Presently, approximately thirty-seven percent

 

'9 The racial classiﬁcation system under apartheid had four basic groups: Europeans, Asiatics, coloureds or
persons of mixed race, and Bantus, also called natives (Bowker and Star 2000).

26

of the world’s meat supply comes from industrial livestock production. However,
industrial production is growing twice as fast as production in mixed crop-livestock
farming systems and six times as fast as production in grazing systems (Haan et al. 1997;
Fritschel and Mohan 1999).20 Due to structural changes in global agriculture the
livestock sector is likely to continue to change from a multifunctional to an industrial
commodity sector (Haen et a1. 1998).21 Factors such as economies of scale, increasing
labor costs, and declining capital costs are cited as promoting further industrialization
(Ibid). Livestock industrialization encourages concentration of production units, and
increasing vertical coordination between feed and meat producers and processors. Within
the red meat industry, the hog industry has seen the highest amount of concentration and
vertical integration, although the beef and sheep industries are also experiencing these
changes (FAO 1998). For example, in the US. the four largest packers of beef have
accounted for approximately 82 percent of steer and heifer slaughter since 1994 (USDA
1996). In South Africa, beef feedlots now provide approximately 70 percent of all beef
sold commercially (SAMIC 2000).

Issues that are exacerbated by increasing industrialization and concentration of
livestock production include environmental concerns (e.g., deforestation, drinking water
and air pollution), impact on smallholders (e.g., market accessibility, income and asset

generation for the poor), animal and public health issues (e.g., transfer of disease from

 

2° Mixed crop-livestock farming occurs in many forms, but it is historically associated with more traditional
and smallholder farming. Mixed crop-livestock farming usually includes a variety of crops that are grown
and animals that are fed on crop residue, and in turn, animal manure and animal power is used for crop
production. Recently, mixed crop-livestock farming has received renewed attention for the sustainable
qualities of this type of farming system (Schiere and Kater 2001).

Commodity production generally involves production for the market (as opposed to use for the family)
with minimal mixed crop-livestock within the farm system.

27

animal to animal and animals to humans), and, in general, increased vulnerability of the
industry to disasters (Delgado et al. 1999; Fritschel and Mohan 1999; Haan et al. 2001).

Growth in consumption of red meat products has generally remained ﬂat in
developed countries, while developing countries have experienced an aggregate increase,
with variance by regions (see Table 2.1 below). For all developing countries, per capita
consumption of beef, mutton, goat, pork, poultry, eggs and milk rose by an average of
about 50 percent per person between 1973 and 1996 (Fritschel and Mohan 1999).

Table 2.1. Per capita consumption of meat products“ (kg)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meat and products
1969/7 l * 1992194" 2010

Developed countries 63 76 97
Developing countries 1 l 20 25
Africa (Sub-Saharan) 11 10 10
Near East/North Africa 13 19 23
East Asia 9 28 49
South Asia 4 5 6
Latin America/Caribbean 33 45 49
World 26 33 27

* Food consumption data from FAOSTAT

** Includes poultry (primarily responsible for growth in

consumption within developed countries)
Source: FAO

 

Adapted from [Haen, 1998 #131]

In developing countries, population growth, urbanization and income growth are
identiﬁed as key factors that have contributed to the major increase in demand for food of
animal origin (Delgado et al. 1999). Delgado et al. (1999) refer to the massive increase
in demand for food from animal origin as a “Livestock Revolution.” Despite this
increase people in developing countries currently receive only 11 percent of their calories
and 26 percent of their protein from animal products as compared to developed countries
where people receive 27 and 56 percent, respectively (Fritschel and Mohan 1999). As

illustrated in Table 2.1, Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region that is not expected to see

28

an increase in per capita consumption. The constant rate of consumption is primarily
attributable to low disposable income. The growth of industrial livestock production and
increasing rates of consumption globally both reﬂect a broader trend in global agri-food
trade. As commodities have become increasingly global there have also been
institutional changes to accommodate (and some would argue accelerate) global trade.
One of the most signiﬁcant institutional changes that has occurred within the past decade
is the creation of the World Trade Organization (W .T.O.).
International Institutional Arrangements”

As of January 1995 the W.T.O. was formally established after the conclusion of
the Uruguay Round Multilateral Trade Negotiations. The W.T.O. was created as a
permanent institution administering several international trade agreements and dealing
with cases of international trade disputes (Spriggs and Isaac 2001). The creation of the
W.T.O. effectively gave “more teeth” to trade dispute settlement procedures (Victor
2000). Prior to the W.T.O., the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (G.A.T.T.) was
a multilateral agreement among countries providing a framework for the conduct of
international trade, but compliance with G.A.T.T. was essentially voluntary (Das 1998;
Spriggs and Isaac 2001).

Figure 2.1. International trade and the W.T.O.

 

The basic principle of international trade is that goods, when exported from a country,
should generally have totally free entry into the importing country.
. Customs duty (tariff) can, however, be imposed at the border.
. W.T.O. provides a framework for negotiations on the levels of trade
. It also permits countries to apply, under certain situations, some non-tariff measures
for directly restraining import
. W.T.O. provides for protection against unfair trade and disguised obstructions to
trade

 

 

 

 

22 Term used by Spriggs and Isaac (2001).

29

Under the W.T.O. there are two agreements that are most relevant to agriculture
and food products. These are the Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) and the Sanitary and
Phytosanitary (SPS) Agreements. The SPS agreement focuses explicitly on food safety
issues, while the TBT agreement is broader in scope, pertaining to any internationally
traded product. Codex Alimentarius, a joint agency of the United Nations’ WHO (World
Health Organization) and FAQ (Food and Agriculture Organization), serves as an advisor
to the W.T.O. Codex was established in 1962 with a mandate to develop international
standards, guidelines and codes of practice to protect the health of consumers and ensure
fair trade practices.” In recent years their focus has extended towards issues of food
quality, which is a natural extension from their focus on issues of food safety and
consumer protection. Codex lacks a formal mechanism to enforce its standards.
Conversely, the W.T.O. conducts dispute settlements between countries and thereby

becomes a de facto enforcer of international standards. Thus, Codex promulgates

 

standards, and the W.T.O.’s SPS and TBT Agreements promote harmonization of
standards while simultaneously discouraging the use of standards as an unwarranted
barrier to trade (Spriggs and Isaac 2001). Therefore, following the creation of the
W.T.O. and the enhanced role of Codex decisions, international agri-food standards have

become increasingly important.

Developing Countries and Critiques of International Institutional Arrangements
Critiques have been leveled against the international institutional arrangements

for global agri-food trade with respect to their impact on developing countries. The

 

23 Note that these two aims within the Codex charter can have contradictory objectives, with issues of
economics (trade) and science (safety) sometimes in conﬂict with one another.

30

critiques include: the principal agent problem, implementation, and representation. The
principal agent problem relates to the larger issue that signiﬁcant resources are required
to bring a case to the W.T.O. for dispute settlement. Generally, the beneﬁciaries of
reduced protectionist trade measures are private ﬁrms, employees, dependents, and
stockholders, but the cost of mobilizing and prosecuting a case is typically borne by
governments (Victor 2000). There are many implications of the principal agent problem,
but most salient for this study is the issue that governments of developing countries are
often overburdened, including general understafﬁng and ﬁscal shortfalls, and therefore
less likely to bring forward a case to the W.T.O. For developing countries this leads to a
dispute settlement system that is more likely to only handle ‘winner cases’, in which the
challenging country is likely to prevail, or symbolic cases, in which the country is
politically unable to avoid dispute (Victor 2000).

The second critique leveled against the current institutional arrangements involves
the issue of implementation and is deﬁned in two ways. First, many developing countries
complain that liberalization by developed countries in agriculture has not yet occurred
(Finger and Schuler 2001). This has been the experience of South Africans, especially in
their dealings with the EU. (Graumans 1997). Second, developing countries are
disproportionately burdened in the implementation of new W.T.O. obligations. Initially,
the developed world promised assistance with implementation in developing countries
but thus far it has not followed through on these promises (Finger and Schuler 2001).

The third critique of current institutional arrangements, unequal representation
during negotiations, is actually a broad critique with two auxiliary critiques. Standard

setting bodies have the potential to be dynamic arenas of negotiation among a myriad of

31

actors (e.g., representatives of industrialized and less industrialized nations, non-
governmental organizations, industry). However, Codex and the W.T.O. tend to be
dominated by US. and EU. participants, primarily from large international companies
(Lang 1999).24 Thus, the EU. and the US. tend to be the standards makers, while
developing countries are the standards takers.

Codex argues that all countries should be present at Codex meetings so standards
will not be created that harm any one country. However, most standards are constructed
and debated within committees and once ﬁnalized, the standard is brought to the entire
commission to be voted on by member countries. For many of the poorer countries,
sending a team of country experts to the Codex meetings and to committees is
prohibitively eXpensive. Therefore, there are likely to be fewer individuals representing
poorer countries' interests at the committee level. In an effort to offset the lack of
developing countries participation, FAO and WHO have started a $40 million Trust Fund
for poor countries to enhance participation in Codex (FAO 2003). Beyond poor country
representation there is the added issue that because standards are viewed by many as
merely technical details, only those directly concerned with standards (e. g., transnational
agribusiness corporations) lobby government representatives to make sure their interests
are represented. Thus, while Codex is structured so that one country equals one vote,
there is a powerful presence of observers representing transnational corporations (TNCs)
at the meetings. These corporate observers come equipped with resources (scientists,

displays, technologies) that lobby for countries’ supporting votes.25 Therefore, even if a

 

2‘ Companies are not ofﬁcial participants at the W.T.O. and Codex; rather ofﬁcials from companies engage
in lobbying practices.

As of 1996 approximately one-half of the world’s total economic activity was produced by just 500
transnational corporations (TNCs). Two-thirds of these 500 TNCs have their base in Japan and the United

32

country is able to send representatives to both the committee level and the commission
meetings, a developing country’s representatives may be signiﬁcantly less prepared and
less informed on all of the relevant issues.

Within the debate focusing on representation are two debates that relate directly to
food and agriculture. The ﬁrst debate is structured around what is considered sound
science. The second debate concerns the multifunctional purposes of agriculture and
food. The debates over sound science involve a general disagreement, especially
between the EU. and the US, over the role of the precautionary principle in sound
science. Within public policy the precautionary principle is a general decision making
rule to be used in situations of potentially serious or irreversible threats to health or the
environment. Thus, the precautionary principle is the idea that there is a need to act to
reduce potential hazards before there is strong proof of harm (European Environment
Agency 2002). As explained in a submission to the US. Advisory Committee on
International Economic Policy in 2000:

The precautionary principle states that if there are reasonable scientiﬁc

grounds for believing that a new process or product may not be safe, it

should not be introduced until we have convincing evidence that the risks

are small and are outweighed by the beneﬁts . . . . The principle does not,

as some critics claim, require industry to provide absolute proof that

something new is safe. . . . On the contrary, it is speciﬁcally intended for

circumstances in which there is no absolute certainty. It simply puts the

burden of proof where it belongs, with the innovator. (Saunders 2000)

The EU. relies extensively on the precautionary principle as a guideline for decision-

making. Generally, the US. views the EU. as misusing the precautionary principle for

 

States (Renzetti and Curran 1998, 339). Korten (1998, 42) writes, “in 1995, the combined sales of the
world's top two hundred corporations—which employed only 18.8 million people, less than one-third of 1
percent of the world's population—equaled 28 percent of total world gross domestic product. . . . The
annual sales of Wal-Mart, the twelfth largest corporation, made its internal economy larger than the internal
economies of 161 of the world's countries—including Israel, Poland, and Greece.”

33

trade protection, whereas the EU. views the US. as not effectively evaluating all the
risks associated with new science and technology, especially as it relates to agriculture
and food. Ultimately, the precautionary principle is meant to be a tool in decision
making, not to provide a ﬁnal answer on the subject. In cases where the potential threats
or harm remain debatable it is likely that there are going to be scientiﬁc experts on both
sides of the dispute (Lee and Barrett 2002). Thus, the debate over the role of the
precautionary principle in sound science is not likely to go away in the near future.

Finger and Schuler (2001, 63) claim that interest in the debates concerning the
precautionary principle and sound science is limited to rich countries, while debates
within the W.T.O. surrounding “multifunctionality” of agriculture are more important to
developing countries. While generally true, it must be recognized that the debate
regarding sound science is a debate that many countries (developing and developed) do
not have the privilege of participating in due to lack of resources for funding the
scientiﬁc research that is necessary to participate. In addition, to see the issue as separate
from the multifunctionality debate (see below) creates a false division between the two
areas.

Summarizing the multifunctionality debate, the EU. asserts that the unique
multifunctional qualities of agriculture and food in society should be taken into account
in the construction of trade rules for agriculture. Food-exporting developing countries
oppose the concept of multifunctionality, instead advocating that trade rules for
agriculture and food should be treated like all other goods. This position is held
particularly by members of the Cairns Group, which includes South Africa, and aims at

opening the EU. and the Japanese markets to developing countries (Finger and Schuler

34

2001). Alternatively, there are developing countries with a less developed agricultural
sector. Food-importing developing countries, generally agree that protection of
developed countries’ (i.e., the E.U., US. and Japan) markets must decline. However,
they argue that developing countries should be able to invoke the use of
multifunctionality when implementing quotas and subsidies that they deem necessary for
rural development or food security (i.e., food is multifunctional to developing countries
because it involves issues of economic development).

To date, the only meat-related trade dispute that the W.T.O. has ruled on is an
exemplar of the precautionary principle debate. The case involves whether the EU. can
ban imports of meat from farm animals that are administered natural or synthetic
hormones used to promote growth. The US. challenged the ban and the EU. defended
its position by arguing that the SPS Agreement explicitly allows W.T.O. members to
adopt standards that are stricter than international norms if those standards are based on
an assessment of risks (Victor 2000). Initially, the W.T.O. Dispute Panel ruled against
the EU. on three criteria. However, the W.T.O. Appellate Body overturned two of the
Dispute Panel’s rulings and in the end only endorsed the ruling that the EU. failed to
base its SPS measures on risk assessment (Ibid). Two important consequences of this
case include the overturning of the Dispute Panel’s ruling by the Appellate Body. The
ruling was overturned because the Dispute Panel interpreted the SPS Agreement as too
narrow and potentially resulting in “international standards becoming the straightjacket of
trade that many countries fear” (Victor 2000, 142). Second, despite the W.T.O.’s ruling
the EU. has yet to ofﬁcially lift its ban on meat from animals treated with growth

promoting hormones. This effectively sends the message that the most powerful actors in

35

the international trading system can remain in breach of a W.T.O. ruling (Spriggs and
Isaac 2001). In response, the US. received authorization from the W.T.O. to impose
retaliatory tariffs of 100 percent on imports from the EU. (Rosson et al. 2000).26

In summary, most countries are moving towards mandatory standards that have
been set de jure by Codex Alimentarius, and complemented by the creation of the W.T.O.
(FAO 2001). As a result, standards are moving towards global uniformity. Spriggs and
Isaac (2001) suggest that food safety standards are converging. These standards impact
and inﬂuence industries that are located in both export and domestic markets. They
write, “even countries that had no strong domestic reason to improve their food safety
had an international imperative to do so - if they wanted to gain and maintain access to
international markets” (Spriggs and Isaac 2001, v). In order to evaluate the claim made
by Spriggs and Isaac (2001) let us turn to a discussion of South Africa’s red meat

industry.

Current Issues in the South African Red Meat Industry

Presently, the majority of black South Africans are conﬁned to 13 percent of the
land.” One quarter of commercial farmers (97 percent of whom are white) produce 80
percent of food output, while approximately one million black families in the former
homelands generate 5 percent of marketed production (W inberg 1996; de Wit 1997;

Lipton 1993). A preliminary effort to reform the agricultural sector occurred in 1996,

 

2° The fact that the W.T.O. has given approval for the US. to use trade restrictions against the EU. in order
to promote free trade is slightly ironic.

27 Black South Africans make-up approximately 75 percent of the population, followed by 13.6 percent
Whites, 8.6 percent Coloureds, and 2.6 percent Indian. Of all black South Africans, 60.7 percent are
categorized as poor, while 38.2 percent of Coloureds, 5.4 percent of Indians, and 1.0 percent of all white
South Africans are poor (May et al. 2000).

36

when the government passed the Marketing of Agricultural Products Act to disband all
marketing boards (Act No. 47 of 1996). After the passage of the act the Meat Board
ofﬁcially ended its operational activities in December 1997.

As the Meat Board prepared to close, several of the Board’s members agreed to
work towards the creation of a Section 21 (non-proﬁt) body to oversee the industry. The
decision to establish a Section 21 body was a standard practice adopted by several of the
agricultural boards. Generally, economic concerns including issues related to food safety,
maintenance of regular production and distribution cycles, and a general desire to create
stability in an industry during turbulent times, contributed to the establishment of Section

21 organizations.28

Thus, for the red meat sector, the South African Meat Industry
Council (SAMIC) was established as a Section 21 company, in which its founding
members intended to take over the responsibilities of the old Meat Board. However, the
creation of SAMIC was not fully supported by all participants in the commercial industry
and SAMIC’s claim as a representative of the industry was contested by other actors in
the industry.

The levy money that was left after the closing of the Meat Board provides a good
example of the divisions that existed (and continue to exist) in the industry. When the
Meat Board closed, a point of debate occurred over who controlled the money left in
bank accounts from levies raised at the point of slaughter. SAMIC, seeing its’ role as the
industry representative, saw this as money that they should use to allow them to properly

promote the interest of the industry. The producers saw this money as their money, since

it was they who paid the levy at the point of slaughter. The consumer groups argued that

 

2' A more critical interpretation of establishing a Section 21 organization was to ensure that dominant
commercial producers, processors, and distributors (who were white South Africans) maintained their
positions of power. Interestingly, this strategy failed for the dominant actors within the red meat industry.

37

the producers simply passed on the cost of the levy to the consumers and therefore, this
money rightfully belonged to the consumers. The abattoir owners argued that the money
was needed to continue to prOperly institute good hygiene and food safety controls within
the abattoirs. In the end, the money was placed into 6 different trusts, with each trust
focused on a different aspect of the meat industry (e. g., abattoirs, research and
development, etc.). In addition, it should be noted that the closing of the Meat Board did
effectively redistribute the power that a few groups had over the industry, which was the
govemment’s intention. However, the redistribution was for the most part limited to only
those people who were already participating in the industry, with very few new entrants.
Today, SAMIC’s board is made up of thirteen industry groups, including, but not limited
to, four producer groups (extensive and intensive beef; pork; and emergent farmers — i.e.,
black South African producers), the abattoir association, a consumers group, the industry
meat processing body, and an export/import group.29

In 2000, South Africa ranked approximately 14th in the world for beef and veal
production, producing approximately 583,000 metric tons (mt) of beef and veal compared
to 12,146,000 mt in the US. and 8,499,000 mt in Brazil, which rank ﬁrst and second
respectively. Comparing South Aﬁica to New Zealand, which produces approximately
592,000 mt of beef and veal and is ranked 13th in the world for beef and veal production,
reveals the differences in current export levels. New Zealand produces beef and veal at
rates similar to South Africa, but with a drastically different population size (42.8 million
South Africans versus 3.8 million New Zealanders). While South Africa imported
32,000 metric tons (mt) and only exported 7,000 mt of beef and veal, New Zealand

imported 2,000 mt and exported 460, 000 mt of beef and veal (Sterling Marketing 2002).

 

29 The thirteenth industry group was added to SAMIC ‘5 board after the conclusion of this research.

38

Export marketing for livestock products could prove to be a growth promoter for
the red meat industry and for rural areas of South Africa (mentioned as a general strategy
for developing countries by Haan 1998). However, to compete internationally puts
increased demand on maintaining animal health and food safety standards. According to
the latest projections, by 2020 63 percent of meat will be produced in developing
countries, whereas developing countries produced 56 percent of meat in 2002 (Haan et al.
2001). Higher-income developing countries, like South Africa, with a fairly developed
agricultural sector are likely candidates as future leaders in developing countries’
livestock production. The following quote addresses the opportunities and challenges
facing countries such as South Africa:

Approximately 150 million tons or about 1/3 of internationally traded

agricultural commodities, are livestock products or livestock feed. The

increase in demand combined with declining levels of protection and

export subsidies (dumping) under the World Trade Agreement, may open

new opportunities for developing countries, but it also puts increasing

demands on their animal health and food safety standards . . .. It is being

increasingly realized that domestic demand is not sufﬁcient as an engine

of growth for rural areas, and that exports are essential for robust rural

income growth. Opening export markets for livestock products could be

such a growth engine for the rural poor. (Haan et al. 2001, 5, emphasis

added)

Several indicators exist that reveal that actors in the South African red meat
industry are aware of the increasing emphasis on animal health and food safety standards.
For example, the CEO of SAMIC noted in the 2000 Annual Report that the single biggest
issue in the industry was food safety (SAMIC 2000). Speciﬁcally, two changes within
the red meat industry reveal the new emphasis being placed on animal health and food

safety standards. First, the South African Meat Safety Act in 2000 was passed by the

government. The purpose of the act is “[t]o provide for measures to promote meat safety

39

and the safety of animal products; to establish and maintain essential national standards
in respect of abattoirs; to regulate the importation and exportation of meat; to establish
meat safety schemes; and to provide for matters connected therewith” (Meat Safety Act
2000, 2).30 Second, there was a new company established in 2001 by SAMIC and two
other industry groups, known as the International Meat Quality Assurance Services
(IMQAS). IMQAS’ mission statement is: “Through the integrity, innovation and
technical capabilities of our staff, render professional, independent and internationally
recognized quality assurance services to the meat industry of Southern Africa” (IMQAS
2002).31

In the context of discussing international trade and the increasing importance of
standards, it is important to note that South Africa does not yet require by law a
hygiene/risk management system. Today, most major meat trading countries legally
require the use of a HACCP based system in meat plants, including the US, Australia,
New Zealand, and Canada. Presently, the EU. Commission is developing proposals for
HACCP. HACCP stands for Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points and is
generally considered a food safety management system in which meat plants identify
“critical control points” where contamination is most likely to occur. The plant then
establishes performance standards and monitoring procedures for each of these points.
HACCP is viewed as an improvement to the “poke and sniff” system used by inspectors

in meat plants and food retail (Juska et al. 2003).

 

3° The new Meat Safety Act does not, however, stipulate the use of any particular hygiene system or
method.

3' IMQAS had hoped to obtain assigneeship from the National Department of Agriculture (NDA) to
perform independent meat inspection services at abattoirs as stipulated in the new Meat Safety Act, but the
Meat Safety Act (2000) has not yet been implemented and the NDA has not made a decision on whether
IMQAS will be granted assigneeship (IMQAS 2003).

40

For trading purposes any importing country that uses HACCP domestically
cannot require South Africa or any other country to use HACCP, but they can require that
South African have a system in place that is deemed equivalent.32 However, in order to
implement HACCP, the system requires extensive record keeping, the kind not usually
found among smaller companies, and a signiﬁcant amount of investment in employee
education and training. The South African government and a few in the industry that are
export oriented recognize the need for HACCP for international trade purposes, but
currently there are many other competing issues, including the desire to maintain small
operators (who are least likely to be prepared for HACCP implementation). Therefore,
HACCP (or an equivalent) is not likely to be a part of government legislation in the near
future.

The South African government did introduce HAS (Hygiene Assessment System),
which is based on a system used in the UK and has been further amended for South
Africa. HAS is a risk based method of assessing hygiene standards arising from
slaughtered livestock, the people working in the plant, the premises themselves, and any
other relevant sources (MAFF 2000). Generally, abattoirs are scored using the HAS
system and substandard scores lead to penalties. It is hoped that the system can also be
used as a means to gauge improvement. HAS is not considered equivalent to HACCP,
but simply as a preliminary step towards improving food safety and hygiene in the
industry.

Another indicator of the increasing emphasis on animal health and food safety

standards is several industry bodies and businesses that are pursuing labeling and

 

32 When speaking of HACCP most publications refer to it as the “most effective” or the “best” method for
preventing food safety problems. Using such strong superlatives makes it unclear how a country might go
about proving that they have an “equivalent” system in place.

41

branding of their meat products. With branding there is an increased emphasis on
traceability and control over the product from start (a speciﬁc animal from a speciﬁc
farm) to completion (the piece of meat on the consumer’s plate). Moreover, traceability
is most easily achieved by reorganization of the structure of production, which is why
several companies are shifting to vertical integration and centralization. These changes
support Reardon et al.’s (2001) point that one strategic response pursued by agribusiness
ﬁrms and farms in developing countries as standards increase in importance is the shift to
the creation of private standards and private certiﬁcation, labeling, and branding systems
by large ﬁrms’ and multinationals. Two other strategic responses are: (1) for medium to
large domestic ﬁrms to lobby governments to adopt public standards similar to those in
export markets in deve10ped regions; and (2) for small ﬁrms and farms to ally with public
and non-proﬁt sectors to form standards and certiﬁcation systems to access export
markets and to bring institutional change to informal markets (Reardon et al. 2001). Both
of these responses are evident within the South African red meat industry, although the
latter strategy for small ﬁrms and farms is still in its infancy.

Having noted the positive change occurring for standards development in South
Africa’s red meat industry, it is important now to highlight a few problematic issues that
continue to hinder the development of standards in the South African red meat industry as
a whole. Over the last several decades, as developing countries experienced structural
adjustments, there has been a decline in the number of civil servants and a decline in
budgets for livestock services (Haan et al. 2001). For example, one study found a
decrease of eleven percent in veterinary services staff in Sub-Saharan African countries

over the last ten years (Gauthier et al. 1999, cited in Haan et al. 2001). South Africa is no

42

exception. As of 1999, sixty percent of all state veterinary positions were vacant (N AMC
2000). Such a severe reduction in state services is bound to hinder the delivery of a
minimum level of public standards for the industry. In addition, as of September 2000,
there was an initial outbreak of foot and mouth disease (FMD) at a pig farm in the
northeastern part of the country with subsequent outbreaks in other parts of the country.33
Due to the FMD outbreaks in the FMD free zones South Africa temporarily lost this
designation, but regained O.I.E. (Ofﬁce International des Epizooties) “FMD free zone”
recognition in 2002. While a decline in public services may not have a direct impact on
the ability to control outbreaks, certainly less oversight within the country compromises
South Africa’s ability to maintain animal health. In addition, South Africa shares borders
with ﬁve countries that have even fewer civil servants for animal disease control.

Another concern is the issue of EU. subsidization of farm products. Recall, that
one complaint from developing countries is the failure of developed countries to fully
liberalize trade. The EU. sets levels of subsidies paid to exporters based on groupings
(determined by the EU.) of importing countries. Prior to 1997 the EU. categorized
South Africa in a zone 8, and as of January 1998, this shifted to a zone 9, which means
the EU. views South Africa as having no established beef industry. Therefore, the level
of restitution payments offered to those exporting beef to South Africa increased after

January 1998 (Roberts 1997; Commission Regulation No 2697/98). Currently, the EU.

 

33 The Uruguay Round Agreements allow countries to establish regions that are insect and disease free,
even if the entire country may not be entirely free of the insect or disease (Rosson et al. 2000). South
Africa has erected a fence that separates the section of South Africa where FMD is endemic from the rest of
the country. The region behind the fence is referred to as the “red zone”, which includes the FMD infected
section and buffer zones for protection. The fence has sections with ladders so people can climb over the
fence, but animals cannot get through. The open sections of the fence where roads run are, at least in
theory, manned at all times to ensure animals do not pass from the red zone to the FMD free zone (unless
the animals have been veriﬁed as FMD free). In 1995, the OIE (The Ofﬁce of International Epizooties)
recognized South Africa as having a FMD free zone.

43

and the US. continue to subsidize their farmers (Becker 2002a). Several export oriented
farmers and industry actors in South Africa believe South Africa can compete
internationally in the quality of its red meat products, but they argue that they cannot
compete against government subsidies and meat arriving in South African markets at
unfairly low prices (personal communication, 1999).

Finally, the structure of the red meat industry is an overarching concern for the
development of standards. The divisions within the South African red meat industry can
best be described as three networks within the red meat commodity chain, an export
network, a domestic network in the commercial sector, and a domestic network in the
informal sector. Some actors participate in all three networks, although the ﬁrst two
networks are largely separate from the third network. Due to the legacy of apartheid,

resources have been distributed unevenly between these networks.

Three Networks

The ﬁrst of the three networks in the red meat commodity chains is the export
network. This network remains small, but is increasing in South Africa. The producers
within this network are generally a few large beef feedlot producers and ironically goat
owners in the informal sector. The beef is primarily shipped to the E.U., while the goats

primarily go to the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia.” Producers of beef tend to be

 

3" The details of each of these exports are quite complex. Brieﬂy, for beef, South Africa has reached an
agreement with the EU. that allows it to ﬁll any of the unmet quotas that Botswana and Namibia do not
ﬁll. The EU. categorizes Botswana and Namibia as developing countries and therefore grants them special
status which allows them to export a set amount of beef per year to the EU. The EU. does not give the
same recognition to South Africa, and therefore, the EU. has not granted South Africa any special export
agreements. The goats that are sent to the Middle East are shipped live and must be free of puncture
wounds to the skin, which makes the informal sector goats more suitable than goats in the formal sector
that are usually identiﬁed with ear tags. This export market was still under development at the time that
this research took place.

large and vertically coordinated, with traceability of the product (from farm to plate) in
place. In order to export to the E.U., meat must be slaughtered through E.U. certiﬁed
export facilities. In addition, all meat must originate from the FMD free zone of South
Africa. (This is why losing FMD free status from 2000 until 2002 was so harmful for
exporters.) Individual exporters are moving towards HACCP implementation; however
they are in the minority within the industry.

Within the domestic commercial network there appear to be three subcategories,
especially when observing divisions among consumers. The highest subcategory tends to
provide beef that is export quality (and the price of the meat reﬂects this) to South
African consumers. This means that traceability of the product is in place and the
network is in the early stages of HACCP implementation. The highest category is
generally only available at what are considered the elite supermarket chains in South
Africa. The medium to lowest networks may have adopted the South African HAS
method, but many have not. Generally, there is little difference between producers whose
product goes towards the medium and lowest subcategories. The differentiation occurs
based on the classiﬁcation of the animal (A versus C grade),35 the abattoir used (hygiene
and technology available in the abattoir), and the type of handling of the meat post-
mortem (including handling by butchers). As a side note, there is a tremendous shift
underway from consumers purchasing meat in butcher shops to consumers purchasing
meat in grocery stores. This follows a larger trend of an increasing number of

supermarkets in Eastern and Southern Africa (Weatherspoon and Reardon 2003).

 

35 Classiﬁcation is optional. Therefore, some retailers sell unclassiﬁed meat. Chapter three will elaborate
on this topic in more detail.

45

The ﬁnal network is the informal domestic network. Actors involved in this
network are best conceptualized as participating in a series of small networks, rather than
one centralized network. The animals slaughtered in these networks are generally raised
on the veldt (ﬁelds or grassland) in rural areas and are not always raised with the intent to
slaughter, but rather may serve multiple purposes, including representing the wealth of a
black South African male and his family. When slaughter does occur it often occurs
under a designated (by the community) slaughtering tree. For those rural people who are
in the business of slaughtering they generally slaughter based on demand within the local
community, which usually consists of slaughtering one cow per week, or two in the busy
season. Once the animal is slaughtered, the carcass is hung, usually by the roadside, and
a ﬁre is made. The ﬁre allows people to purchase a piece of meat that is then cooked
over the ﬁre and consumed on site. Some of the meat is purchased to carry back home,
but an overwhelming amount is consumed at the point of purchase. Bush slaughtering, as
it is often referred to, was outlawed during the apartheid era. Generally, because there
was a lack of butchers servicing the rural areas of South Africa, bush slaughtering has
always existed}6 In the current situation some provinces still criminalize bush
slaughtering, while other provinces have chosen to allow and accept bush slaughtering,
with the intention of eventually “upgrading” and incorporating these butchering
operations in rural areas into establishments recognized within government regulations.37

Actors that move between informal domestic network(s) and the other two

networks include: abattoir trainers, the actual hides of the cows slaughtered, and

 

3” This was true for white and black rural area inhabitants in South Africa, although most people in South
Africa are referring to black South Africans when they speak of bush slaughtering.

37 According to new government regulations, all abattoirs must have a cold storage room, which most
rustic, bush slaughtering abattoirs do not.

46

consumers. The abattoir trainers (one of the six trusts established after the closing of the
Meat Board) are a group whose long-range goal is to upgrade and eventually incorporate
bush slaughtering into more formal markets. The abattoir group has tried to minimally
organize the slaughterers into an association in a few provincial regions that tolerate bush
slaughtering. The trainers then arrange to visit members of the association on days when
the members are slaughtering a cow to show members techniques for slaughtering in a
more hygienic manner than they currently use (including hanging the animal from a tree
instead of laying the animal on the ground). They also offer abattoir knives for sale at
discount prices (although still considered a hefty fee to pay by poor rural inhabitants).
The hides of the cows slaughtered in one South African region (KwaZulu-Natal)
have actually begun to make it into the formal, commercial market. 38 In the past, bush
slaughters would bury the hide and any items viewed as non-edible (stomach content,
etc.). However, several hide and skin collectors drive trucks around the vast region
training bush slaughterers how to preserve the hides and providing them with the supplies
to do so (a tarp and a large container of salt) in exchange for money on pick-up days.
These hides are then delivered to hides and skins processors (who pay the collectors a
signiﬁcantly higher sum for the hides) and the hides are processed and sent to other
countries that use the hides to make shoes and purses. Finally, some consumers move
between this network and the commercial domestic network. The consumers most likely
to move between these two networks are persons who regularly travel between rural and

urban areas or persons in rural areas who utilize both resources for obtaining meat.

 

38 During my ﬁrst research trip in 1998 this was not occurring; however, by my return in 2000 this had
become a thriving business, with a signiﬁcant number of competitors.

47

There are tremendous tensions between the three networks. Black South Africans
who want to become commercial producers feel that there is a lack of opportunities (e.g.,
lack of land and capital for start-up costs). For actors already involved in the ﬁrst and
second networks there are tensions over topics of hygiene and food safety standards.
Several participants in the industry worry that less scrupulous actors (often actors that
operate in a separate network) could harm the entire industry. The harm that they could
cause occurs in two forms. The ﬁrst form of harm involves animal diseases, such as
FMD, in which an actor actually causes an outbreak within the industry. This occurred in
2000 while this research was being conducted. A pig farmer obtained illegal swill from a
ship that docked in Durban’s harbor and fed it to his pigs. The swill was contaminated
and this caused an FMD outbreak in the region, which eventually led to South Africa
temporarily losing its FMD free status. The second type of harm is more indirect -- that
is the worry that substandard actors will harm the reputation of the industry. For
example, when news of the FMD outbreak was made public, sales of beef in that region
of South Africa declined for the next three months.” In addition, many in the industry
who are investing money to maintain hygiene and safety resent that they have

competitors who are not being held to the same standard.

 

39 Although FMD is considered the most contagious animal disease, FMD rarely infects humans. How
humans become infected is not fully understood, but generally all reported cases have been caused through
direct or indirect (consumption of animal products) contact with FMD infected animals. Generally, FMD
in humans is very mild and goes away within a week (WHO 2001). In addition, it appears that the general
public of South Africa did not understand what FMD was, and therefore, stopped purchasing meat for fear
that meat products were not safe.

48

Private and Public Standards Setting

As the South African government and industry engage with the development and
implementation of standards there are organizational debates over who is best positioned
to set standards, the public or the private sector. Although writing about safety standards
in the US, Cheit’s (1990) discussion can be used to understand the current debates
within South Africa. Cheit ( 1990) argues that there is skepticism towards standards that
are set by the private sector due to the belief that there are too many political pressures
within an industry that will control the development of standards. In addition, standards
in the private sector are considered too voluntary with some industry participants not
adhering to the standard or watering it down. Critics of public sector involvement in
standards development focus on the slow development of standards and the inﬂexibility
and economically unreasonable steps for implementation following government passage
(Ibid). Of course, the development of standards does not have to be an either/or
proposition. Indeed, public and private standards setting can operate to complement one
another.

Cheit (1990) identiﬁes four basic organizational forms that account for most
private standards setting. These include trade associations, professional societies, general
membership organizations, and third-party certiﬁers. Of these four basic organizational
forms of private standards setting, South Africa’s red meat industry is dominated by trade
associations and, like most industrial agricultural producing countries is increasingly
exposed to third party certiﬁers. According to Cheit (1990, 23), trade associations are
among “the best known and the least trusted forms of private standards-setting.” Trade

associations often have a homogenous group of members and are created to advance the

49

interests of their membership. Therefore, such groups are often viewed as working to
create standards that beneﬁt their membership, which may include creating anti-
competitive standards or standards that are generally not in the public interest.

Relatively new to South Africa are third-party certiﬁers.40 Generally, third-party
certiﬁers certify that products and companies are complying with standards. Most of the
time third-party certiﬁers rely on standards established by others, but sometimes third-
party certiﬁers also set standards. IMQAS (International Meat Quality Assurance
Services) was created in 2001 with the intent of being a third party certiﬁer. However,
several of the key creators of IMQAS are also key participants in the main trade
associations in South Africa. Thus, signiﬁcant skepticism among various industry
participants and government personnel exists regarding the intentions of IMQAS and
whether IMQAS really is an impartial third-party certiﬁer.

Finally, it is important to emphasize that with the South African elections in 1994,
not only was a new democratic government elected, but South Africans also opened their
doors to international trade like they had not experienced in the previous 40 years. South
Africa, like other governments in transition, has implemented neo-liberal economic
policies that open the country to foreign trade and investment (Wiley et al. 2002).
Several globalization theorists argue that the global economy has reduced the power of
the state (Held 1995; Waters 1995). However, “the state continues to have essential —
and contradictory - functions: (a) to provide infrastructure and a stable regulatory

environment for private corporations; and (b) to maintain some level of social welfare

 

’0 The exception being inspections conducted by 808, an international third party certiﬁer, and the
Perishable Products Export Control Board (PPECB), formerly a government controlled marketing board.

50

and natural environment that will support human habitation and economic production”
(Gould et al. 1996 cited in Wiley et al. 2002: 180).

Opening South African markets to global trade along with the simultaneous
increase in the importance of standards can best be described as not only changing the
“rules of the game” for participants in the red meat industry, but also changing the
referee. What this means is that with the end of apartheid, the government set out to
change the structure of the industry, (i.e., closing marketing boards) as part of the larger
goals of integrating the dual agricultural system and promoting the nation’s economic
growth. However, as neo-liberal economic policies were introduced, the government no
longer served as the primary actor with which the red meat industry had to engage and
respond. Instead, those involved in the commercial red meat industry had the opportunity
and challenge of engaging with a multitude of actors, including actors in red meat
networks in other countries.

In closing, actors within South Africa’s red meat industry have experienced
signiﬁcant changes in a relatively short period of time. Industry actors must respond to
structural changes within the industry, while also directly and indirectly engaging with
international structural changes. Chapter Four will further elaborate on the ways in
which standards emanating from other countries contribute to the construction of South
Africa’s red meat industry. Before turning to a discussion of the impact of international
standards, Chapter Three overviews the methodology used for data collection and

elaborates on issues encountered during ﬁeld research.

51

CHAPTER 3

Methodology

Chapter three focuses on the issue of research design documenting both
conceptualization and implementation of this design. The chapter begins with a
discussion of the selection of South Africa as the country of study. This discussion is
followed by a review of Actor Network Theory (ANT) and Commodity Systems Analysis
(CSA), the methodological frameworks utilized in this research project. Included is an
overview of issues confronted in the ﬁeld while conducting the research (e.g., the
inﬂuence of gender while conducting research). Finally, an extensive focus is placed on
issues of data collection and analysis, including question construction, sampling, coding

schemes, and general qualitative research issues.

The Research Experience

With the post-apartheid transformation underway in South Africa, I had the
opportunity in 1998 to go to South Africa to conduct an exploratory investigation into the
changing agri-food commodity chains. With a speciﬁc interest in (a) the W.T.O. and its
effect on developing countries and (b) standards and their effects on agriculture, South
Africa was chosen as an ideal country of study. This was due to the fact that South
Africa has a fairly developed agricultural sector (unlike some of the more marginalized
developing countries) and rapid changes were taking place in society and in the agri-food
sector. This included the advancement of neo-liberal economic policies. Standards are
often proposed (innocently and not so innocently) as merely technical details, and it can

be very difﬁcult to recognize the social and political aspects of standards (Bowker and

52

Star 1999). Two means by which to assess the social and political consequences of
standards and standardization include (1) speaking with people who are partially
excluded from the communities that utilize standards and standardization and (2)
observing moments when standards change, because it is easier to see the invisible work
and the invisible memberships that have anchored them in place (Star 1991). South
Africa offered both forms of access, excluded communities and changing standards.
Initially, I set out to study the fruit industry (citrus and deciduous) because South
Africa serves European markets during Europe’s winter months. Pursuing the fruit
industry meant I was effectively investigating how international actors (including
standards) were shaping one of South Africa’s export markets. However, upon arriving
in South Africa two events changed my long-term research focus. First, I discovered that
many actors within the fruit industry were not very eager to speak with a researcher.
Actually, almost everyone I contacted spoke with me, but most seemed very
apprehensive in answering many of my questions. From what I can deduce there were
two reasons for this cool reception. The ﬁrst is the structure of the industry itself.
During apartheid one company dominated the fruit industry in a monopolistic manner. In
the post apartheid era, this one company, while no longer possessing a monopoly over the
industry, is still ﬁnancially dominant. As a result, a signiﬁcant amount of tension
surrounded the industry regarding who would be the “winners and losers” in the new free
trade atmosphere. A signiﬁcant number of actors were very concerned with their
competitors and very few of them were eager to speak with an outsider who they had no
reason to trust. In contrast, the meat industry was more of an oligopoly during apartheid,

and although there were similar tensions related to the changing industry, it seems that

53

many of the major actors during apartheid had already lost their power (ﬁnancially and
politically) by the time I arrived in 1998. The second reason for the cool reception by
actors within the fruit commodity chain, especially farmers, may have had to do with the
fact that the fruit industry in South Africa has been scrutinized by researchers for poor
labor practices. Most fruits must be handpicked and therefore, a massive amount of labor
is required. During apartheid laborers were very poorly treated, with minimal labor
standards in place and enforced. Thus, my being yet another researcher, and a social
scientist, did not facilitate my acceptance by industry actors.

The second signiﬁcant event that changed my long-term research focus came
about as a result of meeting several people who worked for SAMIC and the Red Meat
Abattoir Association. In general, everyone I spoke with in the red meat industry seemed
very eager for me to pursue research focusing on the red meat industry. In addition,
within SAMIC there was a position dedicated to “Food Standards and Exports” which
indicated to me that despite red meat being a primarily domestic product, the industry
itself was concerned with standards and developing export markets. After uncovering
many interesting facets within the red meat industry, I realized an even more interesting
research question would be to ask, “How do international standards impact a primarily
domestic market?” This is a question that very few scholars in agri-food studies have
asked.

Qualitative research was chosen as the best method for attempting to access the
issues of interest when returning to the ﬁeld in 2000 on an National Science Foundation
(NSF) grant. The strength of qualitative research is that it accounts for the complexity of

group behavior, reveals interrelationships among multifaceted dimensions of group

54

interactions, provides a context for behaviors, and helps determine questions and types of
follow-up research (Palmquist 2003). Earlier critics of qualitative research argued that
there is a lack of generalizablity inherent in qualitative research, especially case studies.
This remains true if generalizability is understood strictly in the experimental scientiﬁc
tradition with an emphasis on replicability of results (Schoﬁeld 2002). In recent years,
however, qualitative scholars have reconceptualized generalizability in several ways, but
all generally argue that qualitative research can be used to “speak to or help form
judgment about other situations” (Ibid, 179). Adopting two terms ﬁrst proposed by
qualitative researchers in the ﬁeld of education, it is argued that this study provides
comparability and translatability (Schoﬁeld 2002 citing Goetz and LeCompte 1984).
Comparability refers to “the degree to which components of a study - including the units
of analysis, concepts generated, population characteristics, and settings - are sufﬁciently
well described and deﬁned that other researchers can use the results of the study as a
basis for comparison” (Ibid, 228). Translatability refers to a clear description of one’s
theoretical stance and research techniques. Due to the methodology used in this study
(discussed below) and the topic of concern (i.e., standards in agriculture) this study can
and should be used as a point of comparison with future studies. Speciﬁcally, future
studies which focus on developing countries and issues of international trade will provide
an interesting point of comparison.

With the intention to study the socio-economic, political and historical aspects of
standards, four complementary approaches were used to conduct this research. The
methods included: (1) semi-structured interviews, (2) participant observation, (3) a

review and analysis of technical documents related to the historical development of red

55

meat standards, and (4) a review of ofﬁcial statistics on the red meat industry in South
Africa. Before elaborating on each method, the methodology used in this study and

ﬁeldwork issues are discussed.

Methodology

This study focuses on the red meat commodity chain in South Africa.
Commodity chains are ﬁrmly rooted in the political economy literature (Gerefﬁ and
Korzeniewicz 1994; Wallerstein 1986) and beginning in the 1980s became prevalent as a
methodology for studying agriculture and food systems (Friedland 1984; Busch 1990).
Similar to the discussion of the convergence of political economic theory and actor
network theory (ANT) in chapter 1, there are also points of methodological convergence
between political economic commodity systems analysis (CSA) and ANT. Ultimately,
both are empirically driven methodological approaches and it is argued that CSA and
ANT are effective as a methodology when combined together. Below is a summary of
each approach, followed by a discussion of the strengths of combining the two.

CSA was ﬁrst proposed by Friedland (1984) as a way to study the social
organization of agricultural commodity production. He proposed ﬁve basic foci for CSA:
production practices, grower organizations, labor, scientiﬁc production and applications,
and marketing and distribution. Several other categories, in particular consumers, have
since been proposed as additional areas of focus. Generally, these ﬁve categories
continue to form the basic premise of CSA research. When studying a commodity chain
Friedland argued for a “broader methodological posture” and emphasized that there is no

single methodological procedure. Instead, utilizing historical, institutional, quantitative,

56

and qualitative analyses it can be assumed researchers operating within this framework
can delineate a discrete commodity system. Furthermore, research can specify the topics
that must be studied and the appropriate data that must be collected if the commodity
system is to be understood (Friedland 1984). In addition, no commodity system stands
alone, and therefore, it should be recognized when and where systems intersect, and the
ways each system is signiﬁcantly affected by the others (Busch 1990; Friedland 1984).

While CSA has always claimed to be a method, ANT was initially proposed as a
theory and a method for laboratory studies (Callon 1986; Latour 1987). In more recent
discussions, Latour (1999) has argued that the expansive use of ANT does not hold true
to the theoretical ideas of ANT as conceptualized by Callon (1986) and Latour (1987)
and therefore he calls for an abandonment of claims that ANT is a theory and instead
proposes that one simply view it as a method.41 As a method ANT simply asks that a
researcher follow the actor. Thus, if the red meat industry is the focus of the research,
then the researcher would follow all the actors (human and non-human) involved in red
meat production. However, ANT ’s basic premise, to follow the actors, still leaves many
unanswered questions for the researcher. For example, questions are raised over how the
researcher determines the starting point for her/his investigations and which actors should
be followed.

CSA and ANT share many similarities and combined together each complements
the weaknesses of the other approach. First, both approaches follow the actors in a
commodity network. Precisely because both methods follow the changes that a

commodity undergoes as it moves through a subsector, a more nuanced understanding of

 

41 Law (1999) and others still view ANT as a useful theory and ANT is used as both a theory and a method
in this work.

57

global change can be had (Busch and Juska 1997). In addition, by focusing on
commodity chains what is explained and can be explained is more limited than attempts
made by grand theories (Ibid). However, within CSA and ANT there are differences in
how humans and nonhumans are treated as actors in the commodity chain. ANT
proposes that the two be treated symmetrically as actors/actants in a network (Callon
1986; Latour 1987). Friedland (2002) argues that when CSA is properly conducted
nonhuman actors are incorporated. However, Tanaka (2002) argues that the signiﬁcant
role played by nonhumans in commodity studies is taken for granted with CSA, and
therefore, may not be articulated in the same manner that is allowed for in actor-network
studies.

Second, despite the fact that both approaches evaluate the practices of actors in
the chain, ANT enhances the recognition of changeability and ﬂuidity in the network by
extending this to a conceptualization of power within a commodity chain. Both
approaches recognize that there are power relations among actors in the network.
However, CSA assumes power is built into the structure of the market and therefore
rarely demonstrates how power becomes distributed among actors or how power is
transformed in a commodity system (Tanaka 2002). ANT, on the other hand, emphasizes
that power is gained through the ability to enroll more human and nonhuman actors in a
network in order to modify a thing or inﬂuence a decision, thereby enhancing the position
of the network and each actor’s position in the network (Tanaka 2002; Tanaka and Busch
2003). This opens up many more opportunities for the researcher to observe relations of

power in a commodity chain.

58

Finally, a shortcoming of CSA is that the network of social relations surrounding
a commodity only exists in the market (Tanaka 2002). Thus CSA rarely looks at the
process by which a given commodity market emerges. In addition, because there is a
lack of focus on the emergent features of a commodity chain, there is a tendency to only
describe, but not explain how commodity chains are transformed over time and why
some actors come to dominate, while other remain marginal. Because ANT emphasizes
the perforrnative character of all relations, changes within the commodity network are
more fully captured and explained (Ibid). Recognizing the strengths of CSA and ANT,

this study used a methodological combination of the two approaches.

Entry into the Field and Fieldwork Issues

Fieldwork was conducted from October 2000 until July 2001. The ﬁrst phase of
research was primarily spent in the cities of Pretoria and Johannesburg and the
surrounding commercial farm areas and processing plants. Day-to-day operations were
conducted at the South African Meat Industry Council (SAMIC) ofﬁces in Pretoria. In
1998, the then CEO of SAMIC invited me to return to South Aﬁica and informed me that
if available they would provide ofﬁce space. When I contacted SAMIC in 2000 they
made good on their offer to give me ofﬁce space, although this required that one of
SAMIC’s veterinary staff let me use her ofﬁce. By locating myself within SAMIC I was
able to obtain a much closer account of the industry and the politics of the industry than
would have been possible if I had situated myself within an academic environment. In
addition, my association with SAMIC facilitated my gaining access to several major

participants in the red meat industry and several meetings and conferences that most

59

likely would not have occurred otherwise. The connection with SAMIC in general
assisted my research in very important ways, especially in studying the commercial
industry. However, the link with SAMIC limited my research in terms of accessing the
views of people who either do not agree with the role that SAMIC plays in the industry or
are not a part of the same networks. This includes some people within the commercial
sector, government personnel, and the emergent sector. Simply put, SAMIC is located
within a series of networks, most of which are detached from the informal and emergent
networks. In an effort to reduce the distance between the networks in which I was
located (by my association with SAMIC) and the informal network, I opted to afﬁliate
with the School of Development Studies (SODS) at the University of Natal-Durban
during my second phase of research."2

The second phase of research was primarily spent in the city and surrounding
areas of Durban and in the northern rural areas of Kwa-Zulu Natal. During the second
phase, both commercial (primarily white South Africans) and emergent (primarily black
South Africans) farmers were interviewed. Afﬁliation with the University of Natal-
Durban, gave me the opportunity to utilize library resources and engage with other
academics studying similar topics. Upon hearing of my topic, most familiar with the
University of Natal suggested I contact the Pietermaritzburg campus that houses the
agricultural sciences. Historically, much of the agricultural sciences have been linked to
the South African commercial sectors. While I did speak with a few professors and
utilize the library at the Pietermaritzburg campus, afﬁliating with SODs allowed me the

Opportunity to identify contacts involved in the informal red meat networks.

 

’2 I actually attempted to afﬁliate with a historically disadvantaged university (HUD), but persons within
this system suggested that due to ﬁnancial crisis I would ﬁnd more resources and assistance at UND.

60

Race, Gender, and Citizenship

When conducting ﬁeld research it is important to recognize that the researcher is
always situated in the action of her research (Anderson 1993 citing Rapp 1983). Thus, it
is necessary to be aware of how one’s own presence inﬂuences and shapes the research.
Entering the ﬁeld of South Africa, I was aware that my racial status would create
limitations to my study. As Warren (1988, 19) notes, “respondents assign the ﬁeldworker
to what they see as his or her proper place in the social order.” In the context of South
Africa my white skin was signiﬁcant in a variety of ways (that I will never fully know) to
the people I interacted with in the ﬁeld. Among whites the times I was made most aware
of my skin color were negative moments when prejudiced whites assumed I was “white
like them,” meaning they felt comfortable sharing their views about other racial and
ethnic groups. Among blacks, I was made aware of my skin color when I sensed a
certain amount of distrust and hostility (Baca Zinn 1979). However, there were times
when other factors, including my US. citizenship, my gender, and my education, seemed
to trump people’s ideas about my whiteness. On several occasions when I was in rural
areas of KwaZulu-Natal the distrust seemed to disappear into curiosity and an eagerness
to engage with me when people discovered I was a student from the United States and I
spoke a limited amount of Zulu."3 Well aware of the challenges posed by my racial
classiﬁcation in South African society I entered the ﬁeld using the recommendations
made by Anderson (1993) in her article “Studying Across Difference.” Building from

Collins’s (1986) work which suggests that all intellectuals can learn to read their personal

 

’3 All of these factors introduce forms of inequitable power relations between the respondents and myself.
The issue of inequality between the researcher and participants is discussed in greater detail later in this
chapter.

61

and cultural biographies as signiﬁcant sources of knowledge, Anderson (1993, 42) writes,
“Majority group scholars can develop and utilize tensions in their own cultural identities
to enable them to see different aspects of minority group experiences and to examine
critically majority experiences and beliefs.”

My gender contributed in a positive and a negative manner to my research. In a
positive manner, I was generally viewed as harmless and on occasion my presence
seemed to be amusing to some in the industry who could not comprehend why a white
woman from America (as the people in the ﬁeld referred to the US.) would have any
interest in the topic of red meat. Other female researchers have also had the experience
of being perceived as harmless (Gurney 1985; Warren 1988). This perceived
harrnlessness occasionally gave me access to venues, people, and documents I feel certain
would not have occurred otherwise. On one occasion an invited speaker of prominence
in the commercial industry arrived slightly late to a meeting of emergent farmers that I
was attending. The meeting was being held at a retreat a few hours from any major city.
Prior to his arrival I was the only white person attending the meeting, and one of only
about 5 females out of 40 attendees. The speaker was so surprised by my presence at the
meeting he made note of it in his opening remarks and he continued repeating his surprise
to me each time I saw him for the duration of my research. Without reading too much
into this I sensed that underlying his comment was some concern as to just how much I
was learning about the industry.

A disadvantage of my gender is the amount of informal socializing for which I
was not present. There were plenty of occasions when I was not invited to have a beer

with the rest of the men. Based on gossip of incidents that occurred during these outings,

62

this lack of invitation had signiﬁcantly more to do with my gender than with my outsider
status. There were also occasions when I declined invitations to dinner or drinks because
it was unclear what the intention behind the invitation was. Indeed, these are moments
when I experienced the “sexual politics of ﬁeldwor ” (Warren 1988, 36).

A ﬁnal example will serve to reinforce the moments where gender and race
shaped the data I collected. Invited by a local farmer, I attended a regional farmers’
meeting in a rural area. Approximately 15 white male farmers attended. The meeting
was held at the home of a farmer whose farm had been in the news that week because a
white farm worker on the farm had shot and killed a black person who was alleged to
have been stealing sheep."4 There was tension in the air because this incident caused
concern over possible reprisals to the farm, the farmer, or other white farmers in the area.
I was the only female in attendance, although the farmer’s wife was in the house. After
taking notes and observing the meeting, there was a braai (cookout), which offered a
more informal opportunity to speak with farmers and listen to their perspectives.
However, it was starting to get dark and, since I was traveling alone in a rural area on dirt
roads (without road signs), for safety reasons I had to leave to return to where I was
staying. In this example, my race clearly assisted my entry into this group, while my
gender posed limits to the conditions under which the data was collected.

The point of raising the impact of gender, race, and citizenship on ﬁeld research is
that, like all research, my portrait of the red meat industry is only a partial one. My
research is partial in distinct ways due to my observations and perspective being bounded

by the social roles assigned to white females within the South African red meat industry

 

4’ Stock theft is a signiﬁcant problem for livestock producers in South Africa. According to ﬁgures from
the Stock Theft Unit of the South African Police 72,695 cattle and 139,288 sheep were stolen in 1999
(NAMC 2001).

63

(Warren 1988). Ultimately, my goal when entering the ﬁeld was to capture an
understanding of both the commercial and the emergent sectors, which effectively
required accessing whites and blacks. At the conclusion of my ﬁeld research I had made
signiﬁcant strides in trying to grasp the emergent sector, but despite these efforts my
research data more fully captures the inner workings of the commercial sector than the
emergent sector. This is because the emergent sector is generally less organized and
centralized. I spoke with many people involved in the emergent sector, including
researchers, farmers, and businesspeople, and few of them seemed to be in contact with
each other.

Second, there is a roadside bias in this study (Chambers 1983). While I drove
many dirt roads, most the dirt roads were not too far off the paved roads due to safety
concerns (my traveling alone for a large portion of the study), the limits to the vehicle I
was driving, and ultimately, time constraints. Third, the social distance created between
rural black South Africans and myself due to the combination of my race, gender, and
language created barriers to communication. Despite my best intentions, it simply proved

very difﬁcult to interview emergent farmers and other actors in the informal network.

Data Collection and Analysis

Interviews. Other works have noted the key to a successful interview is knowing
enough to ask intelligent questions without knowing too much (Ogasawara 1998, 15 -
also citing other works). With a previous trip to South Africa in 1998, where I ﬁrst met
people in the South African meat industry and then with subsequent library research, I

returned to the ﬁeld in 2000 with enough of an understanding of the red meat industry to

ask a series of reﬁned questions that would permit understanding of a very complex set of
actors and networks. However, because of the elusive topic (the political and social
issues embedded within standards), there was concern that most interviewees would not
explicitly identify with queries about standards in the industry.”

All the interviews were collected using snowball sampling, in which every person
interviewed was asked to recommend others in the industry who should be interviewed.
Interviewees were not a random sample, but rather were selective and theoretical
(Middendorf 2002; Strauss 1987). Selective sampling refers to the “calculated decision
to sample a speciﬁc type of interviewee according to a preconceived . . . set of
dimensions . . . which are worked out in advance” (Strauss 1987, 39 quoting Schatzmah
and Strauss 1973). Thus, my intention from the outset of the study was to follow the
actors in the commodity chain. Theoretical sampling, which asks what groups does one
interview next and for what theoretical purpose, was also utilized in this study (Strauss
1987). The intention of the interviews was to gain a diversity of perspectives within the
red meat industry so as to illuminate the politics of standards in the industry.

Table 3.1 shows a general breakdown of the positions held by the people I
interviewed. There are a number of interviewees that could be classiﬁed into more than
one category, for example, someone who represents an industry body and also owns a
farm. All interviewees are only classiﬁed once. When I interviewed the director of an
industry body and asked a series of questions related to his work as the director I then

categorized the interviewee as someone representing an industry body. Thus, even if the

 

’5 Most interviewees asked for a clariﬁcation of what I meant by standards. Usually my response was to
identify standards that they (the interviewee) might identify with, such as food safety standards when
speaking to abattoir and/or processing plants, or the grading system when speaking with farmers.

65

director was also a farmer, the interviewee’s “farmer” status is not acknowledged within
this categorization scheme.

Table 3.1 Number of People Interviewed by Category

 

 

 

 

A total of 95 formal semi-structured interviews were conducted. Formal

interviews refer to interviews where the person agreed to allow me to ask a series of
questions and take notes as we spoke. There were also several informal interviews that I
conducted, especially with emergent farmers. Generally, these were informal interviews
because I was in the presence of others (usually persons of authority in the industry or the
emergent farmer’s peers) and therefore did not have the time or the proper situation to
conduct a more formal interview. However, the informal interviewees were made aware
of my research and agreed to speak with me. Recognizing the informal interviews is
important because of the seemingly small number of emergent producers formally

interviewed (n=5). Nonetheless, as mentioned previously, the limited number of

66

emergent farmers interviewed also reﬂects my position within speciﬁc networks in the
industry.

Looking at Table 3.1, the largest categories of interviewees are people involved
with industry bodies related to red meat and the government. However, it is worth
mentioning that when all persons directly involved with the production process (e. g.,
producers, abattoir persons, butchers, and wholesalers) are grouped together, they make
up a total of thirty-eight percent of the sample population. While categories have been
identiﬁed for the purposes of research, the divisions are problematic in reality, especially
when interviewing persons within the largest operations in South Africa that are
increasingly vertically integrated. Thus, there are a growing number of feedlot operations
that own their own abattoir and some sell their products through their own butcheries."6

There were two questionnaires, one designed for farmers and one designated for
people working in government and the rest of the industry (beyond the farm gate).
During the ﬁrst wave of interviews (n=65) respondents were asked the same series of
open-ended questions, and each was allowed to elaborate on the points that they found
most relevant. In the second wave of interviews (n=30), the questionnaire was modiﬁed
slightly in order to address questions that arose from the ﬁrst wave of interviews. In
addition, several questions that proved to be irrelevant were dropped from the interviews
(see questionnaires in Appendix B). Interviews were not recorded, but notes were typed
within twenty-four hours after the interview. The length of each interview varied from
thirty minutes to ﬁve hours, with the average interview lasting one hour. The majority of
people interviewed were white males, which is consistent with the make-up of the

commercial red meat industry as a whole (refer to Table 3.2).

 

’6 Almost all abattoirs I visited had local black residents who bought fresh offal from the abattoir.

67

Table 3.2. Gender and Racial Composition of Interviewees ’7

 

Male Female Total

 

 

 

 

White 78 9 87
Black 4 0 4
Other 3 O 3
Total 85 9 94

 

Interview data was extensively coded and compared using NVivo (a qualitative
software program) and concepts and linkages were developed from the data. Each
interview was coded ﬁrst by question (i.e., comparing all responses to the same question)
and then by themes. For example, all comments about food safety were grouped into a
node or category. In addition, to grouping by theme, responses were analyzed based on
the category of the respondent. Therefore, all interviews with government personnel or
all producers (which was further broken down into extensive, intensive, and emergent)
were reviewed as a group. This allowed for an improved understanding of how the
respondent’s position in the networks shaped their perspectives.

Participant Observation. As stated above, generally only interviewees who are
partially excluded from the communities of practice will recognize areas they see as
socially or politically contentious."8 Therefore, beyond interviewing a diverse range of
people involved in the industry and a few more marginalized participants, I also
conducted a signiﬁcant amount of participant observation as a means to access the

politics of changing standards and standardization in the industry.

 

’7 This table does not include a group interview that was conducted with emergent farmers. The group
interview had approximately ten black males and two black females present.

48 I quickly learned that partial exclusion, but not total exclusion, was most beneﬁcial for a discussion of
standards. Those that have been totally excluded from the commercial red meat industry, (i.e., black South
Africans) due to the legacy of apartheid are caught up in questioning the bigger politics of land and
resources. Thus, politics of standards were not as immediately relevant to actors who have been
completely excluded from participation in the red meat industry.

68

Whyte ( 1984) identiﬁes the importance of linking interviewing and observation.
Whyte (1984, 96) writes, “interviewing helps us to interpret the signiﬁcance of what we
are observing” and I would add that observing also helps us interpret the signiﬁcance of
interviews. Simply hearing about the importance of hygiene standards in the industry did
not assist in my understanding the wide range of hygiene standards found in the industry.
Indeed, by touring a variety of abattoirs, I was better able to conceptualize the three
networks in South Africa and the difference in hygiene standards between these
networks. In addition, observation combined with interviews gave me the opportunity to
witness practices in the industry that would not be highlighted if I were simply a visitor
receiving a tour of the industry. Field notes were taken on a regular basis and these were
entered into the computer and coded.

Documents and Statistics. Finally, documents and statistics on the industry were
collected throughout the course of the ﬁeld research. Documents collected consisted of a
wide range of materials including academic articles, industry and government reports,
and brochures/advertisements related to businesses. Several documents discussing the
meat industry prior to 1994 were collected as a means to gain a historical understanding
of the industry (Whyte 1984). In addition, (historical and current) documents lent a
certain degree of descriptive validity to this research (Maxwell 2002). As with most
qualitative research, there is a concern with capturing an account of what is occurring in
the industry as accurately as possible (recognizing of course that there is no one absolute
way to depict reality). Through interviews and observations I began to construct an

account of the industry. Written documents on the industry further supported several

69

aspects of my account. In addition, documents helped raise new and interesting insights
into the industry that I had not previously considered.

Curiously, I managed to obtain several documents that are marked “strictly
conﬁdential” and/or “not to be cited.” The fact that I have several documents with these
phrases typed on the cover page lends further validity to the point that the industry is
currently undergoing extreme turmoil, which involves a signiﬁcant degree of
politicization. Ironically, most of these documents were obtained through other sources
and not directly from the authors. In one case I tried to contact the author, but to no avail.
Unfortunately, many of these documents contain a signiﬁcant amount of insight into the
industry, especially the politics of the industry and this information is important.
Moreover, because I obtained these documents through a variety of sources, there is irony
in the fact that these “conﬁdential” documents are in circulation among non-conﬁdential
sources. It is apparent that these documents are a part of the public discourse in the
industry, despite the text being marked “conﬁdential.” Therefore, I have incorporated
some of this material into my dissertation. Obviously, there is an ethical dilemma
involved in this decision. I have decided to treat these documents the same way I am
treating information gleaned from my interviews. These documents will be kept
conﬁdential and when necessary the information will be presented in such a way that no
one can recognize the source of the information. Having touched on this ethical
dilemma, let me turn to a discussion of ethical considerations in my research.

Ethical Considerations. Qualitative researchers, including feminist scholars, have
long recognized the dangers of conducting qualitative research for the participants

involved in the study (Miles and Huberrnan 1994; Stacey 1988). The power dynamic

70

between researcher and participants is rarely equitable, with the possibility that
participants are giving much more of themselves than they are receiving from the study.
In addition, there is the added power dynamic of being a US. researcher conducting
research in a developing nation (Whyte 1984). In an effort to conduct the research for
this study in an ethical manner, I operated solely on the basis of informed consent. Every
person I interviewed was made aware of what I was doing and it was emphasized that all
responses would remain conﬁdential and at any time during or after the interview they
could opt to withdraw from the study. In addition, I explained my research to every
person I spoke with informally. All information collected remains conﬁdential. Within
this dissertation all responses or scenarios described have been modiﬁed so as to protect
the identity of the person/people involved. Indeed, because the South African industry is
not very large, it made it that much more difﬁcult, but also much more important, to

ensure conﬁdentiality.

A Final Note

Although the research for this study focused on the entire red meat industry, much
of the discussion throughout this dissertation focuses on cattle production and
consumption. One reason for the extensive focus on cattle is the dominance of beef in
terms of quantities slaughtered and consumed in the red meat industry. For example, per
capita consumption of beef was 12.9 kg/per head compared to 3.2 and 2.6 kg/per head for
sheep and pigs respectively in 2001 in South Africa (SAMIC 2003). The dominance of

the cattle sector emerged while I was conducting ﬁeldwork in terms of the number of

71

persons I interviewed who were involved with cattle production, processing, or
distribution.

Another reason that this work emphasizes the technical details of beef production
is due to the social issues surrounding emergent farmers within South Africa. While
there are a few initiatives operating to help establish emergent farmers within the pork
industry, the costs associated with the intensive pork production system are prohibitive.
The beef industry, while moving towards increasing intensive production, is still at a
phase in which farmers can enter the business as extensive producers without excessive
amounts of capital outlay. Therefore, it is a more likely path to enable emergent farmers
to become commercial farmers.

Finally, there is a thriving goat industry, but it is almost entirely in the informal
sector (serving primarily Black and Indian consumers). In fact, the total number of goats
signiﬁcantly outnumbers the total number of pigs in South Africa with 6.8 million goats
as compared to only 1.5 million pigs in 2001. However, it is estimated that 64 percent of
goats are found in the communal areas as opposed to only 20 percent of pigs (SAMIC
2003). There is only one signiﬁcant effort underway to formalize the goat industry and in
large part the US has funded it. The fact that the goat business serves primarily non-
white South Africans and has not become a formalized industry is not simply
coincidence. Rather, the informal goat industry is tightly coupled with the history of
South Africa. (This includes land use and segregated housing practices, government
agricultural control boards, and status symbols associated with meat.) The goat economy

could be the basis for an entire research investigation.

72

However, technical details do matter. Focusing primarily on the beef industry,
including beef production and processing technologies, is different from focusing on the
pork and sheep industry. Thus, some points in this work will be speciﬁc to beef.
However, many broader points will apply to the red meat industry as a whole. The
following chapter delves into some of the technical details of product quality and food
safety standards within the beef industry. Chapter four explores the role of science,
ethics, culture, economics, and politics in two different types of standards: (1) meat
tenderness, and (2) hygiene standards, especially at the level of the abattoir. At a
broader level Chapter four raises a host of issues surrounding the adoption of standards
for the purposes of global trade, which in the case of South Africa may not be the most

suitable set of standards for the country’s economy and its people.

73

CHAPTER 4
Global Steaks: Meat Tenderness and Hygiene Standards in Commercial Red Meat
Production
In this chapter the role of science, ethics, culture, economics, and politics in

standards is examined through an analysis of the "tools of the trade" that are used to
achieve product quality and meet food safety standards within the beef industry. Deﬁned
broadly, "tools” encompass any industry technology that incorporates a standard or a set
of standards to achieve standardized food safety or quality attributes. In particular, the
consequences of emphasizing certain types of quality and food safety standards,
speciﬁcally the production of tender meat and the implementation of hygiene standards
are explored. The chapter concludes by raising critical questions surrounding the
adoption of standards, which in the case of South Africa may have adverse impacts and
deleterious effects for a large segment of the population. This discussion sheds light on
the complexity and contradictory tendencies of globalization by focusing on the

intricacies of standards and their impacts on actors within a commodity network.

Industrial Meat Production -- Science in Action

Industrial meat production can be thought of as scientiﬁc practice. As Clarke and
Fujimura (1992, 5) note, agriculture, along with medicine and biology, has focused on
“what is life” and more importantly, “how to control life.” For the scientiﬁc practice of
industrial meat production to occur there must be some semblance of continuity and
stabilization across time and space. This does not mean that industrial livestock practices

are identical, but similarities and continuities can be found in all locations (Clarke and

74

Fujimura 1992). Standards or sets of standards contribute to the creation of continuity
and stabilization in the red meat industry.

By contributing to continuity and stabilization across time and space, tools of the
trade can be viewed as immutable mobiles (Latour 1986) within the global meat industry.
Immutable mobiles are “things that can travel without withering away do not
fundamentally alter on the trip . . . can be provided to and interpreted by others . . . and
linked to other things” (Clark and Fujimura 1992, 12-13). In other words, standards that
are created in one space (e.g., a business, a country, or a region) become mobile by way
of their incorporation into “tools” of the industry.

An important point made by scholars of science studies is the recognition that
continuity and stabilization are the result of successful efforts to dominate (Clarke and
Fujimura 1992, 13). At one extreme, standards and standardization are one means by
which to dominate. At the very least, a standard that becomes “the” standard in an
industry calls attention to some point of view and silences another (Bowker and Star
2000). Bowker and Star (2000, 5-6) note that this is not inherently a bad thing, but “it is
an ethical choice, and as such it is dangerous - not bad, but dangerous;” dangerous
because these choices are rarely made by democratic decision-making. Despite their
ability to alter power relations, technologies of standards and standardization have
generally been ignored by social scientists as an arena of investigation (Busch et al.
1998). Through understanding industrial meat production as scientiﬁc practice an
analysis of "tools of the trade" translates science, but also ethics, culture, economics, and

politics.

75

In order to understand the impact that standards and standardization can have,
four points need to be outlined. First, creators of standards propose standards as
objective, but standards are always enacted in speciﬁc locations that have their own set of
cultural and historical circumstances. Second, standards do not work equally well across
time and place. For example, standards that suit the purposes of intensive industrial
farming do not automatically suit the needs of agriculture organized in other ways, such
as communal farming. Third, the question of who (which individuals or groups) gets to
determine what is considered a “good” standard is an important point to consider.
Currently standards are constructed within private industry and speciﬁc government
bodies and thus will likely reﬂect dominant (or at least the most vocal) social actors’
deﬁnitions of what a good standard is within these groups. Finally, some standards are
unable to directly measure the phenomenon we want measured, and in their place proxy
standards are used. These standards may change as other standards are found that more

closely measure the desired item or characteristic.

The Quest for Tender Meat
SA Grainfed Beef is lean, tender young beef (0-2 teeth) selected according
to the strictest A Class age speciﬁcations with a speciﬁed fat coverage (2,
3, or 4) over the whole carcase to ensure the ultimate eating experience.
Technically speaking this means that animals are selected for their lean
meat attributes from beef breeds known to produce tender beeﬁ

-- Excerpt from a brochure advertising
South African red meat for export

The quest for tender meat is a curious example of the meshing of ethics, culture,
politics, science, and economics. To look at the history and the resources and money that

have gone into ﬁnding an economical way to produce consistently tender meat at the

76

point of consumption is to see a set of principles and practices that can often be viewed as
innovative and at times counterintuitive. To comprehend the great lengths to which the
industry has gone to ﬁnd consistently tender meat, let us review some of the better known
cases of tender meat production.

One of the more common techniques for achieving tender meat is to slaughter the
animal while it is very young (as animals age, the muscle gets tougher due to more
connective tissue and the connective tissue becomes less soluble). Veal is meat produced
from young meat animals. Moreover, the animals are prevented from exercising, thereby
developing stronger muscles. Similar to the concept of veal, are Kobe and Matsuzaka
cows from Japan (the Japanese locations are the names given to the meat). The tender
meat produced is a combination of a certain breed (W agyu is the breed for Kobe beef)
and production standards. Production standards include feeding beer to the cows to help
them relax, massaging the animals, and a regimen of minimal exercise for the cow (which
some have argued makes the massage a necessity rather than the luxury that humans
associate with the concept). The terms Kobe and Matsuzaka are appellations and cannot
be used unless the cows were raised in these regions. Wagyu, because it is a breed, can
be marketed and sold in other regions of the world. Effectively, veal, Kobe, and Matsuka
remain meats marketed to a niche market of consumers who are willing to pay
signiﬁcantly higher prices for these meats.

A more common technique used throughout the industrialized red meat industry
for increasing tender meat is “aging.” Generally, immediately after an animal dies rigor
mortis sets in and the meat actually becomes tougher within the next 6 to 12 hours. After

this period the meat begins to become more tender. Depending on the breed, conditions

77

at point of slaughter and post-mortem, an animal can be “aged” from anywhere from 1 to
21 days. The average length of time for aging in the United States is 7 days and in South
Africa the length of time for aging generally ranges from 0 to 5 days. The older the
animal the more aging improves the tenderness of the meat, up to a certain point.

An offshoot of the belief in the value of aging meat is a recent cloning experiment
conducted by US. scientists. In 2002, scientists at a United States university in
collaboration with a private agricultural biotechnology company successfully cloned a
cow from a two-day old side of beef. According to the newspaper report this means
“cattle producers could choose beef cells from a slaughtered cow after its meat has been
graded, then create a herd of grade A clones” (Bacon, USA Today 2002). Of course,
genetic appeals obfuscate the many intervening variables that produce tender meat for the
consumer. There variables include: age, sex of the animal, breeds suitability of the
production location, feeding regime, transportation to slaughterhouse, conditions at point
of slaughter, post-mortem handling, and cooking methods.

Finally, the technology most commonly used in slaughterhouses for promoting
tender meat is electrical stimulation (E.S.). Recognized by many as ﬁrst used by
Benjamin Franklin in 1749 on a turkey, E.S. has been increasingly used in industrial
slaughterhouses since 1976. During the slaughter process a cable is attached to the
animal carcass and an electrical current is sent through the carcass, causing the muscles
to contract involuntarily. Not only are there competing theories as to why E.S. works,
but there are also different types of BS. available (e. g., high voltage versus low voltage)
and different points in the slaughter process where it is used (e.g., pre-hide removal in the

bleeding area versus after dehiding, but before evisceration). E.S. combined with aging

78

is considered the most efﬁcient means of achieving tender meat in an industrial setting
(Stifﬂer et al. 1982). Generally, these two practices combined produce tender meat more
quickly which reduces inventory costs of keeping carcasses for extended periods of time,
prevents shrinkage, and reduces energy use."9 Although E.S. was ﬁrst used to improve
tenderness, its adoption by the meat industry in the United States likely resulted from
ﬁndings which demonstrated that E.S. improves lean quality characteristics (Stifﬂer et al.
1982). As the United States has shifted to producing leaner carcasses, the lean carcasses
are more prone to cold shortening. 50 Thus, E.S. helps prevent cold-shortening in lean
carcasses thereby preventing lean meat from becoming extremely tough. Similarly, in
South Africa, they slaughter livestock at a younger age and lighter weight than in the US.
One South African processor states that BS. is widely used because the smaller, leaner
carcasses are more prone to cold shortening during chilling than larger carcasses with
more fat. Therefore, in order to counter toughening of the product, BS. is used.

Prior to the widespread implementation of electrical stimulation, a processor that
was explicitly concerned with producing tender meat would utilize slow chilling
techniques. However, slow chilling requires a large number of chillers (i.e., large
refrigerators), resulting in more capital (cost of facilities) and increased working capital
(costs associated with storing more meat prior to sale). In addition, slow chilling allows
more bacteria to grow on the surface of the carcass than does fast chilling. For
consumption purposes, an increased level of surface bacteria is not as much of a concern

because cooking the meat will kill the bacteria. However, as meat is shipped longer

 

’9 As meat ages it loses weight, which means if you are selling a product based on weight, you are
effectively losing money.

so Cold shortening occurs when muscle ﬁbers shorten during rigor mortis due to cold temperature
producing tough muscle ﬁber. This tough muscle ﬁber is very difﬁcult to break down, even through
cooking.

79

distances surface bacteria shortens the shelf life of meat and thus, increases the risk of
meat spoiling while in transport to the ﬁnal destination. Hence as red meat commodity
chains grow longer, the slow chilling technique is ill suited to the changing
circumstances.

Similar to participants in the United States and other red meat producing
countries, South Africans involved in the commercial red meat industry are very
interested in producing tender meat for consumption. What is the purpose of the quest
for tender meat? In order to capture the complexity of the answer to this question it is
necessary to study the actors involved with and shaped by the quest for tender meat.

For producers, the South African grading system rewards those who bring
relatively young cows to slaughter. This grading system is an example of a proxy
standard, in that the age of the cow is only used as an imprecise measure of the
tenderness of the meat.51 Studies have shown that the younger the cow the more tender
the meat (Crosley, et al. 1994). As noted earlier, there are many variables that contribute
to tender meat and age as a proxy does not guarantee the consumer will get a tender piece
of meat. However, younger animals at the point of slaughter do generally increase the
odds of tender meat at the point of consumption. Thus, South Africa’s grading system
favors producers who raise animals in feedlots as opposed to grazing systems. This is
because livestock raised on grazing systems are generally older at the time of slaughter

and have developed tougher muscles.

 

5' The US. grading system also relies on proxy standards. One USDA web site explains “The quality
grade factors, marbling and maturity, used to determine USDA beef quality grades (Prime, Choice, Select,
etc.) do not explain all of the variation in beef palatability. However, they are capable of segregating a large
dissimilar population of beef into more similar grade classes” (Morris 1999).

80

The quest for tender meat also impacts cattle. Breeds of livestock are often
selected, at least in part, based on the environment in which the animals are reared and
the end purpose of the meat. Thus, native breeds in South Africa, such as the N guni are
excellent for less organized grazing systems where “nature” is less controlled by
humans.52 Nguni adapt well to harsh conditions and have a high tolerance for parasitic
and infectious diseases. However, the Nguni breed is not considered highly productive
within intensive livestock conditions, where reproduction, feed, and the environment are
regulated in order to promote rapid weight gain. Thus, most commercial producers
(intensive or extensive) raise breeds of cattle that are better suited for industrial
production that aims to have the animal gain weight quickly and in a consistent manner.
In South Africa they use major continental livestock breeds, such as Angus and
Simmentaler. Also utilized are Bonsmaras, a beef breed developed after WWII by cross
breeding an indigenous breed with British breeds so that livestock farmers would have a
breed that could produce beef economically in the subtropical savannah regions of South
Africa (Campher 1998; Ramsay et. a1 1994).

For abattoirs the technology used tends to be dependent on the size of the abattoir.
High levels of technology are not cost effective in a smaller abattoir that slaughters fewer
animals per week. For example, an abattoir that slaughters only 75 cattle a week is less
likely to have the types of slaughter equipment found in abattoirs that slaughter 600 cattle

or more a week. 53 Thus, small abattoirs tend to be more labor intensive and they are not

 

’2 Nguni actually originated in Northern Africa more than 8000 years ago. They most likely arrived in
Southern Africa around 800 AD. Compared to breeds introduced to South Africa in the twentieth century,
Nguni is considered an indigenous breed.

53 By international standards an abattoir that only slaughters 600 cattle a week is considered very small.

81

likely to use E.S. as part of the slaughter process. Thus, whatever beneﬁts E.S. bestows
on the meat, cattle slaughtered in smaller facilities will not have these characteristics.

As a side note, it is important to note that BS. is not an automated system, even in
abattoirs where BS. is available. Rather the ES. process requires workers to physically
attach the wire to each cow that passes through the slaughter line and for the wire to then
be physically removed, usually by another worker, after a certain period of time
(approximately 10 to 14 seconds). Hence, E.S. entails properly trained workers who
attach the wire at the proper time and who leave the wire attached for a discrete period of
time.54 The reason for raising this point is because unlike other industrial processes such
as the automotive industry which have tried to minimize the human factor (e.g., human
error) through increased automation in its production process, the abattoir is still highly
labor dependent, regardless of its size. The labor-intensive aspect of the industry is due
to the variability in size of the animals, which thus far has not allowed for fully
automated lines. One interviewee in this study told a story of visiting one of the largest
abattoirs in a particular region in South Africa where he witnessed every third or forth
carcass going through the line without an E.S. wire attached. This person found a worker
on the ﬂoor and asked why some carcasses were without the wire, to which the worker
replied that they were running short on wires that day. Obviously the worker failed to
understand or to care about the purpose of attaching the ES. wire.

In general, abattoirs are increasingly under pressure from larger retailers to

introduce new technological devices that promote more tender meat. One research report

 

5’ Most abattoirs control the amount of time the wire is attached by the actual structure of the slaughter line.
In other words, the slaughterhouses where I witnessed E.S. being used prior to hide removal have a
bleeding area that is inaccessible to workers without a signiﬁcant amount of effort on the part of the
worker. Once the animal has exited the bleeding area, the worker can easily remove the wire and the hide
removal process begins.

82

from Ireland states, “[l]eading supermarkets already issue detailed speciﬁcations to
abattoirs and some specify tenderising processes such as elecuical stimulation, pelvic
suspension and ageing times up to 4 weeks in chill” (Troy and Joseph 2001). Retailers
make up a diverse group in South Africa and include butchers, small independent retail
stores, fast food and restaurant establishments, and large retail supermarkets. Retailers
may have a variety of goals when selling meat to customers, including low price, large
quantity, fresh product, or tender meat. However, regardless of the goals it should be
recognized that meat classiﬁcation, with A as the highest-grade meat and C as the lowest,
is directly coupled to the price that the consumer is going to pay. Therefore, any retailer
who is selling higher grade, and therefore higher priced meat, wants the consumer to feel
they have gotten the appropriate value for their money. This is especially true among the
large retail chains that are selling their store name along with the meat they sell. Thus,
retailers are concerned with how to ensure the consistent meat quality that the customers
have come to expect. A few strategies that the largest retail chains might pursue include
labeling or branding and offering in-store cooking instructions. The largest retail chains
in South Africa are attempting to brand their product, including consolidation and
centralization of operations, thereby ensuring more control over the entire process. As
mentioned in the previous discussion about abattoirs, increased control for a large retail
chain involves the store hand picking select abattoirs that they can trust to provide them
the types of carcasses they request. The retail chains also conduct more of the meat
preparation in house (e.g., deboning of the meat, packing speciﬁc cuts into family size

prepackaged containers, and producing sausages). Of course, the centralization and

83

increasing control also costs more, so stores that take branding to this extreme often
charge higher prices for their meats than other retail stores.

Finally, there are consumers who are supposedly the persons driving the demand
for tender meat. Curiously, tastes vary and change and are generally inconsistent across
ethnic groups and regions of the world. In addition, taste is ambiguous and ﬂavor is
largely a learned reaction (Fiddes 1991). In South Africa, meat preferences fall along
racial and class lines due to the historical and socio-political economic context of South
Africa. As such, there is a noticeable split in the population over what is considered a
“good” piece of meat. Generally, urban populations prefer tender meat. Historically, the
majority of the white population of South Africa lived in urban centers. The rural
populations, primarily black South Africans, tend to prefer meat that is tougher and on
the bone. The grading scheme within South Africa privileges tender meat (A grade) over
tougher meat (C grade). One interviewee concerned with the structure of the grading
system as disadvantaging non-feedlot producers said, “rural people like B and C graded
meat, yet producers get penalized for producing what rural consumers want. Why should
a British, urban elite determine the grading system for everyone?”

If it is understood that continuity and stabilization are the result of successful
efforts to dominate, then seemingly mundane ideas about what is considered “the best”
meat can elucidate much larger processes of domination and subordination. The grading
system rewards industrial livestock producers and the production of cattle that is favored
by a select group of upper to middle-class consumers.

The grading system also reveals the international process of dominance and

subordination. Historically, the need for methods of carcass description arose primarily

84

from the lengthening of the distribution chains and the decline in face-to-face interaction.
Carcass descriptions were introduced to facilitate trade at a distance, but these
descriptions quickly took on promotional signiﬁcance (Kempster et al. 1982). The
promotional signiﬁcance of tender meat as equivalent to good meat on a global scale is
illustrated by the use of BS. during processing in several exporting countries in the
South. For example, in Brazil -- one of the largest exporters of red meat globally -- thirty
percent of medium-size and forty percent of large-size plants use E.S. Signiﬁcantly
smaller participants in international beef trade include Costa Rica and Venezuela.
Nonetheless, all three of the export slaughterhouses in Costa Rica utilize E.S., while six
out of eighteen export slaughterhouses in Venezuela utilize E.S. (personal
communication). The use of BS. in slaughterhouses in countries in the South partially
supports Goodman and Redclift’s (1991, 157) point of recognizing trends that move
beyond the nation state policies and brings attention to the “catalytic role of the
transnational corporation in disseminating standardized technologies and labor processes
and integrating commodity markets on a global basis.” However, in contradiction to
Goodman and Redclift’s point, there is no one corporation that controls the red meat
industry. Rather, red meat production continues to be organized within nation-states.
Despite a lack of uniﬁed corporate control globally, this does not mean that the global
inﬂuence of a few powerful actors within nation states (primarily Western, industrialized
countries, especially the United States) can be dismissed.

In order to explain the means by which a few actors can structure an industry it is
important to understand the process of livestock production. The scientiﬁc practice of

livestock production requires standards and standardization throughout the process, not

85

just at the end point. The following quote, taken from a report prepared by a processor in
the industry, reveals the extent that beef production is a process, whereby scientiﬁc
practices are always emphasized.

After slaughter we receive from the slaughterhouse the individual animal’s

number as well as the grade, the weight, the disease status if any as well as

the selling price of the individual animal. This information would once

again be entered into the computer and as all the cattle from the original

lot that were purchased are sold, so the computer would reconstruct the

original group of cattle coming from the particular cow calf producer and

thus build up a trace record for that particular breeder. As part of the

service offered to the cow calf producer, on his request we would send

him a copy of the performance results of his cattle. We have seen great

improvements amongst those breeders that have consistently asked for this

information and used it to formulate their breeding programmes. Our

consultant also uses this information when advising breeders on their

choice of breeding stock. We use this cattle performance for the

individual breeder as a means to calculate the value of his livestock when

we are offered his calves for sale at a future date (conﬁdential report).
From the above quote it can be seen that if a radical change occurred in the grading
system of South Africa, it would require a reorganization of the whole process. To
reorganize the system would effectively alienate South Africa from international trade.
Recall that differences are found across locations in scientiﬁc practices. This is true in
the case of national grading schemes. South Africa bases its quality grading system
primarily on age by dentition (i.e., the number of permanent incisors — A grade is 0
permanent incisors) and carcass fat cover. In contrast, the United States bases its system
primarily on maturity established through visual inspection of the carcass (such as the
amount of hardening of cartilage into bone) and visual analyses of marbling in the rib eye

muscle between the 12th and 13th rib. However, both systems operate because there is

some semblance of continuity and stability in determining palatability.

86

Like most agricultural industries, South Africa’s industry has a strong interest in
maintaining export options. As one South African report states, “The future growth
opportunity for the local beef industry lies in entering the international market, and in
doing so, we will have to comply with the standards as set by the particular importing
country” (conﬁdential report). Aside from obtaining much stronger currencies, South
African producers/processors aim to sell higher end cuts elsewhere and import lower end
cuts for the majority of the population that do not have enough income to pay for higher
priced pieces of meats5 This is one way to maximize the earning potential of producers
and processors, and simultaneously reduce the costs of meat for the general population.
However, at present, the majority of South African producers are only producing for the
domestic market, yet they are still following this export model. Following this logic, the
current organization of the industry does not beneﬁt the majority of South African
consumers.

While speciﬁc standards have very real material consequences, the issue of
speciﬁc standards designed to produce tender meat might not appear as something which
maintains or enforces power differentials. However, as Bowker and Star (2000, 6) note
“for any group or situation, classiﬁcations and standards give advantage or they give
suffering. Some regions beneﬁt at the expense of others.” Quality standards that
emphasize tender meat have negative consequences for at least some of the South African
actors discussed previously.

First, for extensive livestock producers, the grading system favors young animals

that are ﬁnished (i.e., prepared for slaughter) much more quickly than animals in grazing

 

5’ Many countries pursue the practice of exporting higher quality meat and importing lower quality meat,
including the United States.

87

production systems. Therefore, most extensive producers receive a lower price for their
animals at the point of slaughter or they opt to provide the input (weaner calves) to
intensive livestock producers, losing their ability to capture more proﬁt by raising the
animal until at least the point of slaughter.56 Accompanying the disadvantaged position of
extensive producers is the reality that the majority of emergent farmers in South Africa
will be extensive producers. Emergent farmers generally denote previously
disenfranchised groups, which for the most part in agriculture consist of black South
Africans. Therefore, an emphasis on quality standards that promote intensive livestock
production in South Africa is counter to the govemment’s initiatives to promote the
advancement of emergent farmers. Of course, there are some initiatives underway
(private, public, and not for proﬁt) that are attempting to cultivate and promote extensive
production for a niche market audience. While offering a wide range of reasons for
extensive production, these niche markets generally promote the product based on claims
associated with the environment, health or the ethical treatment of animals. The success
of these initiatives remains uncertain, especially in terms of giving emergent farmers
access to markets for selling the meat they produce.

Second, the emphasis on tender meat leads to a loss of genetic diversity among
livestock. Industrial livestock production relies on a limited number of highly productive
breeds (LEAD 1999). Currently, the FAO predicts that out of approximately 4,500
known breeds globally 30 percent are in danger of extinction (FAO 1993). This means
valuable genetic diversity is increasingly lost, including animals that are better equipped

to resist certain types of parasites or diseases. Finally, South Africa is a country where

 

’6 Most extensive producers actually engage in a combination of practices, which includes selling calves to
intensive producers and sending some animals to slaughter.

88

only 16.8 percent of rural residents have running water inside a dwelling (May et al.
2000) and the privatization of water services has caused severe water shortages among
the poor (Thompson 2003). Yet, South African livestock production is dominated by an
intensive production system which uses more water than any other intensive agricultural
product (Harper and Beau 2003).57 While there is no direct link between the water used
for intensive livestock production and water shortages among the poor, it is worthwhile
noting that cows are able to drink potable water while poor citizens of South Africa go
without.

Abattoir owners who do not have the available E.S. technology in their plants are
the next group of actors that will indirectly and directly experience negative
consequences from the quest for tender meat. Indirectly, this is because the majority of
abattoirs that do not use E.S. are small in size, and as the industry continues to move
towards vertical integration and concentration, smaller abattoirs will be forced out of
business. Directly, larger retail chains will increasingly expect abattoirs to utilize
technology like E.S., that enhances the consistency of the ﬁnal product. Furthermore, the
majority of smaller abattoirs service rural areas that are not regularly serviced by other
larger abattoirs. If supermarkets continue the trend of increasing the number of stores in
rural areas of Southern Africa (Weatherspoon and Reardon 2003), it is likely that meat
coming from larger abattoirs will ﬂow into the area via trucks delivering to rural
supermarkets. The decline of smaller abattoirs in rural areas is important in the context
of South Africa because of the high poverty and unemployment rates in these areas. The

poverty rate in rural areas is about 70 percent (May et al. 2000) with approximately 5 8

 

’7 For example, 100,000 liters of water for every kilogram of beef produced (cited in Harper and Beau
2003)

89

percent of rural inhabitants currently unemployed (Torres et al. 2000). Smaller rural
abattoirs provide employment for rural inhabitants. In addition, smaller rural abattoirs
provide a source of income because the animals slaughtered are purchased from local
producers, thus reducing the costs of transportation should these producers have to send
their livestock to an abattoir located further away.

Linked to the decline of smaller abattoirs are retailers, especially smaller retailers,
who tend to receive their products from small abattoirs. However, small retailers have
many more options for how they can obtain red meat products; thus the decline of this
sector will not be as dramatic as in the abattoir sector. First, despite the increased costs
of transport, it is possible that the carcasses coming from large abattoirs will decline in
price due to economics of scale (i.e., more carcasses moving through one abattoir leads to
a decline in the price per carcass). Second, creative retailers may work out alternative
arrangements for acquiring meat, such as partnering with other independent butchers or
selling more specialty items, such as cheaper imported meats or specialty sausages.
Third, it seems likely that the majority of retailers in South Africa will increasingly serve
a speciﬁc clientele. Thus, speciﬁc retailers will increasingly only serve the upper-middle
class consumers, while others will serve the working class. By serving speciﬁc clientele,
retailers will be better able to control overhead costs based on how much their customers
are willing to pay for their product. In other words, market segmentation will occur.
Market segmentation means retailers serving upper-middle class customers will be able
to charge a higher price for their meats thereby recouping costs associated with
maintaining more rigorous standards and providing higher end meats. Within each

segment of the market competition for customers will be very high; thus small retailers

90

will experience difﬁculty staying in business as they compete for the same consumers
with larger retailers who have economies of scale.

The adoption of standards shaped by international markets impacts the food
preferences of consumers. Despite a large portion of the South African population
preferring tougher meat, they will increasingly get more tender meat. This is because as
smaller abattoirs decline and as more of the rural poor migrate to urban centers?8 much
of the meat obtained by these consumers will be from animals slaughtered in large
abattoirs that use E.S. Poorer consumers will still buy the cheapest meat, which is B or C
grade, but all of the grades will have gone through E.S., thereby increasing meat
tenderness. Overtime, this will likely change meat tenderness preferences. This lends
more evidence to support Goodman and Redclift’s (1994) point that urban food systems
in developing countries are increasingly Westemized.

As stated previously, the entire industrial meat production process favors
Western, industrialized consumers. While we should avoid romanticizing the more
traditional approaches to meat production in third world countries, there is a paradox to
the current situation. There are an increasing number of consumers in the EU. and the
US. that seek ‘all natural beef that does not originate from modern industrial livestock
production.59 ‘All natural’ beef is the type of product that is in abundance in Third World
countries. However, this type of beef is largely found in the informal sector and is
increasingly being pushed out as a viable means of production by intensive livestock

production that is striving to export to Western, industrialized markets. Thus, one

 

58 Due to high unemployment and poverty rates in rural areas many people migrate to urban centers in
search of work (see Posel 2003 for a discussion of migration).

59 While many US. and EU. consumers want “all natural” beef, they often want a combination of
characteristics that originate from all natural productions (e.g., meat with ﬂavor not found from com-feed
beef) and industrial production (e.g., meat tenderness and consistent quality).

91

strategy used for marketing meat from the informal sector would be to advertise it as “all
natural.” However, before meat from informal sectors can be marketed in the formal
sector there are several additional hygiene and food safety standards that must be dealt
with, including animal disease control.

Up until now the discussion has focused on quality grades that generally only
require “voluntary” compliance in most countries including South Africa. But what
about standards that are required by law in some countries, tend to promote global
discussions, and deal with potentially serious health concerns? In the next section I turn
to a discussion of food safety standards. Speciﬁcally, I look at HACCP (Hazard Analysis
Critical Control Points) as an illustrative example of a food safety standard that is

globally signiﬁcant.

The Importance of Hygiene

SA Grainfed Beef originates from abattoirs maintaining high standards of
hygiene and classiﬁcation. The application of the HACCP system is an
integral part of the meat hygiene standards of these abattoirs.

-- Excerpt from a brochure advertising
South African red meat for export

HACCP is an example of a set of widely adopted food safety standards that has a
signiﬁcant impact on meat markets around the globe. Within the context of South Africa
the case of HACCP illustrates another way in which local networks become global.
HACCP has been described as a tool that can be used by ﬁrms as a means to reduce food
safety hazards, thus ensuring safer food products. In this section HACCP is described as

an obligatory passage point for all participants in international meat trade and for several

92

participants in South Africa’s red meat industry. Callon (1986) has described obligatory
passage points as the points that all members must pass through or participate in, in order
to be counted as part of the network. Obligatory passage points can be viewed as loci of
power because they discipline the interactions of actors. Before moving on to discuss the
consequences of HACCP as an obligatory passage point for South Africa, I provide an
overview HACCP and its use by various countries in more detail.

As mentioned in Chapter 2, HACCP is a food safety management system
whereby meat plants identify “critical control points” where contamination is most likely
to occur. Performance standards and monitoring procedures for each of these points are
then established. Speciﬁcally, HACCP is based on seven principles. These are:

Conduct a hazard analysis;

Identify critical control points;

Establish critical limits for each critical control point;
Establish critical control point monitoring requirements;
Establish corrective actions;

Establish record-keeping procedures; and

Establish procedures for verifying the HACCP system is working as
intended.

NP‘MFP’NE‘

HACCP was initially developed in the US. to ensure the integrity of food products for
astronauts while in space. NASA looked at the issue of food safety as an engineering
issue, where possible points of contamination at which a germ or pathogen could enter
the food had to be identiﬁed and controlled. In the 19905, the US. Department of
Agriculture adapted HACCP for use in the meat industry as a more science-based
approach to meat inspection. Prior to HACCP, meat inspectors solely relied on the
‘poke and sniff’ method for detecting unsafe meat (i.e., the use of the senses to detect
unsafe meat). Utilizing HACCP means that meat plants and the USDA now test for

pathogens (e.g., E. coli and Salmonella) that are not visible to the unaided human eye.

93

Today, most meat trading western industrialized countries, including the US,
Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and soon the E.U., make use of a
HACCP-based system in meat processing plants. In large part this is due to each
country’s ability to block imports of products from other countries that do not have the
same level of standards in place.60 The US. beef industry has long been considered very
powerful globally. Spriggs and Isaac (2001, 109) write, “Because of the dominance of
the US. market and the lack of standards in other countries, the US. standards became
the de facto international standards. Thus, if exports met U.S. standards, these were also
sufﬁcient for exports to other countries.” With the introduction of HACCP in the 05.
many other countries that intended to continue exporting to the US. also adopted
HACCP systems. For trading purposes the W.T.O. has ruled that a country cannot ban
another country’s products simply because the country does not have the exact same
HACCP standards in place. Rather, other countries can gain the right to trade with a
country that uses HACCP if they can prove that their standards, procedures, and/or
systems are equivalent. The data in Figure 4.1 evaluates four countries that have
implemented HACCP systems. As a point of comparison South Africa, which has only a
few industry participants utilizing a HACCP system, is also listed on Figure 4.1.

The column in the ﬁgure labeled “National Driver(s)” details which factors,
according to Spriggs and Isaac (2001), have pushed or encouraged the adoption of
HACCP in each country. Note the section header for the second column is ‘national’
drivers, as opposed to international drivers. International drivers are beef market
megatrends that are shaping numerous developed countries’ food safety programs.

International drivers originate from several sources, including the globalization of the

 

6° However, these standards must be based in science.

94

 

.85< Snow mo coinage 05 5.3 A SOS can 23 wwwram Boa 3:530 5:0 £5 E 592585 _

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

0E8 u< mam E ease—.0 . o. 331 . .
BwEEezeO -- =e.:5=m~k-e2 Mia: 8293 @023. 83 Co 5:905...
@0355 name:— eocoqxc .23 mac—noun
ﬁes—a 33m ”3815: toes 5.3:. 9 mmooo<
mcﬁmooca :cmxm 5 Scan; ”HF—Beam
oocovacco 883:8
$5.5 ﬁes—a mﬁmmooca mo 32 l 338 Dog 80.. mo motom
mcﬁmoooi Coaxm Egﬁomzoiﬁnwaﬂm came—non E 32 3 Banana “BEBE «ESQ
:3 bases: ago
2253— “3533m—
ﬁSwE 9.5885 deuce—use 888:8
53:85 gagged—5 he who. I are .903 coon— Scum—5—
. ego seem £8858 Beam 55:5 ”3525 use:
3» 8.3
852m SEE r598 SEE 9 mmoou<
mEmmoooi coaxm ccczascfoﬁmzﬂm Sea—n5 ”=2:me ave—30
«m3 EeEEuSD»
Eccuaﬁoaﬁ 00:03:00 3:538
v.8 oconcQ l 3.33 @6385 he 82 I 8..de bog coon.
3.85 95385 =< ochBmacfoﬁwssm =u I Be. .3 pounced "HESS 8.8m 1815
a... 2...... r...
.3 22953.5. LEA—38$: .63.: «538.3 3.8%
mDOHOO—u— EUU<=
En; mChUm—m .mO mDUOm NUEEEQD EUUE Ami—HEA— 175:.an \EHZDQO
_mo_.===c0 0.5% 50.3qu :ouSEEﬂn-E QUUE no eaten—Eco ".9 “ring

 

95

media, global transport of food, and international institutions, like the W.T.O. and Codex.
Spriggs and Isaac (2001, 7) argue that international drivers for change in food safety have
a harmonizing effect on the food safety systems in different countries and cause domestic
rules to converge, whereas, national drivers “tend to have a differentiating effect, causing
divergence of domestic rules” between countries.

National drivers are speciﬁc to individual countries and can be further divided
into external and internal national drivers.62 External drivers are linked to changes made
by other countries or related to international issues, but the impact is experienced by only
one country (as opposed to several countries as is the case for international drivers). An
example of a national external driver is when another country adopts HACCP. If a
country is dependent for export markets on the country that adopts HACCP, then the
exporting country is driven to adopt HACCP (or an equivalent system) in order to
maintain market access. Looking at Figure 4.1, one can see that this is what happened in
the case of Canada and Australia. This is the situation that South Africa is now facing.

Internal drivers are events that occur internal to the country which encourage
change in the national food safety system. A common internal driver of change is a food
safety scare, such as hamburgers that are contaminated with E. coli 0157:H7. For
example, the United States had a series of food safety scares that encouraged the adoption
of new food safety standards (e.g., the 1993 Jack in the Box Ecoli outbreak). Australia
and the United Kingdom are two countries that had both external and internal drivers of

change to their food safety systems. In the case of Australia, there is a high dependency

 

62 For illustrative purposes this section adopts the language “internal and external drivers” utilized by
Spriggs and Isaac (2001). The internal/external dichotomy does not ﬁt well within ANT. Rather utilizing
ANT Spriggs and Isaac’s argument could be conceptualized in terms of network effects. In other words,
within an ANT approach when and why each actor adopts HACCP is determined by the relationship
between the different actors in a network.

96

on exporting beef products and a series of food safety scares in the country led to a loss
of consumer conﬁdence in the safety of beef products. Thus, Australia dramatically
altered its food safety system, which included requiring HACCP implementation in all
domestic plants. Ultimately, all countries have both internal and external national
drivers, but in some countries the external driver has signiﬁcantly more of an impact on
the adoption of food safety standards than the internal drivers, or vice versa.

As the largest producer and consumer of beef, the United States is not concerned
with equivalency issues in the same way that other countries are.63 On the other hand,
Canada and Australia provide two interesting case studies of countries that adopted
HACCP for the purposes of achieving equivalency with an importing country. For
example, United States’ beef exports were only 9 percent of total US. beef produced in
2000, while Canada exported 45 percent and Australia exported 62 percent of their
nations’ beef production in the same year (Spriggs and Isaac 2001).

In the case of Canada, the industry adopted HACCP with the goal of obtaining
equivalency with the United States. Canada ships approximately 80 percent of all its beef
exports to the United States and Canada’s live cattle trade is almost entirely with the US.
(Spriggs and Isaac 2001). Thus, as the US. began restructuring its food safety system in
the 1990s, Canada’s meat industry needed to ensure market access and industry
competitiveness. It accomplished this by restructuring to at least attain equivalency with
the new US. system. Spriggs and Isaac (2001) argue that because the changes that

Canada introduced are so dependent on US. food safety changes, Canada never

 

63 Article 4.1 states that “Members shall accept the sanitary or phytosanitary measures of other Members as
equivalent, even if these measures differ from their own or from those used by other Members trading in
the same product, if the exporting Member objectively demonstrates to the importing Member that its
measures achieve the importing Member's appropriate level of sanitary or phytosanitary protection”

(W .T.O. 1999).

97

effectively overhauled the entire food governance structure (much as the US. failed to
thoroughly overhaul its food governance structure).

Australia, on the other hand, has completely redesigned its food governance
structures and likewise its food safety procedures. Similar to Canada, the main
destination of Australia’s beef exports is the United States. Throughout the 1960s and
19705 Australia relied extensively on exporting to the US. and therefore it “bent over
backwards” to comply with US. standards (Spriggs and Isaac 2001, 109). Recall that
Australia actually had external and internal drivers that promoted change in its food
safety systems. Beginning in the 1980s Australia experienced a series of events,
including a loss of exports to the US. due to processing plants deemed inferior to US.
standards, a series of national food safety scares, and government policies that adopted

economic rationalism.64

Ultimately, Australia developed HACCP systems and adopted a
whole series of other changes in order to gain a competitive advantage in international
trade. Using HACCP and food safety systems as a competitive advantage required
Australia to employ the equivalency rule as established by the W.T.O. (Ibid).
Irnportantly, it should be noted that HACCP, as adopted and promoted by the United
States government and industry and furthered by countries like Australia, conveniently
ﬁts within a neo-liberal market model in which self-regulation is emphasized and thus
contributes to minimizing and privatizing regulation of capital-accumulating enterprises
(Juska et al. 2003).

The point of highlighting the drivers of HACCP implementation is to call

attention to the different position of each country in an international trading network. As

 

64 Economic rationalism is opposed to all forms of state intervention in economic life along with the idea
that free markets are inherently beneﬁcial (Pusey 1991).

98

an obligatory passage point HACCP requires that each country pass through this node in
the network. However, each country arrives at this node through a series of different
networks, with some countries bound up in larger networks that expand across greater
distances and enroll more actors into their networks than others. In international trading,
South Africa is bound up in more local networks than the four countries discussed
previously. In addition, because South Africa has not yet implemented HACCP, there are
actually two distinct issues related to HACCP as an obligatory passage point. The ﬁrst is
similar to the issue dealt with by some Western industrialized countries just discussed.
South Africa is aware of the need to adopt HACCP in order to export meat to Western
industrialized countries. However, unlike the other countries South Africa is also made
aware of HACCP because under the W.T.O. trade rules, South Africa cannot require that
meat being imported into the country be HACCP compliant unless domestically it also
uses HACCP systems. Thus, South Africa must implement a standard or set of standards
domestically before it can require that products from other countries meet these
standards.

In order to better understand the impact of HACCP on actors in South Africa, I
review in more detail some of the changes that are occurring there. South Africa is
situated in the only region of the world not expected to see an increase in per capita meat
consumption over the next decade.“ Thus, if South Africa’s red meat industry is going
to pursue growth, government and industry actors must recognize the need to adopt
HACCP (or an equivalent system) for the purposes of international trade. One report

states that, “[t]he USA is by far the most untapped export market from a South African

 

6’ The market will expand as the population increases. However, this growth will not be for higher
end/higher priced cuts of meat.

99

red meat perspective. . . . however, one of the biggest stumbling blocks at this stage is
equivalency” (NAMIC 2001).

The issue of equivalency was brought to the forefront when South African
government ofﬁcials contacted the US. in order to begin the initial process of trying to
obtain equivalency. The inquiry by SA ofﬁcials was answered with a cover letter
explaining that equivalency would be evaluated by the US. Food Safety Inspection
Service (FSIS) once South Africa had responded to ﬁve questionnaires and provided
documentation that South Africa had implemented requirements of the Pathogen
Reduction/HACCP Systems ﬁnal rule.66 The questionnaires ultimately proved to be
unanswerable in South Africa’s current situation. For example, the very ﬁrst question on
the ﬁrst questionnaire entitled “Residue Control Program” asks: “What are the total food
animal population ﬁgures for your country for each species and subspecies that is
exported to the United States?” Estimates to this question are possible, but because of
South Africa’s large informal sector, the exact number of cattle in South Africa is
unknown. As one interviewee explained, South Africa does not currently have programs
required by the US. (e.g., residue monitoring) in place and South Africa does not have
the resources to put them in place. In addition, the ﬁve questionnaires ask questions that
deal with issues well beyond equivalency for one product or one sector. For example, in
order to obtain equivalency for red meat exports, there are a series of questions that ask

about crop production.67

 

6° The “ﬁnal rule” requires all domestic U.S. establishments to implement Sanitation Standards Operating
Procedures (SSOP) and all domestic plants that slaughter cattle, swine, or poultry must test for generic
Escherichia (E. coli).

67 These questions focus on pesticide residues on crops, which could potentially end up in animal feed,
thereby producing trace amounts of the pesticide in animal carcasses.

100

Beyond very real concerns about providing safe meat to the public, hygiene and
food safety standards are also politically contentious at the international and national
levels. A statement from one conﬁdential report about hygiene standards in the South
African industry captures the complexity and the politics surrounding hygiene and food
safety debates in South Africa. The report states:

The debate over the appropriate level of hygiene standards remains a

contentious one that belies its seemingly neutral scientiﬁc basis. This is

because it hides the true reason for hygiene standards, which is not

concern for consumer welfare, but a means of exercising control over the

market. For example . . . it is used by the formal market to voice concern

over the competition provided by informal marketing channels. Aspects

of the debate have been couched in neutral terms despite the fact that they

represent crucial sites of conﬂict between very different interests.

(Conﬁdential Report)

Historically, all standards for abattoirs in South Africa were extremely rigid, with
a speciﬁc focus on the structure of the abattoir as opposed to the product. These strict
standards fell under the rubric of food safety/hygiene standards. The extreme oversight
of the structure of abattoirs was used as a control mechanism that regulated who owned
and operated an abattoir. ABACOR, the government controlled company that owned and
managed eleven large abattoirs that were built in major cities (see Appendix C),
controlled 70 percent of industry slaughters. Farmers were given a permit by the meat
control board that allowed them to slaughter a speciﬁc number of animals at a speciﬁc
abattoir. The farmer then had to pay to transport the animals from the farm to whichever
city abattoir they were assigned.68

Cheit (1990, 12), a scholar writing about safety standards, argues that “there are

some anti-competitive [standards], masquerading as safety standards, but there are also

 

68 As an aside, this gave unfettered power to control boards who could make life ﬁnancially difﬁcult for
farmers simply by assigning them to an abattoir at the opposite end of the country.

101

genuine safety standards that, although not necessarily as strict as what government
would adopt, certainly beneﬁt the diffuse interests of consumers.” Cheit’s statement
helps to explain how in the past in South Africa standards were couched under the rubric
of ensuring public safety, when in reality they were a means to control the industry by
those in positions of power. However, Cheit fails to realize that even good safety
standards can be highly politicized and occasionally anti-competitive for certain portions
of a population. During the initial trip to collect research for this study in 1998, one
South African researcher was very aware of the challenge of constructing standards that
would not disproportionately effect speciﬁc populations. She noted “people can use
standards to exclude people, especially small scale farmers. A system needs to be built
that will incorporate small-scale farmers, not exclude them” (personal communication
1998).

Today, some South African government and industry personnel recognize at least
some of the politics of hygiene standards. Haltingly, the South African government has
attempted to implement more ﬂexible hygiene standards in large part to accommodate the
informal sector. Part of this process included the initiatives put forth to deregulate the
industry. Farmers were no longer assigned to speciﬁc abattoirs and guidelines for
building and owning an abattoir were relaxed during deregulation.69 All of these factors
combined led to an explosion in the number of operating abattoirs, with a total of 450
abattoirs operating in 2000, as compared to 281 abattoirs in 1990.70 Of these, only half

voluntarily pursue classiﬁcation, but all are required to have a hygiene inspection. The

 

69 The guidelines for operation as speciﬁed in the Abattoir Hygiene Act remained in place, although
according to individual ofﬁcials involved with abattoir hygiene many new abattoir owners did not initially
understand that the Act still applied.

70 Lubbe (1992) reveals a much longer history of the increase and decline of abattoirs and the fragmented
and sometimes poor hygiene and health standards present in abattoirs.

102

abattoirs range in size from operations that slaughter one animal per week, to operations
that slaughter one-thousand animals per day.

With the increased number of abattoirs, an overall decline in government
resources for hygiene inspection, and South Africa’s adoption of neo-liberal economic
policies, the South African government in cooperation with some industry actors recently
introduced HAS (Hygiene Assessment System) to abattoirs. As mentioned in Chapter 2,
HAS is a risk based method of assessing hygiene standards as it relates to slaughtered
livestock, the people working in the plant, the premises themselves, and any other
relevant sources of possible contamination (MAFF 2000). HAS was introduced as the
beginning steps towards having the industry become more self-regulating with
government only conducting audits of operating abattoirs. In addition, HAS is seen as a
means to eliminate the subjectivity of the assessment of hygiene standards in the abattoirs
and to standardize the assessment across all regions (personal communication). South
African government ofﬁcials and some industry actors’ view HAS as a preliminary step
towards improving food safety and hygiene in the industry.

Within South Africa’s current context there is a fundamental tension between the
desire to maintain small operators (who are least likely to be prepared for HACCP
implementation) and the desire to expand export opportunities through the adoption of
HACCP. The implementation of HAS can be viewed as a compromise among competing
forces. If HACCP is adopted into law and required of all processors, small operators in
South Africa will be disproportionately negatively impacted." HACCP is expensive to

implement despite the seemingly straightforward seven principles of HACCP systems.

 

7' In the United States when HACCP became mandatory of all meat processors the government attempted
to offset the burden to small and medium processors by extending the deadline by which the smaller to
medium size operations had to achieve compliance.

103

Larger ﬁrms have more capital needed to invest in meeting standards and unlike small to
medium processors, large processors do not experience new regulations as a major
increase in the cost of production (Dunn, forthcoming). However, as stated previously,
South Africa has extra reason to be concerned with not harming small to medium
processors. With extreme inequality and severe unemployment in the formal sector,
South Africa’s government has a vested interest in maintaining small to medium
processors. Thus, a “paradigm shift” has been asked of inspectors and the industry.72
According to government ofﬁcials and inspectors, the paradigm shift has involved
a shift to a more holistic approach to the meat commodity chain. The shift to a holistic
focus can be seen in the name given to the new legislation, the Meat Safety Act of 2000,
as opposed to the legislation it replaces entitled the Abattoir Hygiene Act of 1994. A part
of this holistic focus is a move away from standards as strictly a pass/fail measure to an
acceptance of differences between processors and retailers and the clientele they serve.
One inspector labeled it “relative standards” with the explanation that the fast food chain
selling R20 million (approximately $2.5 million) should be held accountable for more
hygiene and food safety standards (in part, due to the increased complexity of a system
set up to feed so many more people) than the individual selling street food earning R 20
(approximately $2.50) a week. In addition, inspectors have been asked to recognize
establishments that are always striving to improve within the constraints of the
environment in which they operate. As might be expected this paradigm shift has not
been an easy accomplishment and the policy has received harsh criticisms of favoritism,

especially from processors and retailers who are in full compliance with the law.

 

72 Several interviewees, especially people working in the government, used this phrase. Interestingly, it
was Kuhn (1962) in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions who is generally acknowledged as the person
who coined this phrase.

104

Another example of what has been asked of inspectors can be found in the ofﬁcial
red meat inspectors’ handbook that states that larger slaughterhouses are to be held
accountable for higher (or tougher) requirements. The reason for needing higher
requirements in bigger abattoirs is because “higher throughput enlarges the risk of
contamination” (NDA 2000, 8). While this statement seems logical, it poses a paradox
for South Africa as it strives to become HACCP compliant. As mentioned previously,
due to the capital and organizational resources needed for HACCP implementation, there
is a tendency for further vertical integration and concentration to occur in an industry as
HACCP is adopted.” The increased vertical integration ironically contributes to the
increased possibility that one small problem (e. g., one carcass contaminated with E. Coli
0157:H7), affects a much larger quantity of meat. This brings us to the critiques of
HACCP and the consequences of HACCP as an “obligatory passage point” for South
Africa.

Juska et al. (2003) call attention to the fact that the actual number of carcasses that
have been infected since testing under HACCP guidelines began in the US. has declined
while the number of human infections traced to E. coli 0157: H7 has increased. What this
suggests is that rather than there being a problem of too many infected carcasses, the
problem appears to be that it only takes one infected carcass to affect a much larger
quantity of meat. Currently, one hamburger contains meat from approximately 1000
different carcasses in the United States (Schlosser 2001). Thus, if one carcass is
contaminated with E.coli, but it is ground up during mass processing of hamburger meat

the contamination spreads to a much larger quantity of meat. Supporting this point is the

 

73 Vertical integration and concentration are already underway in South Africa’s red meat industry; the
implementation of HACCP promotes these structural changes.

105

increase in the quantity of meat that is recalled each year in the US. Since HACCP
implementation the largest meat recalls (in tons of meat) in the history of the US. have
occurred.“ Juska et a1. (2003) maintain HACCP is much more focused on ﬁxing non-
human actors like E. coli and Salmonella as opposed to ﬁxing the “system” which
structures non-human and human actors in such away that the number of food safety
outbreaks has increased. Juska et al. (2003, 15) conclude:

This solution [of adopting HACCP] is costly and most likely will run

small slaughterhouses out of business, [and] is explicitly premised on the

belief that “larger ﬁrms have better resources to control the environment” .

. . . HACCP is likely to contribute to increasing concentration and

coordination among and between the largest packers and feeders - thus

reproducing the very conditions we believe amplify problems of beef

contamination.

Paradoxically, HACCP (or its equivalent), operating as the standard that must be
adopted by countries and their industries in order to trade internationally, ignores the fact
that the current structure of the South African red meat industry is quantitatively and
qualitatively different from the structure of the US. industry or any other Western
industrialized country. The most obvious difference between the US. and SA industry is
the size of the two industries. Although moving towards vertical integration and
concentration in the industry, South Africa is nowhere near the levels of concentration
and vertical integration of the US. Thus, structurally one infected carcass coming out of

a South African abattoir is not likely to impact as large a quantity of meat as is the case in

the us.”

 

7’ Nineteen million pounds of beef were recalled on July 19, 2002. This was the second largest beef (third
overall if poultry is included) recall in US. history (Becker 2002b).

75 This argument is true as long as South Africa’s industry remains primarily domestic. If the industry does
increase export production and/or they become more vertically integrated, then the risk of contamination
due to one infected carcass becomes greater (i.e., the mass processing of carcasses originating from
multiple sources).

106

Also related to the size of each country’s industry is the difference between the
U.S.’s and South Africa’s slaughter lines in the abattoirs. Even the largest South African
abattoirs have line speeds and slaughter volumes that are less than the US. A fast line
speed encourages the possibility of accidents on the slaughter line, which contributes to
contamination of carcasses. A meat packing plant in the US. may employ more than
2000 workers and slaughter over 4000 head of cattle per day (Gouveia and Juska 2002).
In South Africa the largest slaughterhouses only slaughter 1000 head of cattle per day,
with the vast majority of the 450 abattoirs slaughtering anywhere from 0 to 300 head per
day.

A third difference between the two industries is the operation of domestic and
export networks. In the US. the export and domestic beef industry operate in tandem.
This is generally the case for most western, industrialized countries, although (referring
to Figure 4.1) a few countries have a slightly greater emphasis on their export markets
(e. g., Canada and Australia). However, in South Africa, domestic production and export
production are at the moment separate (with the exception of a few of the largest feedlots
that are producing for both markets). The gulf grows even wider if the informal sector is
brought into the discussion. Thus, standards in the US. are more or less applied across
the entire industry, whereas in South Africa a person would be hard pressed to apply the
same standard across all three networks. The questionnaire provided by the US. for
evaluating South Africa’s HACCP system or an equivalent system is in many ways
predicated on the idea of agriculture in the country operating within one uniﬁed network.

There is a fourth possible difference between South Africa, the US, and other

Western industrialized livestock operations that needs to be further investigated and that

107

is biological and zoological differences. The case of South Africa is potentially very
similar to the case of Poland adopting international standards. Dunn (forthcoming)
remarks that in Poland the high levels of poverty and fragmentation of the farming
system substantially reduce the risk of many of the diseases that plague the commercial,
industrial livestock sector in Western industrialized countries, such as BSE and FMD.
This is due to the fact that the points where contamination could occur are much more
fragmented. For example in the case of FMD, an infected cow that stays out in the ﬁeld
by itself never has the opportunity to infect another cloven-hoofed animal. In South
Africa FMD does occur and it does spread; however, it has been suggested that the way it
spreads might be different from FMD cases in the UK or other parts of Europe possibly
due to differences in weather, animal conﬁnement, or some other unknown factors
(personal communication). Obviously, more tests need to be done to further understand
these points.

Finally, there is a difference between consumers in Western industrialized
countries and in South Africa. In South Africa, the average family spends approximately
31 percent of its income on food, with 40 percent of the population spending over 57
percent of its income on food (May et al. 2000). In the United States, the average amount
of family income that is spent on food is approximately 10 percent. This implies a
signiﬁcant difference in the amount that consumers are able to pay for food. The
implementation and maintenance of HACCP standards costs money. Several South
Africans commented that high costs are associated with HACCP implementation with

very little return in the short term. These high costs must be borne by someone within

108

agri-food systems, and due to the economic situation of the majority of South Africans, it
is not likely to be consumers who are able to offset the costs associated with HACCP.

However, for all of the differences, there are points where the US. and South
African industries converge and these points are not “ﬁxed” by HACCP. Similar to the
US, there are poor labor relations between management and workers in the abattoirs and
processing plants in South Africa. In addition, pay is very low. Both of these factors
contribute to high turnover rates among all workers, including managers. With such high
turnover line workers and management tend to be poorly trained. As long as abattoirs
remain labor intensive, abattoir personnel are key participants in maintaining hygiene and
food safety standards in the abattoirs.76

Ultimately, in order to comply with HACCP South Africa’s industry must change
its structure. Thus, standards that are designed to suit speciﬁc purposes actually can
contribute to changing structures to make them better “ﬁt” the standard. This discussion
has sought to reveal that, as South Africa continues towards HACCP adoption, there are
speciﬁc actors in South Africa’s network who will suffer negative consequences,
including smaller processors and poorer consumers who are overwhelmingly black South
Africans. Dunn’s conclusions about Poland’s adoption of international standards should
be considered in the case of South Africa. Dunn (forthcoming, 21) writes that, “in the
rhetoric of standards, the risk that Poland’s [and South Africa’s] current SPS pose to
consumers and animal health is overestimated. At the same time, the costs that SPS pose

in terms of farmers’ livelihoods have been underestimated.”

 

7" While recognizing that individuals are important, the focus should remain on the structure of the industry
and the problems inherent in the structure.

109

Conclusion

A discussion of quality and hygiene standards is not simply about the West’s meat
preferences for tender meat or hygiene standards extending out to “other” regions of the
world. Industrial meat production is clearly grounded in distinct material conditions, and
likewise, food habits and preferences are locally situated and interact with a variety of
historical, economic, and cultural factors that create diverse outcomes. By focusing on a
speciﬁc region and the actors within that region, a more complex understanding of
contradictory processes of globalization can be had.

Some actors in South Africa are actively supporting the pursuit of tender meat and
HACCP implementation, both of which encourage trends in concentration and
centralization. These actors tend to be large feedlot producers, large retailers, and wealthy
consumers. However, as should be obvious from the discussion in this chapter, many
other actors, particularly previously disenfranchised groups, do not beneﬁt from the
production of tender meat or the implementation of HACCP. There are some local
initiatives underway to offset the impact of standards and standardization.

At the provincial government level, several provinces have implemented policies
or laws that are more accommodating to small participants. In one region the policies led
to the establishment of over 150 abattoirs that are only large enough to slaughter one
animal per day. The establishment of these abattoirs encourages the production and
distribution of meat that is more suited to local preferences, while also helping to ensure

the meat has been handled in a manner that ensures food safety.

110

In Durban (one of South Africa’s largest cities) local health inspectors have
modiﬁed the standards to facilitate the establishment of informal meat traders and to ease
the burden of regulation on an already strained government system. Durban has
approximately 7900 informal food traders, with only four inspectors to enforce food
safety and hygiene standards. For meat sellers, the inspectors implemented an education
program that encourages just-in-time preparation. All informal perishable food sellers
participate in a workshop that teaches venders about waiting to prepare the food until it is
ordered or just before a lunch hour rush. By encouraging just-in-time production, health
inspectors are reducing the risk of food spoilage and contamination that occur due to
problems associated with food being kept at a ambient temperature for too long a time.
Thus the safety inspectors argue they are achieving HACCP principles through
identifying and controlling critical control points. In this instance safety inspectors have
renegotiated HACCP principles to better ﬁt the context.

In addition, Durban’s city inspectors also changed laws so as to accommodate the
slaughter of animals at individuals’ homes for ceremonial purposes. This again will help
to ensure the continued existence of diversity in meat preferences among some
consumers in urban areas. All of the above cases are examples of policy changes that
will ensure the continued existence of retailers and consumers that are not a part of the
broader process of concentration and centralization.

For previously disenfranchised actors the continued development of local
initiatives within some areas of South Africa provides new opportunities and alternative

visions for future agri-food networks.77 While none of the local initiatives just mentioned

 

77 This supports Bonanno et al.’s (1994) point that regulation of the global agri-food system is most likely
to occur at the transnational or regional/local level, not at the national level.

111

will bring a halt to the pursuit of tender meat and HACCP implementation (as recognized
by dominant beef trading countries), these local initiatives create spaces of resistance and
alternative practices. National and international bodies regulating global trade would do
well to follow the lead of local South African ofﬁcials. That is, local ofﬁcials have
developed practices and standards that incorporate the ethics, politics, and history of a
region, which requires acknowledging who beneﬁts and who loses economically and

socially from the adoption of speciﬁc standards.

112

CHAPTER 5

Deﬁning Consumers in a Changing Industry

Up until this point the focus of this work has primarily been on the production
aspects of red meat. We now turn to a discussion of another group of actors in the red
meat commodity network: consumers and issues of consumption. This chapter begins
with a brief review of the growing literature on production-consumption linkages in agri-
food studies. Building on this literature, different categorizations of how industry

participants discuss consumers in South Africa will be presented. The development and

.‘n... l- '

analysis of the categories emanating from industry perspectives about consumers

 

highlights the importance of listening to how industry actors speak of consumers.
Finally, conclusions are drawn about the consequences for how consumers are described
among industry participants.

There are moments during ﬁeldwork when a researcher experiences the
excitement of discovering unexpected relationships and ﬁndings, yet is puzzled about
how to explain these ﬁndings. The data for this chapter are situated at the center of these
two emotions. For these reasons this chapter is data driven. Of the ﬁrst sixty-seven
interviews conducted with members of the red meat commodity chain, all but three
mentioned the South African consumer and/or consumption trends. 78 However, the
questionnaire used for the interviews did not have a direct question that explicitly dealt
with consumers or consumption. In total, sixty-four of the ﬁrst sixty-seven interviewees

mentioned consumers without prompting from the interviewer. Generally, consumers

 

78 After the sixty-seventh interview, the questionnaire was modiﬁed slightly. Of the sixty-seven interviews,
ﬁve were conducted with people who work for consumer organizations or are concerned with consumer
issues. The majority of the ﬁrst sixty-seven people interviewed were white males (n: 57), which is
consistent with the make up of the commercial red meat industry as a whole.

113

were ﬁrst mentioned in response to a question that asked industry participants their views
about the driving forces behind changing standards in the industry. After interviewees
would reference consumers as the reason changes were occurring in the industry,
interviewees were encouraged to elaborate on who they meant by “consumers.” The
follow-up question often generated perplexed stares from the interviewees or responses
that simply restated assertions about the vague category “consumers.” With such an
overwhelming number of people referencing consumer demand, it appears that any
researcher interested in standards in an agri-food industry has to attempt to gain a better
understanding of the relationship between standards, standardization within an industry,
and consumers. Confronted with this complex interrelation, Lockie (2002, 278) asks:
“[W]ho are the apparently sovereign ‘consumers’ . . . and how do they place ‘demands’?
Is the ‘invisible mouth’ of ‘the consumer’ to replace Adam Smith’s mysterious ‘invisible
hand’?”

Ultimately, this chapter is built around the comments made by members of the red
meat commodity network about consumers. By beginning to understand industry
perspectives about consumers, light is shed on the way the industry is structured for and
by South African consumers. To borrow from Marsden et al. (2000, 3) the themes that
emerge about South African consumers will “implicate and inﬂuence the provision of
foods and the provision of choices of food the consumer is offered.” However, as this
chapter will show, consumers are bound-up in the provisioning of food and thus, some

consumers are agents in shaping the agri-food network.

114

Literature Review

Within the theoretical literature, sociology and the broader social sciences have
historically been production-focused with minimal attention given to consumption
(Campbell 1995; Marsden et al. 2000; Miller 1995). Within agri-food studies production
and consumption tend to be treated as dichotornized ﬁelds of study, with rural
sociologists studying production and food studies covering topics of consumption
(Goodman 2002, Friedland 2001, Lockie and Kitto 2000, Marsden et al. 2000).

Despite having shown in the previous chapter that a focus on producing tender
meat within industrial production requires organizing and taming the entire process —
involving everything from the genetic make-up of the animal to how a piece of meat is
cooked - rural sociologists have primarily focused solely on aspects of production.
Agricultural commodity studies have been especially production-focused and structural
in form, often failing to recognize key actors within a commodity chain (Arce and
Marsden 1993; Long and Villarreal 1998). When attention is given to consumption and
consumers within agri-food studies these studies are critiqued for keeping the category
consumer as an amorphous whole, without delving into the complexity associated with
production-consumption linkages (Friedland 2001; Goodman and Dubois 2001).

In addition, studies that have focused on the changing structure of agricultural
production have primarily focused on North American agriculture. Arce and Marsden
(1993) assert that a political economic food system approach, while encouraging the
study of change in North American agriculture, has given insufﬁcient attention to the
cultural, political, and economic diversity existing in developing countries. Much of the

previous political economic food studies literature, to which Arce and Marsden refer, was

115

grounded in a period when political representation of producer interests in industrialized,
Northern countries dominated. For a variety of reasons, including the increasing
importance of global trade, privatization of agricultural technologies, and retailer
concentration, a shift occurred beginning in the 1980s to a more consumerist orientation
in policy development followed by a similar shift in academic research (e. g., Edwards
2000; Gaberiel and Lang 1995; Gotdiener 2000; Gronow and Warde 2001).

Separate from the literature focusing on the changing structure of agriculture are
food studies. Within sociology, much of the food studies literature on consumption is
really the study of consumerism, such as the formation of tastes and links between status
and purchasing (Marsden 2000; Warde 1990). Of particular importance to this research
project are food studies that have focused on red meat. Red meat has been explored from
the consumerist perspective with the recognition that meat can signify certain class and
gender qualities about the person who consumes it (Adam 1990, Lupton 1996). For
example, certain cuts or types of meat are associated with higher or lower status and, in
turn, with people of a particular class background. Filet mignon (higher status meat) and
mince meat (lower status meat) are examples of two different cuts of meat that people
associate with different status positions. The different statuses that people associate with
differing types of meat is in part related to the higher and lower price of each cut of meat.
In addition, because class and race are tightly interwoven in South Africa, meat
consumption (i.e., types of meat and ways of consuming meat) tends to have racial

signiﬁcance. For example, historically Europeans viewed beef forequarters as inferior to

116

beef hindquarters (refer to Wylie 2001: 109). In South Africa black consumers primarily
buy beef forequarters, whereas white consumers primarily buy beef hindquarters.79

In reference to gender, Lupton (1996) notes that red meat is generally associated
with men and manliness, while ﬁsh and vegetables are associated with females and
femininity. As further support to the gendered ideas surrounding meat, a study conducted
in the 19803 that looked at ﬁfty different forms of work in 186 countries found only
fourteen activities that were performed strictly by men in almost all societies. One of
these fourteen forms of work was the butchering of animals (Mosse 1993). Within South
Africa, red meat production and slaughtering are considered masculine activities,
regardless of race. In addition, those who purchase meat for immediate consumption at
roadside stands or at urban butcher stores (which usually offer a means to cook the meat
self-service style) are primarily black males.80

More recently, agri-food studies have attempted to improve upon production-
consumption linkages (Goodman 2002; Goodman and DuPuis 2002; Gouveia and Juska
2002; Lockie 2002; Lockie and Kitto 2000; Marsden et al. 2000). Central to gaining a
better understanding of why consumers are identiﬁed as important in changing standards
are two signiﬁcant shifts that have occurred in agri-food networks. First, there has been
an economic and political shift in supply chains from strong representation of producer
interests in agricultural policies (and public interest regulation) to food manufacturer and

retailer strength in food chains (and private interest regulation) (Marsden et al. 2000;

 

79 Usually the hindquarter costs more than the forequarter. However, during the time of this research the
price of forequarters surpassed hindquarters. According to several interviewees this was the ﬁrst time this
had ever happened.

80 The history of employment opportunities for black South Africans has contributed to the creation of large
numbers of gendered spaces, with more men occupying public spaces and more women occupying
primarily private (i.e., household) spaces.

117

I Fiﬂ‘fcr-‘a‘mm

Miller 1995). For example, since 1984 in the United States, the real price of a market
basket of food has increased by 2.8%, while the farm value of that food has fallen by
35.7% (Taylor 1999). The declining farm value of food appears to be a global trend, as
does the increasing concentration among food retailers (Reardon et al. 1999;
Weatherspoon and Reardon 2003). The shift to privatization and concentration has seen
an increase in the use of private industry standards for maintaining food safety, hygiene,
and quality above the govemment-mandated standards. As agri-food networks have
shifted more towards private regulation of standards, the State increasingly acts as a
backstop to try to maintain basic safety standards (Dunn forthcoming; Marsden et al.
2002). However, the state’s ability to effectively act as a backstop, especially within
transitional governments like South Africa, is questionable (refer to Chapter 2 for an
elaboration on this topic).

The second trend, very much related to the increasing power of food retailers, is
an increasing emphasis on “consumers,” rather than citizens, interest and choice.
Generally, the term citizen can be viewed as a political concept and consumer as an
economic concept (Gaberiel and Lang 1995; Marsden et al. 2000). Marsden et al. (2000)
argue that the increasing use of the term consumer rather than citizen reﬂects the shift
from public (government) regulation to private (industry) regulation. More than just a
change of language, the way members behave in the supply chain is directed by this shift
in emphasis. Citizenship rights are about forms of entitlement and these forms of
entitlement mean citizens have certain expectations of the state (Marsden et al. 2000).8|

Historically, within welfare states the role of government was to ensure freedom from

 

8' Of course, the state does not treat all citizens the same. Historically, this was especially true in South
Africa, where the government went so far as to designate a majority of the population as non-citizens.

118

want through the provision of affordable and safe food (Gabriel and Lang 1995; Marsden
et al. 2000; Wilska 2001). According to Marsden et al. (2000), the rise of the importance
of consumers has tended to undermine the traditional role of the state and led to the
construction of more privatized (and differentiated) forms of rights to food provision.

Ultimately, privatization can have very different consequences for consumers.
Food retailers’ abilities to regulate supply chains are variable, as is their willingness to
develop food standards above state baselines. In the context of food safety and quality
standards food retailers will differ in the level of standards they choose to adopt and
maintain. For example, some stores opt to track meat products from the farm to the plate,
while other stores remain unaware of where the meat they sell originates. Therefore,
consumers’ ability to “choose” where they shop (choice might be based on store
availability/accessibility, price concerns, or store preference, etc.) means consumers
enjoy differentiated rights to food quality (Marsden et a1. 2000). This implies a different
deﬁnition of rights. More and more, through the use of money, consumers’ ability to pay
differentiates consumers’ rights to participate in a certain way of life (Gabriel and Lang
1995; Wilska 2001).

Marsden et al.’s (2000, 45) work focuses on rights to consumption or “those
entitlements that help to structure the choices that consumers make.” From Marsden and
his colleagues’ perspective it is important to understand how food choices for consumers
are created through the activities of retailers, food manufacturers and all actors in the
agri-food system. However, Lockie and Kitto (2000) argue that Marsden remains
focused on the structure of agriculture and ignores how consumers are active participants

in shaping the agri-food networks within which they exist. Following the lead of Lockie

119

(2002), this chapter utilizes ANT (Actor Network Theory) as a means to identify
consumers as relational and performed categories. Within ANT, relational materiality
means that consumers achieve their form as a consequence of the relations in which they
are located (Law 1999). Similarly, consumers are performed in, by, and through these
relations. Thus, the consumer only takes shape in relation to the entire agri-food network
and only through the performance of everyone in the network. Utilizing these ideas from
ANT combined with the ideas of liberationist science studies, especially those of Sandra
Harding (1991), offer the opportunity to promote a more dynamic vision of consumers.

This is a point to which I will return at the conclusion of this chapter.

Methodological Comment

Before reviewing the categories of consumers a few methodological comments
are needed. Key actors in the industry operate with a series of assumptions about
consumers, many of which are not made explicit. In many ways, industry actors’
assumptions exemplify Schutz’s (1973) concept of the “natural attitude.” That is,
humans function on a daily basis by creating “typiﬁcations” of the world around them.
Typiﬁcations allow people to go through daily routines assuming and expecting that other
people and things will act in a particular manner. The “natural attitude” allows humans
to simplify what could be a very complex process of interaction with the world around
one’s self. Thus, the “natural attitude” of daily life is that we engage in typiﬁcation for
the purposes at hand. Any change in the purposes at hand may induce us to be interested

in a different set of details about an object.

120

Schutz’s typiﬁcation should not be confused with the stereotyping of people.
Whereas typiﬁcation of people occurs on a daily basis (perhaps by noting their unique
characteristics of relevance for the purposes at hand), typiﬁcation does not automatically
attach pejorative meaning to characteristics in the manner that stereotyping usually does.
In addition, typiﬁcation of people tends to occur along multiple categories, whereas
stereotypes tend to create binary categories, e.g., us/them, good/bad, etc.82 Most
importantly, typiﬁcation is the way we know the world, while stereotyping stops us from
or inhibits our ability to know the world. Schutz’s (1973, xlvi) discussion of the common
sense world means that the social scientist’s task is to reconstruct “the way in which men
in daily life interpret their own world.” This chapter is directed at this task. The
identiﬁed categories of consumers summarize how industry participants talk about South
African consumers. Each category discussed below contains some stereotypical
viewpoints. Thus, one goal of this chapter to tease out the stereotypes expressed within
each category. While industry actors’ typiﬁcation of consumers may beneﬁt the industry
and consumers by helping to organize markets in a predictable manner on a daily basis,
stereotypes of South African consumers will undoubtedly harm some consumers and
possibly the industry.”

Of course, there are some individuals in the industry who conduct surveys in
order to construct an image of consumers. However, even the surveys and other
marketing tools are built upon embedded assumptions about consumers. Kover (1967),

one of the earliest scholars to identify this fact within the ﬁeld of marketing, draws upon

 

82 Stuart Hall (1996) discusses the use of binary opposites in stereotypes.

83 Many of the stereotypes that exist in the industry have been cultivated over many years and are bolstered
by hegemonic beliefs and views that have had signiﬁcant material investment at least as early as European
settlement in South Africa. Therefore, doing away with false stereotypes can be a complex and lengthy
process (Said 1995).

121

Weber’s recognition of the endless complexity of social reality to explain that for any
study of human behavior to take place, a model human must be constructed in order to
simplify the complex. He writes, “all models have one thing in common: they describe
some basic behaviors, needs, or situations and make the assumption that ‘this is really
what man [sic] is like’” (Kover 1967, 129). Thus, actors in the red meat commodity
chain who operate in the market must believe in the existence of “the” consumer.
However, “the” consumer has not been constructed as an explicit, agreed upon model
within the industry. Rather, like Schutz’s description of typiﬁcation, how the industry
views consumers only emerges through an analysis of statements and actions made by

people in the industry about consumers, the topic to which I now turn.

Categorizing Consumers

The following categorizations of consumers are developed based on the
comments made by all the interviewees involved in this study. The interviews were
coded “consumer” each time reference was made to consumers in the course of the
interview. All consumer comments were collected and further coded into categories
based on similarities between respondent comments. In total, ﬁve main categories were
identiﬁed. The ﬁve categories are: (1) the female consumer; (2) consumers in need of
education; (3) educated consumers; (4) race and the consumer; and (5) ambivalent
consumers. The development of distinct consumer categories allows for the construction
of perspectives or beliefs that are dominant within the industry without the industry
having an explicit agreement or necessarily being cognizant of these consumer templates.

Each category is discussed in detail below. Included are some of the apparent

122

contradictions inherent within each category. A theoretically driven analysis follows the
discussion of the largely descriptive development of consumer categories.
The Female Consumer

A constant theme throughout the interviews was reference to “the” consumer as a
female. One interview that best captures this was held with an executive of a large retail

chain in South Africa. Throughout the interview the executive referred to consumers in

the feminine, such as, “yes, the consumer, she will determine which stores survive.” This t
same retail store conducts market surveys on a regular basis. When asked about the 5
number of women versus men who shop at their stores, the senior manager responded i
that forty percent of their customers are male. However, he continued on to say that they if:

assume most of the men in the store are stopping by on their way home from work with a
grocery list prepared by their wives. Otherwise, if the male is doing the shopping on his
own, then he is most likely buying the meat for the braai, which is the South African
equivalent of a US. cookout.84 Therefore, this retail chain operates on the assumption
that regardless of the gender of the person who is physically in the store, it is still
ultimately the female who is doing the primary shopping. This is an example of an
interesting twist on the idea of the disembodied consumer — a consumer that is discussed
as an abstract subject whose choices are not mediated by the historical, political or
symbolic signiﬁcance of daily life (Kaw 1994).

The industry tends to typify the customer as being female, despite the physical

presence of males in the store. However, an apparent contradiction emerges when it is

 

8" The braai in South Africa does cross racial lines, but it is generally associated with white males and large
quantities of meat. If a braai is held, males are always in charge of grilling the meat, while the females
oversee salad preparations, etc. If there are only men having a braai, without women involved, it is not
uncommon to simply eat meat, with no salads.

123

recognized that the actual consumption of red meat is overwhelmingly associated with
men and masculinity (Adams 1999; 1994). Assuming South Africa is not an outlier,
Fiddes (1991) notes that around the world meat is associated with strength and
aggression, traits often assigned to men. In addition, there is also a long history of
Western women (particularly white, upper-class) subscribing to Victorian ideals which
suggested women should not eat meat due to the frailty of their digestive systems and the
immoral acts that might be encouraged by meat eating, such as sexual development and
activity (Brumberg 1997). Finally, around the world meat avoidance is more common
among women (Fiddes 1991).

There is also the additional fact that while females around the world are primarily
responsible for feeding their families, women do not necessarily have complete control
over the ﬂow of food into a family (McIntosh and Zey 1989). Most people interviewed in
the industry seem to miss the idea that men may have some say in the meat purchasing
decisions of women. However, it is interesting to note that there were several pictures
featured in the old South African Meat Board newsletters that suggests men are
minimally recognized as consumers of the product, albeit in a somewhat indirect manner
(refer to Appendix D). The photo pictured refers to men as consumers of women and

thereby consumers of meat.

Consumers in Need of Education
Along with the belief in consumers as female, there is a widespread belief among
people in the industry that consumers need to be educated, either about food safety, meat

quality, or carcass classiﬁcation. Statements that reveal the perspective of needing to

124

«h.- I'm:

educate consumers include: “we need to educate the consumer to be critical of what she
buys, with more emphasis on food safety,” or “consumers are ignorant of grades,
especially pork — they just go to the butcher and ask for pork, not a grade. Educating the
housewife costs a lot of money, something the industry does not have.” Related to this,
the female consumer is discussed in a manner that suggests she is unsophisticated in her
thinking; and the details may be too complex for her to comprehend. Statements were
made such as, the “quality of the product needs to be communicated to the consumer in a
very simple way,” or “the customer needs educating in the store.”

Statements about educating consumers prove to be contradictory in at least two
ways. First, when purchasing meat, there are very few indicators to guide the customer in
the store. The two primary indicators are the price and the way the meat looks. Thus,
unless retailers are prepared to equip stores with microscopes, swab tests, and scientists,
or more realistically provide more detailed labels that can give consumers more
information regarding the safety and quality of the meat, then it is not clear what more
consumers need to understand when purchasing meat. Of course, once consumers
prepare the meat, they can then refer to other factors, such as taste, tenderness, and
whether the product made them sick; but these are all things that occur after the point of
purchase.

As for understanding the carcass classiﬁcation system, once the animal has been
cut into pieces, the inspection stamp (which is stamped only once on each quarter of the
animal and certiﬁes the carcass is not diseased) and the rollermark (that classiﬁes or
grades the carcass) are for the most part not visible to consumers. Thus, even if

consumers understand the classiﬁcation system, there is a continued need to trust the

125

butcher or store manager that the animal has been inspected and classiﬁed as whichever
category consumers think they are receiving. In addition, as elaborated on in the previous
chapter with respect to classiﬁcation, there has yet to be a system that ensures a particular
classiﬁcation or grade will give consumers tender and tasty meat. Worldwide, the meat
industry continues to struggle to predict how meat at the point of slaughter will turn out at

the point of consumption.85

Educated Consumers

The second contradiction in educating consumers is that these statements were
often preceded or followed by statements about the market being consumer driven, or
letting the consumer decide. Letting the consumer decide ranged from decisions on
hygiene and food safety to what products consumers would choose to eat. For hygiene
and food safety there were statements such as, “Hygiene is always a problem; consumers
must check-up on and police the systems themselves. It is up to consumers to check up
on her local retailers and complain if they see a problem,” and “consumers now want to
know what they have on their plate; previously they did not care, but now they want to
know.” For the types of products desired some retailers indicated, “the customer will tell
them when it is time to remove the other sausages from the shelf. What they purchase
will decide.” Interestingly, the same person who said this also stated, “you can sell
anything you want to the consumer, but what about what the consumer wants?” This

perspective treats consumers as well informed and a potentially powerful part of the

 

8’ In the early 19605 Campbell’s Soup Company sponsored an international symposium solely on the topic
improving the tenderness of meat (Pearson 1963).

126

4-r...rn‘,~_- ‘

'7. 1': . :14

Qt! .0“:an '?

production/consumption nexus, while the previous perspective viewed consumers in a

much different light.

Race and the Consumer
The above statements about the un/educated consumer were often made with an

additional reference to race. For example, “It is difﬁcult to educate the white housewife;

 

it is even more difﬁcult to educate the black housewife. The black housewife cannot 1?
read, etc., so it is harder to reach and teach her.” For some there is recognition that race
and class are becoming decoupled in the South African market. For example, one person

said, “the consumer is driving the process. It use to be the white consumer, now it is the :._

middle and upper-class consumer, which is not speciﬁc to race.” However, for a vast
majority of interviewees, race continues to signify difference in the meat industry.
Difference includes levels of education, types of meat or meat products preferred, and
perceptions about the level of food safety and quality consciousness. Some of the
differences were stated simply as fact, such as that the black population consumes the
majority of beef forequarters in the country, while the white population consumes the
majority of beef hindquarters. On the other hand, interviewees often made unsupported
statements about differences, which were blatantly discriminatory toward black South
Africans.

The overwhelming derogatory point of difference identiﬁed between whites and
blacks is the belief that blacks are less concerned with meat safety and quality.
Statements that portray this point include, “in the black townships they buy meat that is

infected with ﬂies, and they do not care.” More subtle statements that imply racial and

127

racist differences include “in the rural communities people have no concept of food
safety,” and “the normal housewife is so happy just to provide her family with food, that
not only would she not notice hygiene standards in a butchery, she would not even care.”
Of course, these statements fail to account for the ways in which some consumers were
historically excluded from commercial red meat networks, thereby limiting some

people’s access to meat. During apartheid there were regulated and unregulated areas for

meat classiﬁcation. In general, black consumers of South Africa were marginalized 5
(either by physical proximity or because the price of meat prohibited purchase) from the i
formal, regulated meat markets and they were largely ignored. Here again we see :
industry participants utilizing the disembodied consumer who makes choices without 3;—

reference to historical circumstances, symbolic meaning or political signiﬁcance (Kaw
1994). Even if those interviewed were to recognize the impact of the structure of the
industry historically, there still remains the discriminatory stereotypical assumption that
blacks, especially those who are poor and/or in rural areas, do not care about hygiene and
quality.

Of course, the consumers under consideration do not allow themselves to be
endlessly created to suit the purposes of the industry. Based on observations and
interviews with people who have interaction with black consumers (e.g., butchers with a
primarily black clientele, rural training specialists, etc.) the micropolitics of consumption
reveals evidence that poorer, rural, and less educated segments of the population are
concerned with meat safety/hygiene, and quality. For example, offal is generally

associated in South Africa as being a part of the poor black person’s diet.86 Anyone

 

86 Of course, this varies, with speciﬁc parts of offal considered as delicacies. However, in general, offal is
viewed as an inexpensive protein for poorer people.

128

involved with offal sales in the industry knows that they dramatically decline during the
summer months. There are two main reasons for this. First, offal tends to be used in
stews and soups, which is generally a winter food and second, without proper cooling
facilities offal tends to " go off" or become rancid quickly. At a very basic level this is an
indication that the poorer populations do indeed have an awareness of food quality and
safety.

Related to the racial differences that were noted among consumers was reference

I. Hal-3“ has?“
I .l

to South Africa as a First and Third World country. One person noted that the big retail ‘

stores all have First World standards and they are expanding, while the other people’s

 

standards in the industry (independent butchers, bush slaughtering, and farm slaughters)

qrrﬁ.

have dropped, and they are Third World standards. This metaphor was used many times
throughout the interviews, and in some respects does well in describing the signiﬁcant
economic disparities found in South Africa. However, usually within the First
World/Third World dichotomy is a racialized message. First world is equated with white,
western, civilized customs, while Third World is associated with black, uncivilized and

ignorant traditions.

Ambivalent Consumers?

A ﬁnal category identiﬁed is ambivalent consumers. Several interviewees
recognize consumers as not having a lot of power or as simply unaware of other options.
One person involved with organizing the retail sector stated, “The consumer in South
Africa is not formally organized and for the groups that are organized they have an

interest, but it is slanted and weak. In addition, food and food standards rank very low

129

among all the other concerns held by consumers. Consumers just assume that things on
the shelf are good and safe.”

One industry person went on at length about consumers. Finally, when asked if
the consumer is really important, he replied, “No, it would be nice if they were important.
Consumers are such a controversial group. Lip service is paid to consumers. Now
consumer groups are always on to issues.” Several in the industry referred to ways they
need to change consumers, e.g., “we need to convince lower income groups that they
want to consume pork” or “we are teaching the consumer the right way to buy meat.”
However, the category "ambivalent consumer" might also be called the powerless
consumer. If the comments from people in the industry are to be believed, then one is
left wondering if consumers have any power.

With the recognition of an ambivalent consumer, it would seem that consumers
would be differentiated in South Africa (and perhaps globally) according to her/his ability
to pay. For example, one long time researcher of the South African red meat industry
said, “niche markets will exist for higher standards products in South Africa. In the US,
the consumer expects quality and meat is in excess, so they are unwilling to pay more,
whereas here, meat is in shortage and therefore, if you want higher standards, then you
will have to pay a higher price. Because all meat will sell regardless of standards, up to a
point.” Several people spoke of niche market consumers, which meant consumers who
are willing to pay more for some special feature or quality. With the niche market
concept in mind, perhaps it is possible that South Africa has both ambivalent and
powerless consumers. Ambivalent consumers who have the money could demand

through their purchasing power that their wants be fulﬁlled; however, they do not. Poor

130

rth: 1 '-—._"'7"'.""'TT ”lxv'... _.‘_q

consumers, on the other hand, are likely to have limited purchasing power and thereby,

have limited ability to require that their demands are met.

Interpretation of the Categories
So what exactly does “the consumer” mean? One approach is to recognize that

the question is only signiﬁcant within a speciﬁc population of study. In other words, to

p
refer to the general population and study consumers means you will get such a diversity 3
of descriptions about who consumers are that the response will be meaningless. After all, i
everyone is a consumer and consumer preferences are always changing. Thus, to obtain l
any sort of useful response to the question, it must be bracketed to refer to a speciﬁc :.

population, within a speciﬁc time frame. For example, who is the consumer who shops at
this store during this particular time? Indeed, this is the type of question posed by
marketing specialists.

Another approach, which can exist alongside the previous approach, is an
understanding of consumers as a performed and relational category. If it is assumed that
economics, rather than describing the world, actually shapes the world to ﬁt the
economists’ models (Callon et al. 2002; Miller 2002), then the answer to the question
“Who is the consumer?” is: “The consumer is constructed in the market.” At ﬁrst glance
this account of consumers sounds too deterministic with little room for agency. On the
contrary, consumers do exert agency, but it is always agency within the bounds of the
market/society. Sociologist Robert Merton (1957) once noted that, even the way one
rebels is shaped by the society within which the rebel is situated. To better understand

consumers as performed and relational groups means one must understand which

131

consumers’ voices are represented. This point is similar to that made by Slack (1988
cited in Wylie 2001: 5). He argues that policies oriented towards the poor in England
changed based on which group — the economists, the clergy, or the magistrates -- held the
public’s attention. This chapter is built upon the assertion that consumers are a
performed and relational category and thus, an analysis of the categories that arise from

the way industry actors — retailers, government personnel, manufacturers - describe

consumers is an important component to better understanding how consumers participate 5
in agri-food networks. This is especially important when studying an industry that is in L
the process of adopting and implementing new standards and standardization. F
Developing these categories of consumers ultimately improves our ability to understand

-Ot.‘ “Th” 5 i":
1t:

the impact of standards on all aspects of the network, including consumers.

This chapter has categorized how key actors in the industry discuss consumers.
Beyond helping us to clarify and organize, categories are always interesting for what they
leave out. In other words, categories shape how we view society and sometimes we can
learn a signiﬁcant amount about a subject by analyzing what is not discussed within a
category (Roy 2001). As an example I return to the category of “the female consumer.”

Beyond the material aspects of meat consumption as a gendered activity, a more
theoretical understanding of why women are constructed as “the consumer” involves the
recognition of how the category constructs not only women, but also men, and the
relations between the two. As industry actors construct an image of the red meat
consumer as being female they are simultaneously deﬁning an image of what it means to
be male. By constructing and insisting upon the maintenance of the female consumer

that is in charge of nurturing (emotionally and substantively) the family, the speaker is

132

simultaneously insisting upon the idea of the male breadwinner that operates in the
political and economic world, free from the burden of the personal realm. As Coontz
(1992, 53) notes, the use of “the term individualistic to describe men’s nature became
acceptable only in the same time periods, social classes, and geographic areas that
established the cult of domesticity for women. The cult of the Self-Made Man required
the cult of the True Woman.” In South Africa the True Woman and the Self-Made Man
were additionally bound by class and race identities as well. Note that the image in
Appendix D portrays a white female. Of course, those retailers who are wise to the
changing economic positions of non-whites in South Africa have broadened the scope of
the True Woman. In addition, the photos of women labeled as meat further reinforce
ideas surrounding female subordination and male domination. Fiddes (1991, 60) writes,
“the portrayal of women, by men, as meat is an instance of the wider caricature of woman
as animal . . . just as meat is a sign par excellence of man’s control of the natural world,
so woman as meat has been a particularly effective statement of her supposedly wilder
social role, and availability as a natural resource for men.”

Similar to the changing categorization of the True Woman and the Self-Made
Man, a more theoretical interpretation of the un/educated consumer categories reveals
new insights into a period of rapid changes in standards and standardization in South
Africa’s red meat industry. In the past theoretical discussions about the industrialization
of agriculture drew attention to the transformations that occur in a commodity network up
to the point of consumption, whereas more recently scholars have recognized the
transformations that also occur at the point of consumption. Recognizing the changes

that occur throughout the commodity network, including consumption contributes to our

133

 

ability to interpret what industry participants say about the uneducated consumer. The
industrialization of agri-food networks requires the extension of production-consumption
chains in time and space, which renders the point of food production increasingly
invisible to food consumers (Fischler 1988). Taking this argument one step further,
several scholars have noted that industrialized meat production rests on a foundation of
socially distancing the slaughterhouse from the minds of consumers (Fiddes 1991;
Gouviea and J uska 2002). Gouveia and Juska (2002) argue that the industrial meat
production process thrives on the separation of the less palatable conditions of industrial
meat production from the act of consumption. This separation includes the continuous
“proletarization and marginalization of displaced communities of labor” and the
construction of consumption imaginaries by complex industry networks (Ibid 374).
Labels used on meat products are one aspect of the complex imaginaries used to
encourage the separation of the act of consumption from the processes of production. For
example, one company in South Africa has a label that features a steak that is cooking on
a grill. The words above and below the steak include: “Matured” and “Tender and
Tasty.” Thus, when industry participants speak of consumers as uneducated, they are
suggesting that consumers need to be re—educated and thus, more accepting of meat
emanating from industrial livestock production processes.

Similarly, educated consumers are the persons who have properly embraced the
purchasing and consumption of industrial meat and all of the conventions that surround
the consumption of meat from industrialized processes. Conventions surrounding the
consumption of industrialized red meat include consumers learning the names of speciﬁc

cuts of meat and understanding how different cuts of meat should be prepared. In

134

4- ‘ {-‘u'

 

1_+_

addition, consumers must adapt to meat that tastes and looks different from meat
produced in non-industrialized settings. There is also another dimension of the educated
consumer for the purposes of the industry. Educated consumers signify the consumer
that the industry is trying to “know.” Thus, the educated consumer symbolizes
consumers that the industry depends upon for sales and these are the consumers that the
industry surveys in an effort to identify trends, including the types of meat products
consumers might purchase in the future.

Finally, the last two categories, labeled race of the consumer and ambivalent
consumers, both link broadly to issues surrounding the power of consumers in a
marketplace. South Africa is one of the most inequitable societies in the world (May
2000). Therefore, it is perfectly reasonable to make statements such as, “on the consumer
side, standards are changing because people’s ideas about nutrition and health are
changing and perspectives about meat as it relates to health. But again in South Africa
we have a big, diverse population to deal with and some people are just concerned with
eating.” Indeed, as long as the extreme inequalities exist in South Africa, there will be
extreme differentiation among consumers. However, in an inequitable society the
concern should be that consumers who are among the most subordinated in society (e.g.,
due to their class position in society) are those likely to suffer the consequences of
stereotypes within the industry. Thus, even if all consumers in South Africa are
concerned with food quality and safety, the ways the commercial industry markets to the
consumer have the potential to refashion the proﬁle of meat consumers in the shape of
current categories, some of which are misleading stereotypes (Lockie 2002). Lockie

(2002, 289), who makes a similar point about consumers of organic foods suggests that,

135

\ I inluur—1E‘

OL'VII'. 0.77.?" . .7. a I

 

“this does not mean potential consumers are disempowered and manipulated, but it does
mean some “demands,” are more visible and more likely to be met than other demands
unless alternative knowledges and projects are brought to the fore.”

In addition, industrialization of agri-food networks undermines traditional bases
of trust (Lockie 2002). Standards and standardization are part of the increasing
industrialization of agri-food networks, and as such, consumers must accept the
increasing distance between production and consumption practices and be willing to shift
the way ‘trust’ is conceptualized, from individual to institutional forms of trust (Lockie

2002). For example, anyone intimately involved in a local South African community that

1*”‘1-1‘04hzuiﬁn1ll’mum.‘ n

a . : g!

" 1 II
., I

is serviced by a tree slaughterer utilizes their trust in the person selling the meat as an
assurance that the meat is safe. Indeed, those involved in the business of tree
slaughtering are very aware that if they sell meat that makes people in the community ill,
everyone in the community will refuse to purchase meat from them in the future. Thus,
through the reliance on trust between individuals, an acceptable level of meat safety and
hygiene standards are maintained.87 Likewise, a study funded by the FAO reveals that
overwhelmingly the street foods available in the Gauteng province (which includes the
cities of Johannesburg and Pretoria) of South Africa are safe to eat (Martins and Anelich
2000). Street food vendors generally serve a small clientele and earn a very low income
from their sales. However, in order to maintain a customer base the street food vendor

has a strong interest in maintaining individual rapport and trust with her/his customers.88

 

87 The concept of “acceptable” is the source of signiﬁcant debate. Generally, statistics related to food-
bome illness in South Africa, especially in rural areas, are almost non-existent. Until scientiﬁc studies are
conducted to assess levels of food safety it is unclear how safe or unsafe meat products actually are. In the
context of this discussion “acceptable” refers to perceptions among community members regarding safe
meat.

88 Street food vendors are primarily female.

136

 

Even within a city setting, the degree of trust that customers place with a street food
vendor is crucial to the long-term survival of a street vendor’s business.

As an industry adopts standards and standardization for, at least in part, the
purposes of international trade, the industry must simultaneously convince domestic
consumers to trust institutions, over and above, their trust in individuals. Clearly, it is in
the industry’s interest to encourage all South African red meat consumers to put their
trust in institutions. In fact, only through convincing consumers to trust institutions to
maintain adequate standards of food safety and hygiene can the industry be successful in
implementing industry-wide standards and the standardization of standards. This
suggests that while South Africa may have ambivalent consumers, consumers are far
from being powerless. The industry must enroll the participation of the majority of
consumers within South Africa in order to further the implementation of standards and

the standardization of standards.

Conclusion

One conﬁdential report that evaluates the impact of the old meat board on the red
meat industry in South Africa notes, “red meat is considered a staple food by producers,
yet perceived as an expensive item by consumers, an indication of the gap that exists
between these interests within the meat ﬁliere.” The report states that the producer-
dominated system, which fails to account for the consumer, is the reason for the overall
reduction in red meat consumption among consumers. While the veracity of such uni-
causal models would beneﬁt retailers tremendously, the ability to pinpoint a cause in

consumption changes thus far has not been so easy. Red meat consumption globally

137

 

continues to hold steady or decline, depending on the product (e. g., consumption of lamb
is declining while pork and beef consumption remain the same) and the methods used in
measuring meat consumption (i.e., taking into account techniques used for measurement
and recognition of sampling error). Within South Africa, red meat consumption has seen
a two per cent decline annually for the past several years. Growth in meat consumption
is largely viewed as occurring in poultry, not in red meat. This leaves many in the
industry expressing a sense of urgency in understanding ways to increase red meat .1
consumption and increase the number of consumers. In part this requires that industry

participants become increasingly aware of “the consumer” and, hopefully, gain a better

 

TNT—'7' -\. Y

understanding of consumers. However, if the information that industry actors are
receiving about consumers is “slanted and weak” as one interviewee suggested, then the
industry is likely to capture an inaccurate understanding of consumers.

Utilizing concepts from ANT contributes to a better understanding of the
importance of viewing consumers as relational and performed in the context of an
industry implementing new standards and standardization. As Latour (1987) and Law
(1987; 1999) note, consumers are always constructed in relation to something else. Thus,
we are able to understand that primarily female consumers are constructed in contrast to
the position of males in a society. Likewise, by participating in the construction of
consumers, the industry is simultaneously constructing itself. The industry’s relationship
with consumers is shifting with the loss of government regulation and changes in
international trade rules. The changes include many previously disenfranchised

consumers who now participate in shaping the future of the industry.

138

Similarly, consumers are performed in, by, and through their relations to the
industry. A concept that contributes to a better understanding of how the consumer is a
performed category is “heterogeneous engineering.” Heterogeneous engineering is
deﬁned as an “interrelation of a range of disparate elements of varying degrees of
malleability” (Law 1987, 113). Law (1987, 114) continues to explain, “elements in the

network prove difﬁcult to tame or difﬁcult to hold in place. Vigilance and surveillance

1; ..
have to be maintained” in order for the network to remain intact. The red meat network f
in South Africa has been destabilized because of “freer” trade (i.e., less national :5
government intervention) and other national changes linked with the end of apartheid. ::

z
Participants in the red meat industry are very aware of the industry’s changing i2 ..

relationship to consumers. Thus, when asked about changes in the industry, participants
are likely to mention consumers. However, when actors in the industry speak of
consumers, they are simultaneously involved in trying to tame or stabilize the network by
deﬁning the relationship of the industry to the consumer. In other words, speaking of
consumers contributes to the redeﬁnition of the industry’s relationship to consumers, with
the intent of establishing a more durable red meat network (Law 1999).

Using the insights of the relational and performed aspects of consumers and the
industry contributes to a better understanding of why it is important to listen to and
analyze the way industry participants construct consumers. As industry participants are
constructing consumers, they are not just describing the world around them, but also
participating in the creation of that world and redistributing power in the network. In

other words, both things and people are co-constructed in a commodity network.

139

 

The concern should be over which consumer “demands” are made more visible by
the creation and implementation of standards. Sandra Harding (1991) has introduced the
concept of strong objectivity in science studies as one way to address how power is
differentially distributed in current understandings of science. Harding argues that
science would achieve a stronger objectivity if more perspectives representing the
diversity of the world were added to a debate or area of inquiry. However, Truth, with a
capital T, is something that will never be achieved. Similarly, the consumer is something
that is dynamic, and, therefore, the idea of gaining complete knowledge or Truth about
consumers is unattainable. However, it is certainly possible to construct an
understanding of consumers that is closer to or further from the many truths that can exist
surrounding consumers. The focus should now be on ensuring alternative knowledges
and projects about diverse consumers are brought to the fore (Lockie 2002). In order for
all consumers to have access to safe and quality red meat, the industry must gain new
knowledge about diverse consumers and move away from inaccurate stereotypes about
previously marginalized consumers.

This chapter has attempted to explore the various ways consumers are constructed
among industry participants and to suggest which assumptions bring us closer to
understanding the endlessly changing consumer. To analyze how the industry
participates in the construction of consumers helps us to understand the types of choices
or the way food is provisioned for consumers. The fact that all of the categories
identiﬁed in this chapter are in the process of being transformed by larger social changes
suggests that there are opportunities for amending the conceptualization of consumers, to

better reﬂect the relationships that consumers currently have with the industry.

140

 

CHAPTER 6

Conclusion

The production and promulgation of standards and the standardization of
standards at the international level has existed for well over 100 years. In 1906 the
International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) was formed, followed by the
establishment of the International Federation of the National Standardizing Organizations
(ISA) in 1926 (Drori et al. 2003). Similarly, two signiﬁcant international standard setting
organizations were established in the mid-1900s, the International Organization for
Standardization (ISO) in 1947 and the Codex Alimentarius Commission in 1962.

Beyond the development of international standardizing organizations, there was also an

increase in national standards-developing organizations. For example, the South African 9
Bureau of Standards (SABS) was ofﬁcially established by the Standards Act of 1945 (Act
24 of 1945) and was an outgrowth of the South African Branch of the British Engineering

Standards Association.89

The South African Branch of the British Engineering
Standards Association had primarily been concerned with standardization of materials
used in the gold mining industry (SABS Annual Report 1996-1997).90 By 1999, sixty-
two countries had at least one national standards-developing organization registered with
ISO or IEC (Mendel 2001 cited in Drori et al. 2003).

With the advent of the W.T.O. in 1996, which effectively increased the level of

organizational authority in settling trade disputes between countries, standards became

 

89 The connection of South Africa’s ﬁrst standardization body to a “W estern” country lends support to
claims made by social studies of science scholars who argue standards and standardization emanate from
Western countries and now dominate all countries (see for example Drori et al. 2003).

9° More recently, SABS develops and enforces standards for a wide range of products. For red meat, SABS
is only involved in standards development and enforcement of canned meat products.

141

increasingly important for global trade. This importance is due to the fact that standards
are viewed as one means to achieve a more predictable and efﬁcient trade system.
Likewise, the importance of standards and standardization of standards to agri-food
industries has increased with the extension of trade liberalization policies to agri-food
products. However, as noted at the start of this dissertation, only within the past ﬁfteen
years have social scientists paid any signiﬁcant attention to standards and standardization.
Social scientists have increasingly studied how standards are constructed and how they
simultaneously shape the environments within which they are constructed (Brunsson and
Jacobsson 2000; Busch 2000; Grindley 1995; Krislov 1997). Due to the increases in
global trade and the emphasis on standards and standardization, standards offer a means
to study the phenomenon of globalization. Viewed in this light, this dissertation
contributes to a better understanding of the ways in which standards, seemingly small
technical details, contribute to constructing the world in some forms and not others.
More speciﬁcally, by focusing on standards within one agri-food commodity network
(red meat) this work investigates and explores the many connections that exist between
and within global and local processes.

One of the primary questions examined in this dissertation is “how do
international standards impact a primarily domestic market?” An analysis of tender meat
standards and hygiene standards reveals the complex impact of international standards on
diverse actors in South Africa’s red meat industry. Much of the formal red meat network
in South Africa is intent on producing tender meat for seemingly invisible overseas
consumers. This work reveals that the production of tender meat encourages a speciﬁc

type of industrial production and slaughter operation. In addition, tender meat production

142

 

encourages the development of certain breeds (and likewise discourages the existence of
others) and promotes a loss of diversity in consumption practices. Curiously, despite the
signiﬁcant impact of tender meat standards, these standards remain unofﬁcial as
compared to hygiene standards. Hygiene standards are increasingly regulated on a global
scale, and for the most part, HACCP, a hygiene management system, has become the
obligatory passage point for agri-food industries interested in pursuing export markets.
HACCP requires signiﬁcant investment, provides little ﬁnancial reward in the short term
to actors that implement it, and is more difﬁcult to implement in countries that have a
highly fragmented farming sector and a large number of medium to small processors,
such as South Africa. Through an analysis of tender meat and hygiene standards we
realize international standards impact South Africa’s primarily domestic industry in
signiﬁcant and diverse ways. This brings us to the second primary question that this
dissertation addresses.

“How do standards interact with markets that are segmented by race, class, and
gender?” Generally, standards and standardization offer some opportunities for
previously marginalized actors to participate in agri-food trade. However, standards and
standardization that coincide with international standards employed in the red meat sector
appear to pose more challenges than opportunities for the vast majority of actors all along
the red meat commodity chain. Those few actors (overwhelmingly white males) in South
Africa who are dominant at speciﬁc points in the industry (e. g., production, processing,
retail) appear to be the few who beneﬁt from the new standards and standardization that
are being introduced. However, there are situations where more marginalized actors

could beneﬁt from the construction and/or implementation of new standards.

143

 

The moments when more marginalized producers, processors, and retailers have
the potential to receive beneﬁts from new standards and standardization are almost
always moments when government and industry ofﬁcials participate in modifying the
standards to better ﬁt the situation. In other cases ofﬁcials have stepped in to assist
marginalized participants in meeting speciﬁc standards. One of the best examples is in
the city of Durban. City ofﬁcials are attempting to incorporate informal street food
vendors (who are primarily black South African women) into a more standardized food
distribution system that promotes food safety for consumers, while also enabling and
maintaining the vendors’ businesses. Another example is the rural, small-scale slaughter
operators (primarily operated by black male South Africans) in speciﬁc provinces of the
country. Through the combined assistance of laws that incorporate and recognize their
businesses and a few industry personnel who work with these smaller abattoirs owners,
the small abattoirs are in the process of being incorporated into the agri-food network.
There are other areas of the country that criminalize slaughtering of animals outside of
established, government approved abattoirs. In these provinces small-scale slaughter
operators are not likely to survive due to a lack of support from industry or government
personnel. Interestingly, based on the data collected, with the exception of the few
provinces that are supporting small-scale abattoirs, all other abattoirs in the country are
white owned and operated. This fact, combined with an understanding of the impact of
HACCP implementation suggests that consolidation and concentration will make it more
difﬁcult for small-scale operators to survive. Thus, abattoir ownership will remain

almost entirely among white South Africans.

144

 

Finally, the beneﬁts of increased standards and standardization in the industry
would seem to outweigh the costs for consumers in South Africa. However, as identiﬁed
earlier, this group is currently poorly deﬁned within the industry. While all consumers
are potentially interested in consuming safe and high-quality meat products, the industry
currently only recognizes or identiﬁes consumer demand within a narrowly deﬁned
subset of the population. This subset is primarily comprised of the upper class, and for
some in the industry, primarily white consumers. Current conceptualizations of
consumers within the industry are disadvantageous to the lower class and non-white

consumers.

Making the Global Local

Standards are part of a global science and technology. Harding (2001, 291)
suggests that, “scientiﬁc and technological productions are now the foundation of the
global political economy. This economy continues to expand into new areas around the
globe, and to structure more deeply and completely daily life in societies in which it has
already been present.” Furthermore, Drori et al. (2003) suggest that it is only through the
globalization of science that the groundwork is set for global standardization. Similarly,
Latour (1987) proposed the metaphor of a train on its tracks to symbolize the movement
of science and technology. He observed that science must always have tracks on which
to operate, otherwise science does not penetrate spaces where tracks are not in place.
Thus, when focusing on standards (that are bound up in science and technology) and agri-
food networks, it is abundantly clear that the concept of globalization masks operations of

material reality. Law and Hetherington (2001) assert globalization implies some kind of

145

 

totality; some kind of global system and it misses spatialities implied in the enacted
materiality.

‘ This work has sought to reveal the spaces in which standards are enacted. This
includes a more dynamic understanding of actors’ experiences and interactions with
standards and standardization due to the performed and relational materiality of each
actor in the network (Law 1999). This work has not made explicit the use of
liberationists’ accounts of science. Yet, by interrogating some of the “silences”
surrounding how the world is made, this work contributes to demands by liberationists
that science be recognized as contributing to the construction of societies in some forms
and not others (Haraway 1997). Rather than view standards as simply technical details, a
liberationist account of science reveals how standards are not neutral or rational when
standards and the standardization of standards are enacted within diverse environments
and societies (Haraway 1997).

A common theme shared by liberationist accounts of science and agri-food
scholars interested in a more just and equitable food system is a focus on “the local.”
This does not mean a return to micro versus macro level analysis, but rather a recognition
that all action is spatially enacted. In general, social studies of science and technology
(SSST) encourages an understanding of science as inherently local, meaning science is
always produced in a location (a space and a place). Latour’s (1987) use of networks is
one way of capturing the locality of science. Scientiﬁc and technological concepts that
successfully encompass the globe do so through larger networks that enroll more and
more actors (human and non-human). Thus, even when focusing on a technology such as

the automobile, within actor-networks one is always able to see that automobiles traverse

146

VW~EI.‘-n

 

”sift J " .
.14

the globe by enrolling more and more actors within locations. In order for automobiles to
function, you must have roads, gas, technological know-how to build the vehicle or
equipment to ship vehicles to the location, replacement parts, people who know how and
are willing to drive automobiles, etc. Certainly, there are spaces where not enough actors
have been enrolled and in these spaces automobiles do not operate.

An understanding of science as local allows one to understand that science is also
cultural. Rather than portraying science as the “culture of no culture” (T raweek 1988),
science is best understood as informed and energized by the culture within which
scientiﬁc systems operate (Harding 1998; 2001). By understanding the cultural aspects
of science, the ways in which standards are conveyers of culture can be unraveled.
Recognizing standards as embedded within culture allows scholars and practitioners the
opportunity to evaluate the impact of standards on diverse cultures.91 For example, Drori
et al. (2003, 281) identify what they see as a negative aspect of the scientiﬁc culture
currently embedded within global standards when they write that science “is heavily
intertwined with modernist concepts of a rational order [and] acts as a central impetus for
countries to embrace global standards.” The authors continue, “rational order, with its
concentration on cause-effect relations, is a product of globalized modern, mostly
Western, culture” (2003, 284). Once culture is recognized within science, and therefore,
within standards, all actors in a network can begin to evaluate and debate which cultural
values are important. Far from offering a way out of cultural and political debates
surrounding science, liberationist science scholars suggest, “what should count as science

remains both an epistemological and a political question” (Harding 2001, 302).

 

9' In addition, understanding standards as a part of culture furthers our recognition of the ways that
dominant actors can use standards to their advantage. Since these standards reﬂect a dominant group’s
culture, the imposition of standards on less powerful actors also implies an imposition of culture.

147

 

Similarly, Magdoff et al. (2000, 20) argue, “creating a just and environmentally
sound food system cannot be separated from the creation of a just and environmentally
sound society.” Agri-food scholars have continually called attention to not only the
inequitable provision of food (Mardsen et al. 2000), but also to the ways in which agri-
food networks enroll more marginalized actors, including agricultural workers, poorer

communities, and the environment in such a way that beneﬁts wealthier, more powerful

r“. h.”.‘. l-L Ix" Aunwn. W Ixu4 -~
,. . - - . . k. v
.

actors in the agri-food network (Baker 1999; Brandt 1999; Friedmann 1999; Gouveia and
J uska 2002). Baker (1999) argues that in order to promote a more equitable food system,
food production must be rooted in local economies. This raises the critical question of
whether agri-food standards and standardization can even exist within a framework
striving to create a more equitable and just food production system? Agri-food scholars
and liberationist science scholars would generally both agree that agri-food policies and
science and technology policies must be democratized. What this means is that those
who bear the consequences of agri-food and/or science and technology policy decisions
must have a proportionate share in making these decisions (Harding 2001).

A quote from a delegate from Guinea who recently walked out of the W.T.O.
trade talks in Mexico (September 2003) is reﬂective of both liberationist accounts of
science and agri-food scholars’ emphasis on the need to democratize science and
technology policy and agri-food policies. The delegate was quoted as saying “Coming
into this meeting everyone said, ‘yes, cotton is an important question; yes, agriculture is
important.’ But when it came down to negotiations, our daily problems were ignored”
(Becker 2003b). As suggested by this quote and by scholars interested in constructing

more democratic sciences and food systems, a global agri-food system must be

 

148

responsive to more marginalized participants. The next section of this chapter will focus
on the relevance of the recently failed W.T.O. talks and the implications for the

generalizability of this study to other countries.

Relevance and Generalizability

On September 14, 2003, developing nations effectively shut down W.T.O. trade
talks in Cancun, Mexico. Although this breakdown in trade talks is not viewed as
momentous as the failure of talks in Seattle in 1999, this is the second time that a group
of representatives from African, Asian, and Latin American developing nations have
walked out of the W.T.O. meetings. These nations are referred to as the Group of 21, and
are comprised of developing countries, including South Africa. The Group of 21 has
organized to protest unfair trade conditions between developed and developing nations,
especially in terms of agriculture. The group has called attention to the fact that
agriculture is among the most protected sectors of trade for the world’s wealthiest
nations. According to the Group of 21 and other fair trade advocates, the wealthiest
nations are estimated to provide $300 billion annually in subsidies to their own farmers,
while maintaining high agricultural tariffs, blocking farm imports, and subsidizing farm
exports (Becker 2003a). The representatives of developing nations argue that this
contributes to an inequitable agri-food system.

Standards and standardization are part and parcel of global trade. Beyond the
overtly unfair trade rules, actors in developing nations are well aware of the more subtle
ways trade can create/foster imbalances. Thus, this dissertation provides an important set

of ideas to help better understand the way technical details, especially as they are bound

149

*‘q‘ t'm“l":‘l.:i-Ah_.—.——-~_
' .~ . a Y.
1 l
u

 

up in international trading systems can promote or counter efforts to create a just and
equitable agri-food system. The potential impact of this study will be discussed along
three dimensions: what is, what may be, and what could be (Ward Schoﬁeld 2002).

Current and future W.T.O. meetings will likely witness further resistance from
developing countries. In this context, it seems critical that additional studies be
conducted in order to evaluate ‘what is’ the current situation of standards development
and implementation in non-Westem and Western countries. This includes an evaluation
of the positive and the negative impacts of standards for a variety of agri-food networks.
This study has examined the ways standards are conceptualized and operationalized in
only one agri-food commodity network. Future studies need to be conducted across
agricultural commodity sectors, as well as between countries. For example, a study of
South Africa’s primarily export commodities, such as seafood and fruit will most likely
reveal similarities and differences in the operation of standards and standardization. In
addition, further study needs to occur comparing the same commodity in different
nations. Botswana and Namibia are both countries that export beef to the EU. due to the
Lomé Agreement. An assessment of the conceptualization and implementation of
standards in these nations and the differences and/or similarities in their impacts would
provide more information about the effect of export opportunities on developing
countries.

This dissertation can also contribute to understanding ‘what may be.’ In other
words, this study contributes to a broader understanding of current and future trends in
agri-food trade and can contribute to designing future research that illuminates these

issues as much as possible. Currently, developing nations are united in confronting what

150

 

they perceive as inequitable global trade. The Group of 21’s criticisms have thus far been
directed at changing policies. However, this study suggests that standards for an agri-
food product can contribute to structuring global trade inequitably. Thus, future studies
that focus on standards and standardization and trade should further explore how
standards may promote inequitable or more equitable agri-food trade.

Finally, this work contributes to studying ‘what could be.’ There are clearly ways
to conceptualize and implement standards that promote a more equitable food system.
Thus, future research would purposively select sites based on what we know or expect to
be ideal or exceptional on some a priori basis and then study these sites to see what is
actually going on there (Ward Schoﬁeld 2002). In the context of this study, we would
revisit moments where previously marginalized actors in the agri-food network have
become active participants in the network, such as the 150 small abattoirs established in

one province of South Africa.

Final Words

Standards are technical details that contribute to the construction of societies in
some forms and not others. This means that standards are bound up in networks that co-
construct who beneﬁts and who does not beneﬁt from the creation and implementation of
standards. This dissertation explores the entire red meat commodity network, focusing
on the production, processing, retailing, and consumption of red meat in South Africa.
Standards are identiﬁed within every part of the network. For example, standards
contribute to the co-construction of what is considered a good breed, a good farmer, a

good processor, a good retailer, and a good consumer. The ways in which standards are

151

 

bound-up in these constructions are complex and variable. Thus, it is important to
investigate the construction of standards, and the ways in which standards can
differentially impact a group of actors. Standards cannot be overlooked. For
marginalized members of the agri-food network in South Africa to prosper, their voices
must be heard. Standards can be constructed in such a way that they are not deleterious
to the marginalized actors. Moreover, if the South African government or other agencies
are interested in assisting more marginalized participants, then they must recognize the
role that standards play in the current system and work towards constructing or
implementing standards in such a way that theyactually assist these marginalized
participants. In closing, this work should reinforce the assertion “that the shapes the
world takes are conventional and revisable, if also eminently solid and full of

consequences for unequally distributed chances of life and death” (Haraway 1997, 269).

152

 

APPENDICES

153

 

Appendix A

Selected International Food and Agricultural Standards Bodies

 

Orggization:

The Function of the Orga_nization:

 

Codex
Alimentarius
Commission
(Codex)

Established in 1961, the Codex Alimentarius Commission, in consultation with
the directors-general of the Food and agriculture Organization (FAO) and the
World Health Organization (WHO), is responsible for making proposals on all
matters pertaining to the implementation of the Joint FAO/WHO Food Standards
Programme, the purposes of which are: protecting the health of consumers and
ensuring fair practices in the food trade; promoting coordination of all food
standards work undertaken by international governmental and non-governmental
organizations; determining priorities and initiating and guiding the preparation of
draft standards through and with the aid of appropriate organizations; ﬁnalizing
those standards and, after acceptance by governments, publishing them in a
Codex Alimentarius, either as regional or worldwide standards, together with
international standards already ﬁnalized by other bodies whenever this is
practicable; and amending published standards, after appropriate survey in the
light of developments.

http://www.codexalimentarius.net/index_en.stm

 

International
Plant Protection

Convention
(IPPC)

The International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC) is a multilateral treaty
deposited with the director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization of
the United Nations (FAO) and administered through the IPPC Secretariat located
in the FAO’s Plant Protection Service. Contracting parties to the IPPC number
110 governments. The purpose of the IPPC is to prevent the spread and
introduction of pests of plants and plant products and to promote measures for
their control. The convention provides a framework and forum for international
cooperation, harmonization and technical exchange in collaboration with regional
and national plant protection organizations (RPPOs and NPPOs). The IPPC plays
a vital role in trade — it is the organization recognized by the World Trade
Organization in the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary
Measures (the SPS agreement) as the source for international standards for the
phytosanitary measures (ISPMs) affecting trade.
http://www.fao.orﬂVAICENT/Faolnfo/Agricult/AGP/AGPP/PQ/

 

International
Organization for
Standardization
(ISO)

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is a worldwide
federation of national standards bodies from some 130 countries. ISO is a
nongovernmental organization established in 1947. The mission of the ISO is to
promote the development of standardization and related activities in the world so
as to facilitate the international exchange of goods and services, and to develop
cooperation in the spheres of intellectual, scientiﬁc, technological and economic
activity. The 180’s work results in international agreements that are published as
international standards.

http://www.iso.chl

 

 

Organisation

for Economic
Co-Operation and
Development
(OECD)

 

The OECD provides its 29 member countries a setting in which to discuss,
develop and perfect economic and social policy. Governments compare
experiences, seek answers to common problems and work to coordinate domestic
and international policies. OECD countries produce two-thirds of the world’s
goods and services, but it is not an exclusive club — membership is limited only
by a country’s commitment to a market economy and a pluralistic democracy.
The core of original members has expanded from Europe and North America to
include Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Finland, Mexico, the Czech Republic,
Hungary, Poland and Korea. Many contacts with the rest of the world occur
through programs with countries in the former Soviet bloc, Asia and Latin
America — contacts which, in some cases, may lead to membership.
http://www.oecd.org/

 

154

 

Selected International Food and Agricultural Standards Bodies (cont)

Orga_nization:

The Function of the Orggrization:

 

Ofﬁce International
des Epizooties (OIE)
(World Organisation
for Animal Health)

The main objectives of the OIE are to: inform governments of the occurrence and
course of animal diseases throughout the world and of ways to control these
diseases; coordinate, at the international level, studies devoted to the surveillance
and control of animal diseases; and harmonize regulations for trade in animals
and animal products among member countries. The OIE enjoys permanent
working relations with more than 20 other international organizations, including
the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World
Health Organization (WHO), and the World Trade Organization (W.T.O.).
http://www.oie.int/

 

World Health
Organization
(WHO)

The objective of the WHO is the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible
level of health. Health, as deﬁned in the WHO Constitution, is a state of complete
physical, mental and social well-being, not merely the absence of disease or
inﬁrmity. In support of its main objective, the organization has a wide range of
functions, including: to act as the directing and coordinating authority on
international health work; to promote technical cooperation; to promote, in
cooperation with other specialized agencies, where necessary, the improvement
of nutrition, housing, sanitation, recreation, economic or working conditions and
other aspects of environmental hygiene; to promote and coordinate

biomedical and health services research; to promote improved standards of
teaching and training in the health, medical and related professions; to establish
and stimulate the establishment of international standards for biological,
pharmaceutical and similar products, and to standardize diagnostic procedures; to
foster activities in the ﬁeld of mental health, especially those activities affecting
the harmony of human relations. The WHO also proposes conventions,
agreements and regulations, and makes recommendations about international
nomenclature of diseases, causes of death and public health practices. WHO
develops, establishes and promotes international standards concerning foods and
biological, pharmaceutical and similar substances.

http://www.who.int/

 

United Nations
Economic
Commission

for Europe
(UNECE)

The Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) is the forum at which the
countries of North America, western, central and eastern Europe, and central
Asia come together to forge the tools of their economic cooperation. This large
group of countries accounts for 64 percent of world production, 60 percent of
total exports, and between 65 and 70 percent of the patents registered throughout
the world each year. It is also responsible for 60 percent of the world’s carbon
dioxide (C02) emissions. The main purpose is to harmonize the policies and
practices of the ECE member countries. Such harmonization not only facilitates
economic exchange investment and the integration of transport networks but also
makes environmental procedures more effective.

http://www.unece.org/

 

 

World Trade
Organization
(W.T.O.)

 

The W.T.O. is the only international body dealing with the rules of trade between
nations. At its heart are the W.T.O. agreements, the legal ground rules for
international commerce and for trade policy. The agreements have three main
objectives: to help trade ﬂow as freely as possible, to achieve further
liberalization gradually through negotiation and to set up an impartial means of
settling disputes.

http://www.WTO.org/

 

 

Source: Adapted from the Institute for Food and Agricultural Standards (2000).

155

 

Appendix B

Questionnaire for Government and Industry Oﬁ‘icials

1.

8.

9.

Explain in detail what your organization/ofﬁce does? (What role does your
organization play with the South African red meat industry?)

What are the current key issues affecting the red meat industry?
How have these issues changed in the last 5 years?
How do you expect them to change in the future?

[If they have not already touched on then ask -] What are the biggest challenges
your organization faces?

Are there particular standards that are impacting red meat production, processing,
or distribution? [If no, what factors are impacting red meat production,

processing, or distribution?]

From the perspective of your organization/agency, are red meat standards
changing?

If yes, what do you see as the driving force in changing red meat standards today?

Who are the key players in standards setting?

10. Who are the key participants in standards implementation?

11. What groups are most involved and in what issues?

12. Are there distinguishable positions among the actors?

13. How could standards in the red meat industry (production, processing,

distribution) be improved?

14. Are there things that need to be changed within the red meat industry?

15. Do you see standards setting and enforcement moving to the private sector

entirely?

16. Who would be a person or group that I should speak with that is involved in some

aspects of standards in the red meat industry?

156

 

Questionnaire for Commercial and Emergent Farmers
1. Describe your farm for me (size, herd, etc.)
2. What breed/type of cattle/sheep/pigs do you have on your farm?
3. What are the current key issues impacting you and your farm?
4. How have things changed since in the past 5 years?
5. How do you expect them to change in the future?
6. Are there particular standards/regulations that are impacting red meat production?
7. (If yes,) What do you see as the driving force of these changes?

8. From your perspective who are the key players in standards/regulations setting
and enforcing?

9. How have you had to change your operation in order to satisfy regulations or
achieve better production, higher quality, etc.?

10. What groups are most involved and in what issues?
11. Are there distinguishable positions among the actors?

12. Do you think your interests as a red meat producer are represented within the red
meat industry?

13. (If yes) In what areas are your interest represented?

14. (If yes to number 10) How do you and other red meat producers make sure your
interests are represented (among standards and regulations committees)?

15. How could standards in the red meat industry (production, processing, and
distribution) be improved?

16. Are there things that need to be changed within the red meat industry?
17. Should standards setting and enforcement be done in the public or private sector?

18. Is there anything relevant to standards that I have not asked you that I should
know about?

157

 

19. I am trying to get as wide a range as possible of different perspectives from red
meat producers. Can you think of other producers I should speak with that would
have a different perspective about the red meat industry?

158

 

Appendix C

Photo of City Deep Abattoir in Johannesburg, South Africa

 

Source: Photo taken by Elizabeth Ransom, 2000

159

Appendix D

Woman’s Body Labeled as Different Cuts of Meat

Ill! h I i . Vb.

.- .Hl :
X33»! \
.5. .

 

Adams (1990), source

111

Cited in Vleisﬂlleat, 1972, source unknown. Also cited

unknown.

160

Works Cited

Adams, Carol J. 1994. Neither man nor beast : feminism and the defense of animals.
New York: Continuum Publishing Group.

Adams, Carol J. 1990. The Sexual Politics of Meat: A F eminist- Vegetarian Critical
Theory. New York: Continuum Publishing Group.

Anderson, Margaret L. 1993. “Studying Across Difference: Race, Class, and Gender in
Qualitative Research.” Pp. 39-52 in Race and Ethnicity in Research Methods, edited by
John H. Stanﬁeld II and Rutledge M. Dennis. Newbury Park: Sage Publications.

Appadurai, Arjun, editor. 1986. The Social Life of Things: commodities in cultural
perspective. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Arce, A. and T.K. Marsden. 1993. “The Social Construction of International Food: A
New Research Agenda.” Economic Geography 69: 293-311.

Baca Zinn, Maxine. 1979. “Field Research in Minority Communities: Ethical,
methodological and political observations by an insider.” Social Problems, 27:209-219.

Bacon, John. 2002. “What’s for dinner? Cloned Cow.” Pp. 3A USA Today. April 26,
2002.

Baker, Lauren. 1999. “A Different Tomato: Creating Vernacular Foodscapes.” Pp. 249-
259 in Women Working the NAFTA Food Chain: Women, Food and Globalization, edited
by Deborah Brandt. Toronto, Canada: Second Story Press.

Becker, Elizabeth. 2002a. “U.S. Defends Its Farm Subsidies Against Rising Foreign
Criticism.” The New York Times, June 27, 2002, p. A5

Becker, Elizabeth. 2002b. “19 Million Pounds of Meat Recalled After 19 Fall 11].” The
New York Times, July 20, p. Al. ’

Becker, Elizabeth. 2003a. “Agriculture Tops WTO Talks in Mexico.” The New York
Times, September 9, p. Al

Becker, Elizabeth. 2003b. “Poorer Countries Pull Out of Talks Over World Trade.” The
New York Times, September 15, p. A1

Belk, Keith B, John A. Scanga, Gary C. Smith, and Temple Grandin. 2002. “The

Relationship Between Good Handling / Stunning and Meat Quality in Beef, Pork, and
Lamb.” Presented at the American Meat Institute Foundation, Animal Handling And

161

 

Stunning Conference on February 21-22, 2002. Retrieved October 1, 2003
(httpzl/www.grandin.com/meatlhand.stun.relate.quality.html)

Bijker, Weibe E., Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor Pinch. 1987. The Social Construction
of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology.
Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Bloor, David. 1976. Knowledge and Social Imagery. London: Routledge.

Bonanno, Alessandro, Lawrence Busch, William Friedland, Lourdes Gouveia, and Enzo
Mingione. 1994. From Columbus to ConAgra: The Globalization of Agriculture and
Food. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas.

Bowater, FL, 1996. "The Preparation and Transportation of Meat Products with
Particular Emphasis on Chilled Meat Shipments.” Retrieved November 11, 2002
(httpzllwww.ﬁb.co.uk/technical%20papers/intermoda1/intermodal.html)

Bowker, G.C. and S.L. Star. 1999. Sorting Things Out: Classiﬁcations and Its
Consequences. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

Brumberg, Joan Jacobs. 1997. “The Appetite as Voice” chapter 13 in Food and Culture:
A Reader. Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik (eds.) New York: Routledge Press.

Brunsson, N. and B. J acobsson. 2000. A World of Standards. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.

Busch, L. 2000. “The Moral Economy of Grades and Standards.” Journal of Rural
Studies 16: 273-283.

Busch, L. 1997. “Grades and Standards in the Social Construction of Safe Food. Invited
paper presented at a conference on the Social Construction of Safe Food, Trondheim,
Norway, 1997.

Busch, Lawrence. 1990. “How to Study Agricultural Commodity Chains: A
Methodological Proposal.” Pp. 13-24 in Economies des F iliéres en Regions Chaudes:
Formation des Prix et Echange Agricoles, edited by Michel Griffon. Paris: CIRAD.

Busch, L., R.J. Bingen, C. Harris, and T. Reardon. 1998. "Standards and Appellations."
Invited paper presented at the Salone del Gusto, Torino, Italy, October, 1998.

Busch, L. and A. Juska. 1997. "Beyond Political Economy: Actor Networks and the
Globalization of Agriculture." Review of International Political Economy 4(4): 688-708.

Callon, Michel. 1986. “Some elements of a sociology of translation: Domestication of

the scallops and the ﬁsherman of St. Brieux Bay” pp. 196-229 in John Law (ed.) Power,
action and belief: A new sociology of knowledge? London: Routledge.

162

 

Callon, Michel and John Law. 1997. “After the Individual in Society: Lessons on
Collectivity from Science, Technology and Society.” Canadian Journal of Sociology 22:
165-182.

Callon, Michel, Cecile Méadel and Vololona Rabeharisoa. 2002. “The Economy of
Qualities.” Economy and Society 31(2): 194-217.

Campbell, Colin. 1995. “The Sociology of Consumption.” Pp. 96-126 in
Acknowledging Consumption: A Review of New Studies, edited by Daniel Miller.
London: Routledge.

Campher, Johan. 1998. “Bonsmara Synthetic Breed.” DNAfrica (Pty) Ltd. Retrieved
July 21, 2003 (httpzllwww.dnafrica.co.za/bonsmara.htm).

Center for Science in the Public Interest. 2000. Outbreak Alert.’: Closing the Gaps in
Our Federal F cod-Safety Net. Washington, DC, Third Printing.

Chambers, Robert. 1983. Rural Development: Putting the Last First. Essex, England:
Longman Scientiﬁc & Technical.

Cheit, Ross. 1990. Setting Safety Standards: Regulation in the Public and Private
Sectors. Berkley, CA: University of California Press.

Collins, Patricia Hill. 1986. “Learning from the outsider within: The sociological
signiﬁcance of Black feminist thought.” Social Problems, 33: 14-32

Coontz, Stephanie. 1992. The Way We Never Were: American Families and the
Nostalgia Trap. New York: Basic Books.

Crosley, R.I., P.H. Heinze and RT. Naudé. 1994. “The Relationship Between Beef
Tenderness and Age Classiﬁcation in the South African Beef Carcass Classiﬁcation
System.” The Meat Industry Centre, Irene Animal Production Institute, Irene, South
Africa. Unpublished Report.

Das, BL. 1998. An Introduction to the W0 Agreements. London: Zed Books.

de Wet, Chris. 1997. “Land Reform in South Africa: A vehicle for justice and
reconciliation, or a source of further inequality and conﬂict?” Development Southern
Africa. 14(3): 355-362.

Delgado, C., M. Rosegrant, H. Steinfeld, Simeon Ehui, C. Courbois. 1999. Livestock to
2020: The Next Food Revolution. Food, Agriculture, and the Environment Discussion
Paper 28, IFPRI. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute.
Retrieved May 21, 2002. (http://www.cgiar.org/ilri/news/news-pdf/lvst2020.pdf)

163

 

Drori, Gill, John W. Meyer, Francisco O. Ramirez, and Evan Schofer. 2003. Science in
the Modern World Polity: Institutionalization and Globalization. Stanford, California:
Stanford University Press.

Dunn, Elizabeth. Forthcoming. “Trojan Pig: The Moral Economy of Food Safety in
Poland.” Environment and Planning A.

Edge, David. 1995. “Reinventing the Wheel” pp. 3-24 in Handbook of Science and
Technology Studies, edited by Sheila J asanoff, Gerald E. Markle, James C. Peterson, and
Trevor Pinch. London: Sage Publications.

Edwards, Tim. 2000. Contradictions of Consumption: Concepts, Practices and Politics
in Consumer Society. Buckingham: Open University Press.

European Environment Agency. 2002. Late lessons from early warnings: the
precautionary principle 1896—2000, some summary points. EEA, Copenhagen.
Retrieved June 10, 2003.

(http://reports.eea.eu.int/environmenta1_issue_report_200l_22/en/EN%205ummary%20p
oints.pdf).

FAO. 1998. Mid-term Projections for Meat to 2005. Cape Town, South Africa,
Committee on Commodity Problems, Intergovernmental Group on Meat, Seventeenth
Session.

FAO. 1993. “Agrobiodiversity: the case for conserving domestic and related animals.”
World Animal Review 77. Retrieved on July 16, 2003
(httpzllwww.fao.org/docrep/v1650t/v1650t0y.htm).

Feyerabend, Paul. 1978. Against method: outline of an anarchistic theory of knowledge.
London: Verso. (1st ed., 1975)

Fiddes, Nick. 1991. Meat:A Natural Symbol. London: Routledge.

Finger, J .M. and P. Schuler. 2001. “Developing countries and the Millennium Round.”
Pp. 58—71 in The World Trade Organization Millennium Round, edited by K.G. Deutsch
and B. Speyer. London, Routledge.

Friedland, William. 1984. “Commodity Systems Analysis: An Approach to the
Sociology of Agriculture.” Pp. 221-235 in Research in Rural Sociology and
Development, edited by H.K. Schwarzwellar. Greenwich, Connecticut: J AI Press.

Friedland, Willam H. 2001. "Reprise on Commodity Systems Methodology."
International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food 9 (1): 82-103.

Fritschel, H. and U. Mohan. 1999. “Are We Ready for a Meat Revolution?” Pp. 81-87
in The Unﬁnished Agenda: Perspectives on Overcoming Hunger, Poverty, and

164

 

Environmental Degradation, edited by P. Pinstrup-Anderson and R. Pandya-Lorch.
Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute.

Gabriel, Yiannis and Tim Lang. 1995. The Unmanageable Consumer: Contemporary
Consumption and its F ragmentations. London: Sage Publications.

Gauthier, J ., M. Simeon, C. de Haan. 1999. The Effects of Structural Adjustment
Programs on the Delivery of Veterinary Services on Africa. Paris: Proceedings of
International ofﬁce of Epizooties for Aﬁica, DaKar, Senegal.

Gerefﬁ, Gary and Miguel Korzeniewicz, editors. 1994. Commodity Chains and Global
Capitalism. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger.

Giovannucci, D. and T. Reardon. 2000. “Understanding Grades and Standards -- and
How to Apply Them.” in A Guide to Developing Agricultural Markets and Agro-
Enterprises, edited by D. Giovannucci. Washington: The World Bank.

Goetz, J .P. and MD. LeCompte. 1984. Ethnography and Qualitative Design in
Education Research. Orlando, FL: Academic Press.

Goodman, David. 2002. “Rethinking Food Production-Consumption: Integrative
Persepectives.” Sociologia Ruralis 42(4): 271-277.

Goodman, David, and E. Melanie DuPuis. 2002. "Knowing Food and Growing Food:
Beyond the Production-Consumption Debate in the Sociology of Agriculture." Sociologia
Ruralis 42(1): 5-22.

Gottdiener, Mark. 2000. “Approaches to Consumption: Classical and Contemporary
Perspectives.” Pp. 3-32 in New F arms of Consumption: Consumers, Culture, and
Commodiﬁcation, edited by Mark Gottdiener. New York: Rowman & Littleﬁeld
Publishers, Inc.

Gould, Kenneth, Allan Schnaiberg, and Adam Wieberg. 1996. Local Environmental
Struggles: Citizen Activism in the Treadmill of Production. New York: Cambridge
University Press.

Gouveia, Lourdes and Arunas Juska. 2002. “Taming Nature, Taming Workers:
Constructing the Separation Between Meat Consumption and Meat Production in the
US.” Sociologia Ruralis 42(4): 370-390.

Graumans, Anne. 1997. SADC-E U Cooperation Beyond Lomé: Between Continuity and
Change. FGD Occasional Paper No. 11, Braarnfontein, South Africa: The Foundation for
Global Dialogue.

Grindley, P. 1995. Standards Strategy and Policy: Cases and Stories. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.

165

 

Gronow, Jukka, and Alan Warde. 2001. “Introduction.” Pp. 1-8 in Ordinary
Consumption, edited by Gronow and Warde. London: Routledge.

Gurney, J .N. 1985. “Not one of the guys: The female researcher in a male-dominated
setting.” Qualitative Sociology, 8: 42—62.

Haan, Cees de, Henning Steinfeld, and Harvey Blackburn. 1997. Livestock and the
Environment: Finding a Balance. Brussels: European Commission Directorate, General
for Development.

Haan, Comelis de, Tjaart Schillhom van Veen, Brian Brandenburg, Jerome Gauthier,
Francois Le Gall, Robin Meams, Michel Simeon. 2001. Livestock Development:
Implications for Rural Poverty, the Environment, and Global Food Security.
Washington, DC: The World Bank.

Haen, Hartwig de, Nikos Alexandratos and Jelle Bruinsma. 1998. Prospects for the
World Food Situation on the Threshold of the 21St Century. Pp. 21-52 in The Future of
Food: Long-term Prospects for the Agra-food Sector. Paris: OECD Publications.

Hall, Stuart. 1996. “The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power.” Pp. 185-227 in
Modernity: an Introduction to Modern Societies, edited by Stuart Hall, David Held, Don
Hubert, and Kenneth Thompson. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell.

Harding, Sandra. 1991. Whose Science? Whose Knowledge ?: Thinking from Women ’s
Lives. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.

Harding, Sandra. 1998. Is Science Multicultural? Postcolonialisms, F eminisms, and
Epistemologies. Bloomin'gton: Indiana University Press.

Harding, Sandra. 2001. “After Absolute Neutrality: Expanding ‘Science’.” Pp. 291—
304 in Feminist Science Studies: A new generation, edited by Maralee Mayberry, Banu
Subramaniam, and Lisa H. Weasel. New York: Routledge.

Haraway, Donna. 1997. Modest *Witness@Second* MillenniumFemaleMan *Meets*
OncoMouse: feminism and technoscience. New York: Routledge.

Heffeman, William. 1999. “Consolidation in the Food and Agricultural System.”
Presented at the National Farmers Union, February 5, 1999. Retrieved May 10, 2003
(httpzllwww.nfu.org/images/heffeman_1999.pdf)

Held, David. 1995. Democracy and the Global Order: from the Modern State to
Cosmopolitan Governance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Horton, Douglas. 1999. “Building Capacity in Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation:
Lessons from the Field.” Knowledge, Technology, & Policy. 11(4) 152-188.

166

 

Institute for Food and Agricultural Standards. 2000. “Markets, Rights and Equity: Food
and Agricultural Standards in a Shrinking World: Recommendations from an
International Workshop.” East Lansing, MI: [PAS and Michigan State University
Extension. (Co-compilers/authors: L. Busch, G. Middendorf, and E. Ransom).
http://www.msu.edu/user/ifas/foodag.pdf

Juska, Aruna, Lourdes Gouveia, Jackie Gabriel, and Kathleen P. Stanley. 2003.
“Manufacturing bacteriological contamination outbreaks in industrialized meat
production systems: The case of E. coli 0157:H7.” Agriculture and Human Values 20
(1): 3-19.

Kaw, Eugenia. “Opening Faces: The Politics of Cosmetic Surgery and Asian American
Women.” Pp.241-265 in Many Mirrors: Body Image and Social Relations. Nicole Sault,
ed.. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. 1994.

Knorr-Cetina, Karin D. 1981. The Manufacture of Knowledge: An Essay of the
Constructivist and Contextual Nature of Science. New York: Pergamon.

Knorr—Cetina, Karin D. 1995. “Laboratory Studies: The Cultural Approach to the Study
of Science” Pp. 140-166 in Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, edited by
Sheila Jasanoff, Gerald E. Markle, James C. Peterson, and Trevor Pinch. London: Sage
Publications.

Korten, David C. 1998. The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism. San
Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler.

Kover, Arthur J. 1967. "Model of Man as Deﬁned by Marketing Research." Journal of
Marketing Research IV (May 1967): 129-132.

Krislov, Samuel. How Nations Choose Product Standards and Standards Change
Nations. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Kuhn, Thomas S. 1962. The Structure of Scientiﬁc Revolutions. Chicago: University of
Chicago.

Latour, Bruno. 1987. Science in Action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Latour, Bruno. 1996. Aramis, or the love of technology. Translated by Catherine Porter.
Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Latour, Bruno. 1999. Pandora ’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Latour, Bruno. 1999. “On recalling ANT” Pp. 15-25 in Actor Network Theory and
After, edited by John Law and John Hassard. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

167

Latour, Bruno and Steve Woolgar. 1979. Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of
Scientiﬁc Facts. Beverly Hills and London: Sage Publications.

Law, John. 1991. “Introduction: Monsters, Machines and Sociotechnical Relations.” pp
1-25 in John Law (Ed.) A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on Power, Technology and
Domination. London: Routledge.

Law, John. 1987. “Technology and Heterogeneous Engineering: The Case of
Portuguese Expansion.” Pp. 111-134 in Weibe E. Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor
Pinch (ed.). The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the
Sociology and History of Technology. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Law, John. 1999. “After ANT: complexit, naming and t0pology.” pp. 1-14 in Actor
Network Theory and After. John Law and John Hassard (eds.) 1999. Oxford: Blackwell
Publishers.

LEAD (Livestock, Environment and Development Initiative). 1999. Livestock and
Environment Toolbox. Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations.
Retrieved on July 16, 2003
(http://1ead.vurtualcentre.org/en/dec/toolbox/Indust/IossAgbi.com).

Lee, Stuart and Katherine Barrett. 2002. “Comments on: A Canadian Perspective on the
Precautionary Approach/Principle Discussion Document.” The Science and
Environmental Health Network. Retrieved June 11, 2003.
(http://www.sehn.org/canpre.html).

Lewontin, RC. 2000. “The Maturing of Capitalist Agriculture: Farmer as Proletarian.”
Pp. 93-106 in Hungry for Proﬁt: The Agribusiness Threat to Farmers, Food, and the
Environment, edited by Fred Magdoff, John Bellamy Foster, Fredrick H. Buttel. New
York: Monthly Review Press.

Lipton, Merle. 1993. Restructuring South African Agriculture. Pp. 359-408 in State &
Market in Post Apartheid South Africa, edited by Merle Lipton and Charles Simkins.
Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.

Lockie, Stewart. 2002. ‘The Invisible Mouth’: Mobilizing ‘the Consumer’ in Food
Production-Consumption Networks.” Sociologia Ruralis 42(4): 278-294.

Lockie, Stewart and Simon Kitto. 2000. “Beyond the Farm Gate: Production-
Consumption Networks in Agri-Food Research.” Sociologia Ruralis 40(1):3-19.

Long, Norman and Magdalena Villarreal. 1998. “Small Products, Big Issues: Value

Contestations and Cultural Identities in Cross-Boarder Commodity Networks.”
Development & Change 29(4): 725-750.

168

Lubbe, W. F. 1992. “The Red Meat Marketing Scheme: An Evaluation in a Dynamic
Environment.” Agricultural Economic, Extension and Rural Development. Pretoria,
South Africa, University of Pretoria: 423.

Lupton, Deborah. 1996. Food, the Body, and the Self. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage
Publications.

MAFF. 2000. “Banded HAS scores.” Pp. 8- 4 in Meat Hygiene Enforcement Report.
Retrieved June 25, 2003 (http://archive.food.gov.uk/maff/pdf/meat/mher33.pdf).

Magdoff, Fred, John Bellamy Foster, Fredrick H. Buttel, eds. 2000. Hungry For Proﬁt:
The Agribusiness Threat to Farmers, Food, and the Environment. New York: Monthly
Review Press.

Marsden, T. 1997. “Creating Space for Food: The Distinctiveness of Recent Agrarian
Development.” pp 169-191 in Globalising Food: Agrarian Questions and Global
Restructuring, edited by D. Goodman and M. Watts. London, Routledge.

Marsden, Terry. 2000. “Food Matters and the Matter of Food: Towards a New Food
Governance?” Sociologia Ruralis 40(1): 20-29.

Marsden, Terry, Andrew Flynn, and Michelle Harrison. 2000. Consuming Interests: The
Social Provision of Foods. London: UCL Press.

Martins, J.H. and LE. Anelich. 2000. Socioeconomic Features of Street Food Vending,
Hygiene and Microbiological Status of Street Foods in Gauteng, 2000.
TCP/SAF/8924(A), Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, Rome.
Pretoria, South Africa: Department of Health.

Maxwell, Joseph. 2002. “Understanding and Validity in Qualitative Research.” Pp. 37-
64 in The Qualitative Researcher’s Companion, edited by Michael Huberman and
Matthew Miles. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

May, Julian, Ingrid Woolard, and Stephan Klasen. 2000. “The Nature and Measurement
of Poverty and Inequality.” Pp. 20-48 in Poverty and Inequality in South Africa: Meeting
the Challenge, edited by Julian May. New York: Zed Books.

McIntosh, William Alex and Mary Zey. 1988. “Women as Gatekeepers of Food
Consumption: A Sociological Critique.” Food and F oodways 3(4): 317-332.

McMichael, Philip. 1996. Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge.

McMichael, Philip. 2000. “Global Food Politics.” Pp. 125-144 in Hungry for Profit:

The Agribusiness Threat to Farmers, Food, and the Environment, edited by Fred
Magdoff, John Bellamy Foster, Fredrick H. Buttel. New York: Monthly Review Press.

169

Meat Safety Act, 2000. Republic of South Africa Government Gazette Vol.
425, number 21707. Capetown, 1 November 2000.

Mendel, Peter. 2001. Global models of organizations: International management
standards, reforms, and movements. Ph.D. diss., Stanford University.

Merton, Robert. 1957. Social Theory and Social Structure, 2nd edition. New York: Free
Press.

Merton, Robert K. 1973. The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical
Investigations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Middendorf, Gerad. 2002. Development Narratives: Actor-Network Theory and
Panamanian Agricultural Development Policy. Ph.D. Dissertation Thesis, Department of
Sociology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI.

Miles, Matthew B. and A. Michael Huberman. 1994. Qualitative Data Analysis: An
Expanded Sourcebook. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Miller, Daniel. 1995. “Consumption as the Vanguard of History: A Polemic by Way of
an Introduction.” Pp. 1-57 in Acknowledging Consumption: A Review of New Studies,
edited by Daniel Miller. London: Routledge.

Miller, Daniel. “Turning Callon the right way up.” Economy and Society 31(2): 218-
233.

Morris, Craig A. 1999. “The Role of USDA's Beef Grading Program in the Marketing of
Beef” in 1999 Agricultural Marketing Outreach Workshop Training Manual Retrieved
on October 14, 2002. (http://marketingoutreach.usda.gov/info/99Manua1/grading.htrn).

NDA. 2000. Meat Inspectors Manual Red Meat. Pretoria, South Africa: National
Department of Agriculture.

NAMC. 2001. Report on the Investigation into the Effect of Deregulation on the Red
Meat Industry, second draft. Pretoria, South Africa: National Agricultural Marketing
Council.

Ogasawara, Yuko. 1998. Ofﬁce Ladies and Salaried Men: Power, Gender, and Work in
Japanese Companies. Berkley, CA: University of California Press.

Palmquist, Mike, editor. 2003. “Advantages of Qualitative Observational Research.”

Colorado State University, Colorado. Retrieved on June 2, 2003.
(http:”writing.colostate.edu/references/research/observe/comZd 1 .cfm).

170

 

Pearson, A.M. 1963. “Objective and Subjective Measurements for Meat Tenderness.”
Pp. 135-159 in Proceedings Meat Tenderness Symposium. Camden, New Jersey:
Campbell Soup Company.

Pickering, Andrew. 1992. “From Science as Knowledge to Science as Practice” Pp 1-28
in Science as Practice and Culture, edited by Andrew Pickering. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press.

Posel, Dorrit. 2003. “Have Migration Patterns in post-Apartheid South Africa
Changed?” Paper presented at Conference on African Migration in Comparative
Perspective, Johannesburg, South Africa, 4—7 June, 2003. Retrieved August 10, 2003
(http:/lpum.princeton.edu/pumconference/papers/1-Posel.pdf)

Pusey, Michael. 1991. Economic Rationalism in Canberra: A Nation-Building State
Changes its Mind. Oxford: Cambridge University Press.

Ramsay, Keith, Liz Harris, and Antoinette Kotzé, editors. 1994. Landrace Breeds:
South Africa 's Indigenous and Locally developed Farm Animals. Pretoria, South Africa:
Farm Animal Conservation Trust.

Rapp, R. 1983. Anthropology: The science of man? Address presented at the University
of Delaware.

Reardon, T., J-M. Codron, L. Busch, J. Bingen, C. Harris. 1999. “Global Change in
Agrifood Grades and Standards: Agribusiness Strategic Responses in Developing
Countries” International Food and Agribusiness Management Review. 2 (3): 421-435.

Renzetti, C. M. and D. J. Curran. 1998. Living Sociology. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Roberts, D., L. Unneverhr, et al. 2001. Agriculture in the WTO.: The Role of Product
Attributes in the Agricultural Negotiations. Washington, DC, International Agricultural
Trade Research Consortium: 1-65.

Rosson, C. Parr, Aaron Hobbs, and Flynn Adcock. 2000. “Leaﬂet 10: Beef and the
World Trade Organization.” U.S. Agriculture and the World Trade Organization: Issues
and Priorities for the Millenium. September 2000. Retrieved May 10, 2003
(http://cnas.tarnu.edu/publications/10beerVTO.pdf)

Rouse, Joseph. 1987. Knowledge and Power: Toward a Political Philosophy of Science.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Roy, William G. 2001. Making Societies: The Historical Construction of Our World.
Thousand Oaks, California: Pine Forge Press.

SAMIC. 2003. “Production.” Retrieved May 10, 2003
(httpzllwww.samic.co.za/CI/PRODUCTION.htm)

171

Saunders. Peter T. 2002. “Use And Abuse Of The Precautionary Principle.” Institute
for Science in Society submission to US Advisory Committee on International Economic
Policy (ACIEP) Biotech, Working Group, 13 July, 2000. Retrieved June 5, 2003.
(http://www.ratical.org/co-globalize/MaeWanHo/PrecautionP.html#p0).

Schatzman, Leonard and Anselm Strauss. 1973. Field Research. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall, Inc.

Schiere, Hans and Loes Kater. 2001. “Mixed Crop-Livestock Farming: A Review of
Traditional Technologies.” FAO report, January, 2001. Retrieved May 14, 2003
(httpzllwww.fao-kyokai.or.jp/edocuments/document3/mixed-crop-index.htm)

Schlosser, Eric. 2001. Fast food nation : the dark side of the all-American meal.
Boston: Houghton Mifﬂin.

Schoﬁeld, Janet Ward. 2002. “Increasing Generalizability of Qualitative Research.” Pp.
171-203 in The Qualitative Researcher’s Companion, edited by Michael Huberman and
Matthew Miles. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Schutz, Alfred. 1973. Collected Papers I: The Problem of Social Reality, 4th edition.
The Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff.

SABS. 1997. South African Bureau of Standards Annual Report, 1996-1997. Pretoria,
South Africa.

Spriggs, J. and G. Isaac. 2001. Food Safety and International Competitiveness: the Case
of Beef. Oxford, CABI.

Stacey, Judith. 1988. “Can There be a Feminist Ethnography.” Women ’s Studies
International Forum 1 1(1): 21-3 1.

Star, Susan Leigh. 1991. "Power, technologies and the phenomenology of conventions:
on being allergic to onions.” pp. 26—56 in A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on Power,
Technology and Domination. John Law (ed.). New York: Routledge.

Sterling Marketing, Inc. 2002. Meat and Poultry Facts 2001. Mt. Morris, IL: Watt
Publishing.

Stifﬂer, D.M. , J .W. Savell, G.C. Smith, T.R. Dutson and Z.L. Carpenter. 1982.
Electrical Stimulation Purpose, Application and Results. Report No: B-1375. College
Station, Texas: Texas Agricultural Extension Service, The Texas A&M University
System. Retrieved October 10, 2002 (httpzllsavell-j.tamu.edu/pdf/es.pdf)

Strauss, Anselm. 1987. Qualitative Analysis for Social Scientists. Cambridge University
Press.

172

 

Tanaka, Keiko. 2002. “Actor Network Theory and Commodity Systems Analysis:
Friends or Foes?” Presented at the annual meetings of the Rural Sociological Society,
August 15, Chicago.

Tanaka, Keiko and Lawrence Busch. 2003. “Standardization as a Means for Globalizing
a Commodity: The Case of Rapeseed in China.” Rural Sociology 68(1): 25-45.

Taylor, C. Robert. 1999. “Economic Concentration in Agribusiness.” Testimony to the
United States Committee on Agriculture, January 26, 1999. Retrieved August 5, 2002
(httpzl/www.competitivemarkets.com/library/testimony/ocmt3.htm)

Thompson, Ginger. 2003. “Water Tap Often Shut to South Africa Poor.” New York
Times, May 29, p. Al.

Torres, Liv, Haroon Bhorat, Murray Leibbrandt and Fuad Cassim. 2000. “Poverty and
the labour market.” Pp. 73-94 in Poverty and Inequality in South Africa: Meeting the
Challenge, edited by Julian May. London: Zed Books.

Traweek, Sharon. 1988. Beamtimes and Lifetimes. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT
Press.

Troy, Declan and Robin Joseph. 2001. Very Fast Chilling in Beef. The National Food
Centre, Research Report No. 43. Castleknock, Dublin. Retrieved July 21 2003
(httpzwww.teagasc.ie/research/reports/foodprocessing/4985/eopr-4985.htm)

US. House of Representatives. 2000. The Role of Technical Standards in Today ’s
Society and in the Future, Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Technology of the

Committee on Science, House of Representatives, One Hundred Sixth Congress.
Washington DC: US. Congress.

USDA. 1996. Concentration in the Red Meat Packing Industry. Packers and Stockyards
Programs, Washington, DC: US. Department of Agriculture.

Victor, David G. 2000. “Risk Management and the World Trading System: Regulating
International Trade Distortions Caused by National Sanitary and Phytosanitary Policies.”
Pp. 118— 169 in Incorporating Science, Economics, and Sociology in Developing Sanitary
and Phytosanitary Standards in International Trade. National Research Council.
Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Vleis/Meat. March 1972. “Photo in newsletter” in Vleis/Meat newsletter for South
African Meat Board, Pp. 25.

Wallerstein, Immanuel. 2000. The Essential Wallerstein. New York: The New Press.

173

 

Ward Schoﬁeld, Janet. 2002. “Increasing the Generalizability of Qualitative Research.”
Pp. 171-203 in The Qualitative Researcher’s Companion, edited by Michael Huberman
and Matthew B. Miles. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

Warren, Carol AB. 1988. Gender Issues in Field Research. Qualitative Research
Methods, Vol. 9. Newbury Park, California: Sage Publications.

Walzer, Michael. 1983. Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality. New
York: Basic Books.

Waters, M. 1995. Globalization. New York: Routledge.

Watson, Ian. 1998. “Review of Krislov’s How Nations Choose Product Standards and
Standards Change Nations.” Contemporary Theory 28(2): 169-170.

Weatherspoon, David D. and Thomas Reardon. 2003. “The Rise of Supermarkets in
Africa: Implications for Agrifood Systems and Rural Poor.” Development Policy Review
21(3): 333-355.

Wiley, David, Christine Root, and Sven Peek. 2002. “Organizing for the Environment in
South Durban: Inﬂuences of the Transition to Democracy and Globalization.” In

(D )urban Vortex. A South African City tn Transition, edited by Bill Freund and Vishnu
Padayachee. Durban. University of Natal Press.

Wilska, Terhi-Anna. 2001. “The Role of States in the Creation of Consumption Norms”
chapter 11 in Ordinary Consumption. Jukka Gronow and Alan Warde. New York:
Routledge.

Winberg, Marlene. 1996. Back to the Land. Johannesburg, South Africa: Porcubine
Press.

Whyte, William Foote. 1984. Learning from the Field: A Guide from Experience.
Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.

WHO. 2001. “Foot and mouth disease: consequences for public health.” WHO/OMS.
Retrieved June 26, 2003 (http://www.who.int/emc/diseases/zoo/FMD.html).

W.T.O. 1999. “Review of the operation and implementation of the Agreement on the
Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures.” Sanitary and Phytosanitary
Measures: The SPS Committee ’3 Report, G/SPS/l2, 11 March 1999 (99-1007).
Retrieved on August 10, 2003

(http://www.WTO.org/english/tratop_e/sps_e/gsps 12_e.htm)

Wylie, Diana. 2001. Starving on a full stomach : hunger and the triumph of cultural
racism in modern South Africa. Charlottesville, Virginia: University Press of Virginia

174

 

   

llilﬂflzlﬂljllljﬂlﬂﬂlllljﬂljﬁl