Politics of Risk. Questioning the Naturalization of Danger in Meat Production and Consumption

In our presentation, the relation between risk and meat production/consumption is investigated by combining anthropological literature with empirical material from a qualitative research in Umbria (Central Italy). The ambiguities and contradictions of strategies to avoid risk emerge also in our examples from empirical and narrative material based on a qualitative data deriving from focus groups realized in Umbria with organic poultry farmers, gym- goers, organic buying group organizers and researchers in animal disease control and prevention. The research highlights social and political practices that are employed either by individuals or institutions in order to avoid or mitigate risk in everyday consumption of poultry meat. On a deeper level, these practices are depending on what is precisely perceived as a risk and what not, what seems to present itself as “natural” and what not, questioning the way how danger is naturalized. In this context, two salient tensions emerge in the politics of risk. First, one tension occurs out of contemporary disputes over the exploitation of animals and how far rights of “persons” should be extended, if non-humans that have specific sentiments, agency and moral capacities should be included or excluded in risk mitigating strategies. Second, another tension in the politics of risk arises in relation to disputes over how to regulate meat processing in order to avoid health risks, as well as mitigating implications on animal welfare. Within the realm of increasingly complex global meat chains, public scandals like the “mad cow” have attracted much attention. In conclusion, we emphasize the importance of an anthropological perspective that allows to question how political interests are masqueraded and hidden behind the veil of practices and discourses of “naturalization”. In this way, in order to explore contradictions in contemporary politics of risk we remark the necessity to “question the unquestionable” (Butler, 1997), also with particular regard to what seem natural patterns of food consumption.