Strategic ignorance and crises of trust: Un-anticipating futures and governing food supply chains in the shadow of Horsegate

Abstract

This paper explores how transnational food supply chains are governed and secured through examining the 2013 horsemeat scandal, during which processed beef products were adulterated with horseflesh. Drawing on theories of governmentality and ignorance studies, it argues that the apparent ignorance among food businesses about their supply chains which this event exposed arises in response to a regulatory apparatus which renders businesses responsible for taking precautions only against foreseeable threats to food safety and authenticity. Limiting their knowledge of their supply chains therefore enables food businesses to control their ability to anticipate (and their liability for) crises. This paper highlights the role of strategic ignorance in rendering future events unforeseeable and ungovernable, and in mediating the politics of accountability and responsibility within anticipatory governmental apparatuses.

Keywords:

• anticipation
• governmentality
• ignorance
• food scares
• supply chain
• horsemeat

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank our interviewees, without whose patience, knowledge and candour this paper could not have been written. Earlier versions of this paper were presented in Oxford at a Keble College research seminar organized by James Palmer, in Lancaster at an EASST/4S session organized by Claire Marris, Isabel Fletcher, Katerina Psarikidou, Kathryn Packer and Allison Loconto, and in Vienna at a workshop on ignorance and non-knowledge organized by Katharina Paul and Helene Sorgner. We are grateful to the organizers of and participants at these events (in particular Maan Barua, Emma Roe, Suzanne Hocknell and Sam Vanderslott) for their thoughtful questions and considerate feedback, and to three anonymous reviewers at Economy and Society for their generous and valuable comments on the draft manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Jeremy Brice is Fellow in Economy, Risk and Society in the Department of Sociology at LSE. His research examines the business, culture and governance of food, with recent projects focusing on the role of digital marketplace platforms in reconfiguring urban economies and cultures of food consumption.

Andrew Donaldson is Senior Lecturer in Newcastle University’s School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape. His research is centred on food, urban infrastructures and pathological processes, focusing on themes of expertise, security and the management of futures.

Jane Midgley is Reader in Urban Social and Economic Practice at Newcastle University’s School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape. Her work explores the critical relationship between vulnerability, insecurity and responsibility in contemporary society, emphasizing the ethics of care within community food provisioning and the work of industry and charitable actors in identifying and redistributing surplus food.

Notes

1 During this project we interviewed 48 employees of organizations including food manufacturers and retailers, UK government agencies, and providers of third-party consultancy, audit and data management services to the food sector. The names of all participants have been replaced with pseudonyms in order to preserve their anonymity.

2 This need not necessarily mean events with a high statistical probability of occurring. While the circumstances confronted by Reasonable Man can be likened to past events, they remain irreducibly singular and he must always confront the possibility that a situation might possess unique characteristics which could produce an unexpected outcome (Daston, 1988; Maurer, 2005).

3 Given its long history in case law we are reluctant to identify the due diligence defence as a specifically neoliberal legal technology. Indeed, it seems to us to resemble more closely O’Malley’s (2004) characterization of a ‘classical’ liberalism which governs uncertainty through contractual agreements among prudent subjects than neoliberal valorizations of competition and entrepreneurial risk-taking. While we would suggest that the specific subjectivities and practices discussed in this paper arise through its encounter with apparatuses of vigilance associated with late liberal modes of rule, we are more concerned here with the implications of this interaction than with its periodization.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council [grant number ES/M003159/1].