Open AccessTrojan Pig: Paradoxes of Food Safety Regulation
Author(s) -
Elizabeth Cullen Dunn
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
environment and planning. a
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.74
H-Index - 129
eISSN - 1472-3409
pISSN - 0308-518X
DOI - 10.1068/a35169
Subject(s) - multinational corporation , competitor analysis , scale (ratio) , corporate governance , politics , international trade , business , economies of scale , state (computer science) , industrial organization , market economy , economic system , economics , marketing , political science , law , physics , finance , algorithm , quantum mechanics , computer science
Standards, including food safety standards, have become a key tool in the governance of the world economy. The current drive to harmonize these standards on a global scale is supposed to reduce technical barriers to trade and create conditions for fair and free trade. However, as the case of the Polish meatpacking industry shows, standards often create new barriers because they are embedded in specific geographies. On the one hand, many harmonized standards favor large-scale multinational capital and bar local small-scale producers. On the other hand, the social legacies of previous economic systems—in this case, state socialism—give small-scale producers tools such as informal markets, personal social ties, and political organizing skills that can be used to create barriers for large multinational competitors.