Standard fare or fairer standards Feminist reflec

Authors: Martha McMahon

Publish Date: 2009/11/14

Volume: 28, Issue: 3, Pages: 401-412

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Abstract

In 2007 new meat inspection regulations standardizing meat production throughout the Province of British Columbia BC Canada came into effect moving food for local consumption closer to continentally harmonized production standards Critics argue that the economic viability of smallscale livestock farmers is threatened Smallscale women farmers are central to the creation of alternative local agrifood networks in BC Using gender as an analytically enabling tool this paper argues that public foodsafety regulation can create the conditions for the dominance of private agrifood governance The discursive creation of a feminized privileged consumer legitimates much nondemocratic agrifood governance The paper argues that more just and ecologically sustainable futures require a ‘gender troubling’ of agrifood governance in which the privileged identity of the food consumer is reconstructed as global citizen in the context of the food sovereignty of the farmers who produce their food

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