Public Policy and Calculative Practices of Risk: Making Matters of Concern and 'Non‐Communicable' Threats, from Farm to Fork. Issue 1 (23rd October 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Lavau, Stephanie
• Is Part Of: Sociologia ruralis. Volume 57:Issue 1(2017:Jan.)
• Page Start: 23
• Page End: 40
• Publication Date: 2015-10-23
• Subjects: Sociology, Rural -- Periodicals; 307.72
• DOI: 10.1111/soru.12113
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0038-0199

Abstract

Abstract: This article considers the ways in which calculative practices of risk assessment and management generate matters of concern for public health policy. Campylobacterosis has become the most frequently reported zoonotic disease in the EU, responsible each year for thousands of hospitalisations, several dozen deaths, and significant public health costs and productivity losses. Whilst receiving much attention as a risk to consumers of poultry, it receives little attention as an occupational risk for those working on poultry farms and in processing factories. Informed by ethnographic fieldwork, documentary analysis, and interviews on how biosecurity is practised in poultry production in the UK, I identify particular configurings of risk in the governance of food safety and occupational health and safety that preclude this as a matter of concern for public policy. I argue that calculative practices of risk assessment and management, whilst making some matters present as risks, simultaneously make others 'non‐communicable'.