In Food We Trust? Technologies of Governance in Industrialized Food Systems

Questions related to technological development, food safety and consumer confidence have increased in importance throughout the 20th century. Today's industrialized food systems are an integral part of our everyday lives. Government agencies, legislators, food producers, researchers and consumer organizations are still active to ensure that the food that comes into the market is safe. The main aim of the project has been to show how today's industrialized food systems have been integrated into everyday life in Norway through the parallel system of food safety and consumer confidence. The project has been very diverse with both historical and contemporary topics. More generally, the project has attempted to investigate and describe how the landscape between the hard (policy, law and government regulations) and soft power (cookbooks, blogs, quasi-institutions) unfold. In this landscape you will find a number of new actors. We have examined political, academic and public debates and controversies related to food production and regulation through legislation and regulations. These affect and lay down how these systems work. Perhaps equally important in our material is how informal channels like blogs, information in everyday literature such as cookbooks, political technologies such as standards, certificates and various brokerage institutions affect and control both eating habits and safety. This kind of soft power, in today's media society, has as many times as great authority and importance as general dietary advice and safety practices. State-run internal control systems compete with smileys and magazines in magazines. The project has published a number of monographs, articles and chapters. The project ends with a book where the projects are synthesized. Several chapters are written and the book will be available in 2019.

Questions related to technological development, food safety and consumer trust in food increased in importance throughout the 20th century. Today industrialized food systems are integrated parts of everyday life. However, governmental agencies, legislator s, food producers, scientists and consumer organizations still struggle to ensure that food is safe and to deal with on-going technological development. This project will analyse how industrialized food and food systems were integrated into everyday life through its sibling systems of food safety and consumer trust. We will investigate policy oriented, academic and public debates and controversies on the social and cultural aspects of food production and consumption. Our approach will examine the cultural ly contingent processes that led to the present industrialized system of highly manipulated and transformed foods. By investigating themes related to food safety and consumer trust in a perspective that combines science and technology studies (STS) and hi storical studies of technology we offer alternative visions of how the present system emerged, its historical roots and transformations in time. A historical study of "the technologies of trust" can improve our understanding of the present situation of ou r food system and offer alternative visions for securing safe food and consumer trust in the future. 1. How have our conceptualizations and handlings of food safety and consumer trust changed during the 20th century? 2. How have institutional setups, tech nologies and mediators been utilized to transform food in time and space to become healthy and trustworthy? 3. How have various actors acted upon food, technology and people to produce or format individuals and collectives so that they suit the prevailing systems of food safety and consumer trust? 4. How have this transformed our relationship to the food we eat and thus the culture of food, safety and trust in Norway through the 20th century.