Journal article
Soft law, responsibility and the biopolitics of front-of-pack food labels
Griffith Law Review, Vol.26(3), pp.355-377
2017
Abstract
Front-of-pack (FOP) food labels are increasingly used by government and industry to provide nutrition information to consumers for the promotion of healthier eating habits. However, quantitative and qualitative research into the effectiveness of FOP food labelling schemes is in its infancy and, at this stage at least, is largely unconvincing. Using Australia's health star rating system as an exemplar, in this article we provide a novel perspective on FOP food labels and in so doing make two (related) arguments about FOP food labels and in many ways about food label schemes more broadly. The first argument is that FOP food labels enliven a combination of hard and soft law. The second argument, informed by Foucault's notion of governmentality, is that FOP food labelling functions as a technology of the self. Drawing these two arguments together, we conclude that FOP food labels rely on a distorted rationality, because (i) the main actors in the process - food companies - are placed in a position of self-regulatory actors, fundamentally oriented to an economic rather than biopolitical agenda; and (ii) the biopolitics of population health through FOP food labels assumes particular kinds of rational consumers, when the reality of social life is far more complex.
Details
- Title
- Soft law, responsibility and the biopolitics of front-of-pack food labels
- Authors
- Brendon Murphy (Author) - University of NewcastleJay Sanderson (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast - Faculty of Arts, Business and Law
- Publication details
- Griffith Law Review, Vol.26(3), pp.355-377
- Publisher
- Taylor & Francis Australasia
- Date published
- 2017
- DOI
- 10.1080/10383441.2017.1436371
- ISSN
- 1038-3441; 1038-3441
- Organisation Unit
- University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland; School of Law and Society; School of Law and Criminology - Legacy
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 99451437402621
- Output Type
- Journal article
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