“Regulating Accountability and Transparency in China’s Dairy Industry” analyzed the production, modification and transfer of regulatory practices following the global 2008 melamine adulteration scandal and later food safety controversies in the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) domestic dairy industry. The project assessed how food safety regulations and industry best practices, targeted on improving accountability and transparency, transformed as they moved across different locales and through various technical practices.

Food scandals often lead to regulatory reform, the reworking of relationships between regulatory and other actors, and ethical debates within society about the role, limits and possibilities of regulation. Government and industry develop techniques to create transparency in an effort to combat future disasters. Responding to research demonstrating that these efforts do provide an appearance of greater transparency and regulation, but often fail in increasing transparency and in preventing future crises, this research found that systematic information about standards and best practices transferred across extended chains. Yet different sets of actors interpreted and implemented this information in non-uniform ways dependent on their position in the chain. The results of this research thus show that transparency is not a straightforward outcome of simply providing greater access to information.

During the research period, the Principal Investigator (PI) employed a range of qualitative research methods, including on-site observation, interviews, and the collection and analysis of documentary practices, primarily in the PRC. The PI identified specific groups for research based on their location in the food safety regulatory and/or dairy supply chain, including food safety experts, industry and trade association representatives, transnational organizations, dairy farmers and managers, and government officials. The project traced the production and transfer of transparency norms across a number of sites, including dairy farms of different scales, food safety and industry training workshops, retail outlets, and industry trade exhibitions and forums. The PI worked in conjunction with teams from two Chinese universities and trained graduate students and undergraduate students in the US and China on data collection and analysis.

This research addressed several themes important to cultural anthropology and the social sciences more broadly as well as the national interests of the United States. This finding has implications for how global transparency norms are incorporated that extends beyond a straightforward examination of how regulations and standards are translated. The findings suggest that the actual work of this translation process occurs across different sites and an extensive range of practices. Moreover, the knowledge gaps created in the transplant process occur not only as regulations are transformed into best practices on farms and production facilities but also in their movement from global regulatory bodies to local contexts. Thus the research has the potential to increase our knowledge on the transformative effects of food safety standards, especially the long-term effects on regulatory practices following crises identified as a failure of regulatory and technological systems. The project also sought to bridge a quantitative-qualitative research gap by adding to the predominantly qualitative and survey-based literature on China’s dairy industry and through collaborations with Chinese researchers and their students across different disciplines. With the volume of agricultural imports and exports between the US and China and the evolving nature of China's food regulatory system, a detailed understanding of China’s regulatory regime has direct relevance for America's food safety and security in addition to future economic opportunities. More broadly, the project addressed fundamental questions about whether or not demands for accountability embedded in now global standards are actually implemented and whether or not this might make food safer.

Last Modified: 11/16/2016
Modified by: Megan E Tracy