Elsevier AMS ch12-I045018 Job code: AFR 23-5-2007 7:53 a.m. Page:203 Trimsize:165×240 MM Basal Fonts:Times & Helvetica Margins:Top:3 pc Gutter:4p9 Font Size:10/12 Text Width:29p6 Depth:47 Lines Chapter 12 ‘Bending Science to Match Their Convictions’: Hygienist Conceptions of Food Safety as a Challenge to Alternative Food Enterprises in Ireland Colin Sage Department of Geography, University College Cork, Republic of Ireland Introduction A series of food safety crises in the UK and to a lesser extent elsewhere in Europe during the 1980s and 1990s introduced far-reaching regulatory and institutional reform. The enormous cost of the BSE crisis – fiscal, political and, critically, that sustained by consumer confidence – initiated a process involving the creation of food safety authorities at national and at EU level (Marsden et al. 2000; van Zwanenberg and Millstone 2003). These statutory, science-based and ostensibly ‘independent’ organ- isations were responsible for ensuring a seamless guarantee of food safety from farm to fork. The reallocation of responsibilities for food governance that had hith- erto been in the hands of the old agricultural ministries was designed to restore the faith of consumers in the food supply chain (Barling 2004). Yet the adoption of a rather narrow and conservative approach to protecting the consumer against the risks caused by the way food is produced or supplied has tended to encourage the defence of conventional agriculture and the mainstream food system (Barling and Lang 2003). A feature of the institutional response to public anxieties associated with the food scares of the 1980s and 1990s has been the emergence and consolidation of a science- based approach to food safety regulation. Frequent reference to ‘sound science’ and ‘scientifically based evidence’ has become a prevailing feature of the contemporary food Alternative Food Geographies D. Maye, L. Holloway & M. Kneafsey (Editors) Copyright © 2007 by Elsevier Ltd. ISBN: 978-0-08-045018-6 All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.