Capturing the sustainability agenda: Organic foods and media discourses on food

scares, environment, genetic engineering, and health

Stewart Lockie

Centre for Social Science Research, Central Queensland University, Rockhampton, QLD, Australia

Accepted in revised form April 12, 2005

Abstract. This paper undertakes a content analysis of newspaper articles from Australia, the UK, and the USconcerned with a variety of issues relevant to sustainable food and agriculture from 1996 to 2002. It then goes on toidentify the various ways in which sustainability, organic food and agriculture, genetic engineering, geneticallymodified foods, and food safety are framed both in their own terms and in relation to each other. It finds that despitethe many competing approaches to sustainability found in scientific and agricultural production discourses, mediadiscourses tend to reduce this complexity to a straightforward conflict between organic and conventional foods.Despite regular reporting of viewpoints highly critical of organic food and agriculture, this binary opposition producesdiscourses in which organic foods are seen as more-or-less synonymous with safety, naturalness and nutrition, andtheir alternatives as artificial, threatening, and untrustworthy. Particularly controversial food-related issues such asgenetic engineering, food scares, chemical residues, and regulatory failure are treated as part of the same problem towhich organic food offers a trustworthy and easily understood solution.

Key words: Content analysis, Discourse, Genetic engineering, Organic food

Stewart Lockie is Associate Professor of Rural and Environmental Sociology and Associate Dean (Research) in theFaculty of Sciences, Engineering and Health at Central Queensland University. His main research interests lie in thegreening of food and agriculture, food commodity networks, and natural resource management. Recent co-editedbooks include Rurality Bites: The Social and Environmental Transformation of Rural Australia andConsuming Foods, Sustaining Environments.

Introduction

It is widely acknowledged that despite almost universalacceptance of the importance and desirability of envi-ronmental and social sustainability, the concept of sus-tainability is slippery and contested (Barr and Cary,1992). Conflicting ideas about what a safe and sustain-able food system might look like are evident in debatesover organic food standards, genetic modification, foodlabeling, chemical safety guidelines, agricultural researchpriorities, tree clearing, food safety standards, qualityassurance processes, property rights, pesticide regulation,and appropriate levels of public investment in agri-environment schemes. They are also reflected in whatLockie et al. (2002) identify as high levels of confusionamong Australian consumers regarding the social andenvironmental attributes of foods produced and pro-cessed according to a variety of regulatory regimes andthe ability of these foods to alleviate consumers� ownfood-related concerns and anxieties. Such confusion has

promoted, among many consumers, a sense of ambiva-lence and powerlessness regarding the extent to whichtheir own food choices may make a difference to them-selves, others, or the environment (see also Lockie,2002).

This paper is not concerned with the evaluation ofcompeting claims to sustainability but rather with theidentification of major themes and trends in mass mediarepresentation of issues related to food, environment, andhealth. It would be simplistic to draw any direct causalinferences, in either direction, between media reportingand public understanding and attitudes. Nevertheless,mass media representations of food-related issues doprovide a useful focus to analyze the ways in whichwords, symbols, and meanings are deployed in bids toinfluence others and thus to order, or structure, foodproduction–consumption networks. In light of claims that‘‘consumer demands’’ are driving the growth of a varietyof quality assurance programs and alternative food net-works (Lockie, 2002), it is particularly pertinent to

Agriculture and Human Values (2006) 23:313–323 � Springer 2006DOI 10.1007/s10460-006-9007-3

examine the wider discursive fields in which these ‘‘de-mands’’ are articulated. Before doing so, the paper willturn briefly to an articulation of the key methods andconcepts on which it draws.

Methodology and key concepts

The data presented in this section were drawn principallyfrom a content analysis of the Chicago Tribune, the NewYork Times, The Times (London), and all major Austra-lian national and state newspapers as defined by theNexus indexing service. Newspaper selection was basedboth on the desire to attain a degree of internationalcomparability and the pragmatic need to limit coverageto English language newspapers available through theCentral Queensland University subscription to the Nexusindexing service. As a result, it must be acknowledgedthat while the Australian sample covers a wide spectrumof publications and associated readerships, the UK andUS samples are biased towards broadsheet newspapers.While intuitively one might expect broadsheet newspa-pers to offer more extensive coverage and greater depthof analysis of issues such as food and sustainability, areview of the Australian publications demonstrates thatthis is not necessarily the case with a large number ofrelevant feature articles appearing in tabloid newspapers.

The sampling period for this analysis was January1996 to December 2002. Searches were performed on avariety of terms including organic food, organic agri-culture, agriculture and environment, food and envi-ronment, genetic engineering, genetically modifiedfoods and food scares. All articles identified using thesesearch terms were downloaded and screened to ensurethey matched the intended meaning of the search criteria.This process resulted in a database of over 9000 usablearticles. Analysis was then conducted, relating to: first,the prevalence of each search term and how this hadchanged over the sampling period; and second, the keythemes to emerge in relation to the greening of foodnetworks and the manner in which these were framed.

Framing here refers to the repetitive use of particularways for presenting information that help the reader,viewer, or listener interpret the meaning and significanceof that information (Hannigan, 1995). Frames provideprinciples for selecting, emphasizing, and presentinginformation that leave unstated any number of assump-tions and theories about what is important and why(Gitlin, 1980, cited in Miller and Riechert, 2000).According to Miller and Reichert (2000: 45), framingallows journalists to focus on objective and balancedpresentation of facts while still contributing –whetherconsciously or unconsciously – to the pursuit of particularpolitical projects. By reducing complex issues to series oflargely unrelated events – but presenting those events in

the context of familiar storylines – the need to providein-depth analysis is significantly reduced (Hannigan,1995). Framing devices include metaphors, examples,catch-phrases, depictions, and visual images, and may beaccompanied by reasoning devices including the causesof events, their consequences, and appeals to principles(Hannigan, 1995).

The deployment of framing devices does not, ofcourse, guarantee either that audiences will interpret theircontent in the intended manner or that this content willinfluence their attitudes or behavior. Communication isnon-linear and audiences bring their own, variable framesto bear on the interpretation of information. However,this does not mean that textual meaning is either‘‘radically indeterminate’’ or insignificant (Corner andRichardson, 1993: 229). Media frames reflect, and con-tribute to, discourses that extend beyond the immediatetextual content of the newspaper or broadcast. Discoursesare ways of ‘‘talking about something, organizingknowledge and thereby classifying and regulating peo-ple’’ that come to be established as accepted knowledge(Haralambos et al., 1996: 159). While discourses arecontestable and potentially unstable, they contribute tothe reproduction of networks by helping participantsmake sense of social relationships (Law, 1994); that is,by linking words and symbols with power, knowledgeand expertise (Foucault, 1980). Thus, the prevalence,relatively high level of organization, and appeals toobjectivity and authority of media content render analysisof the frames through which it is organized a useful entrypoint in the exploration and analysis of public discourses(Corner and Richardson, 1993) and an equally usefuladjunct to research on social movement mobilizations,regulatory practices, public opinions, and other aspects offood and sustainability politics.

Prevalence of food scare and sustainability signifiers

The prevalence of articles concerned with differentaspects of the sustainability of food networks has chan-ged dramatically over the last ten years. Despite thedevelopment of sizable sustainable agriculture move-ments, programs, and research initiatives over severaldecades, prior to 1996, very few articles on any aspect ofsustainability found their way into any of the publica-tions included in this analysis. Even during the period1996–2002, there were some aspects of sustainabilitythat still did not attract significant media attention.Searches for agriculture and environment and foodand environment uncovered few articles concerned withthe biological and physical environment rather than themarket, business, or regulatory environment for foodproduction. The found articles were framed in terms ofimpending environmental crisis as a result of salinity,

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water shortages, and land clearing (see also Vanclay,1992). Very few mentioned alternative or innovativeagricultural practices that may help to avert or managethese crises. Farmers and governments were representedeither as victims or villains, but there was no mention ofhow consumers, agribusinesses, and other participants inagri-food networks contribute to environmental threats.

Figures 1–5 show the results of the other searches.Caution should be exercised in drawing conclusionsbased on differences in the number of articles attributedto each source for any one search term since the cate-gories used are a combination of single publications andgroups of publications. Trends in the numbers of articlespublished over time for each source – and differences inthe number of articles published on each topic – are morereliable indicators of the relative prominence of thevarious greening issues over time.

In contrast with the extremely low level of reporting ofissues associated with environmental degradation inagriculture, organic food and agriculture, and geneticengineering both featured prominently. However, con-

sistent with the low level of reporting of environmentalissues, articles about organic food (Figure 2) were sev-eral orders of magnitude more prevalent than articlesabout organic agriculture (Figure 1). In terms of prev-alence alone, the focus was on what potential readersmay be eating rather than on how their food was pro-duced. There was also a clear trend over time for cov-erage of organics rising from its low base to a peak in2000 and 2001 and then dropping slightly.

As Figures 3 and 4 show, the concept of geneticallyengineered foods was far more common in Australiannewspapers than was genetic engineering, while thereverse was true of the London and US newspaperssampled. Reporting on genetic engineering and geneti-cally modified foods, however, followed a consistentpattern, peaking approximately a year earlier thanorganics in 1999 and 2000, and then dropping offsomewhat more dramatically than did reporting onorganics. While it is impossible to draw a direct causallink between heightened media scrutiny of the new bio-technologies, peoples� concerns regarding these

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Figure 1. ‘‘Organic agriculture’’ articles.

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technologies, and their interest in organic foods, thispattern is at least consistent with such a proposition anddeserves further analysis.

The level of reporting on food scares was low bycomparison with organics and genetic engineering. Al-though this may have reflected low use of this specific

term in articles that otherwise dealt with specific foodscares such as the BSE crisis, what is important to notefrom Figure 5 is that there is no readily apparent corre-lation between the level of reporting on food scares andmedia interest in either organics or genetic engineering inAustralia and the US. The London Times, by contrast,

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Figure 4. ‘‘Genetically modified food’’ articles.

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did appear to increase its reporting of food scares aroundthe same time that its interest in genetic engineeringpeaked, although it also appeared to sustain a moreconsistent interest in organic foods over the followingfew years.

It is, of course, dangerous to infer too much from theprevalence alone of articles on each topic. By itself,prevalence tells us nothing of the relative importanceplaced on different issues through practices such aspositioning and presentation, nor the ways in which is-sues are interpreted and represented to the reader. Thispaper turns, therefore, to the framing of these issues and,in particular, the ways in which they were framed inrelation to each other.

Framing food, environment, and health issues

Food scares

The apparent lack of any direct causal relationshipbetween the incidence of food scares and the level ofmedia interest in either organic or genetically engineeredfoods is shown to be somewhat more complicated by anexamination of the ways in which food scares wereframed in British, US, and Australian newspapers. Anumber of themes dominated the framing of food scares:

• The perception that the principal food-borne threat inAustralia and the US was food poisoning or contam-ination caused by food producers, processors, and/orretailers;

• The perceived freedom of Australia and the US fromthe level of food-borne risk associated with farmingpractices experienced in Europe and Britain;

• The status within Britain of genetic engineering as afood scare in its own right;

• The dramatic contrast between public fears andanxieties as embodied in food scares and the claimsof state food regulators that these fears were out ofproportion with the level of risk determined byobjective scientific assessment.

Often, these themes were drawn together as shown by thefollowing quote from the Chicago Tribune:European countries, spooked by recent food scaresfrom mad cow disease to products laced with cancer-causing dioxins, have in the last four months led aninternational charge away from transgenics, whichenvironmental groups there have termed ‘‘Frankensteinfoods’’ (Goering, 1999: 1).

This food-scare-induced charge away from transgenics,in turn, was credited with responsibility for the rapidlygrowing enthusiasm of the British public for organicfood. The Times (London) reported:

The controversy over genetically modified foods andmultitudinous food scares have meant that ... Organic

food sales have risen by 40% for the second yearrunning, and will be worth Pounds 546 million by theend of 1999 (and an estimated Pounds 1 billion by2001) ... Studies show that one in three people havebought organic food in the last three months (Teeman,1999).

As will be elaborated in the sections below, apologistsfor the biotechnology industries regularly used printmedia in all three countries to promote the view that foodscares related to genetic engineering and other industrialagriculture technologies are irrational and have cynicallybeen manipulated by the organic food industry for itsown commercial ends. In response, an alternative fram-ing has also been presented in these newspapers thatrepresents consumer demand for organic produce not asan irrational confusion of unrelated events but as a rea-sonable response to competing knowledge claims and tostate and industry agencies that have not proven them-selves trustworthy. In an article that otherwise parodiedanti-GE protesters as earnest, but ill-informed and con-fused, The London Times argued that the British gov-ernment was not only losing the battle to convince thegeneral public that genetic engineering offered significantbenefits, but would continue to do so because of its pastrecord on these issues:The problem for the government is that after a tortuousperiod of shillyshallying and double-talk, many previ-ous food scares have proved to be well founded(Driscoll and Carr-Brown, 1999).

The erosion of trust in pubic agencies was extended toprivate firms seen to be pushing products with no dis-cernable consumer benefits. Attempts by Monsanto, forexample, to market transgenic crops in Europe were re-ported in the Chicago Tribune to coincide witha string of food scares that undermined confidence inbig agriculture, as well as in government regulatorswho at the time downplayed the genuine human healthrisks of mad cow disease (Burns, 2002: 1).

From this perspective, consumers were rational to shungenetically modified foods promoted by the same gov-ernments and companies that had dismissed their fears inthe past. Industrialized foods –whether the products ofgenetic engineering or input-intensive agriculture –werebelieved to be as risky for their dependence on untrust-worthy institutions as they were for the dependence onseemingly unnatural production processes

Genetic engineering and genetically modified foods

The novelty of genetic engineering – together with its raftof highly controversial positive and negative implica-tions – amplifies its perceived public significance andprovides innumerable symbolic resources on which proand anti-GE spokespeople may draw. Genetic engineer-

Capturing the sustainability agenda 317

ing and genetically modified foods were framed variouslyas follows:

• Scientific achievements newsworthy in their own rightas examples of human progress and modernization

• A focus of moral and environmental conflict to bereported on in an impartial manner little different toreporting of conflicts over, for example, animalexperimentation, abortion, or wildlife conservation

• A source of personal and environmental risk withuncertain ecological and health implications, includingthe possibilities of gene transfer and genetic contam-ination

• A new agricultural and pharmaceutical revolutionpromising, on an international scale, to ease hungerand cure currently intractable diseases

• A new agricultural revolution promising to increaseproduction efficiencies and in which farmers mustparticipate in order to maintain competitive advantage

• An international trade dispute between, primarily, theUnited States and the European Union

• A threat to democracy and the rights of farmers andconsumers to decide for themselves whether or not togrow or ingest genetically modified organisms

• The antithesis of anti-scientific irrationalism.Of the framings listed above, by far the most prevalentamong the newspapers sampled was genetic engineeringas a focus of moral and environmental conflict, withprotagonists themselves drawing on other framings suchas personal and environmental risks, or the promise of arevolution in food supply. Articles thus tended to drawon several framings within an overall framing of thearticle as a factual report on public debate. This meldingof framings is illustrated in reports of a speech given byBritish Prime Minister Tony Blair to the Royal Society inLondon. According to Mr Blair,To oppose scientific research [is] to retreat into a cultureof unreason ... There is only a small band of people, Ibelieve, who genuinely want to stifle informed debate... But a small group can, as has happened in ourcountry, destroy experimental crops before we candetermine their environmental impact. I don�t knowwhat that research would have concluded. Neither dothe protesters. But I want to reach my judgments after Ihave the facts and not before ... In GM crops I can findno serious evidence of health risks, but there are gen-uine and real concerns over biodiversity and genetransfer (Kite and Henderson, 2002).

Mr. Blair�s comments as quoted above are far moretemperate than some of the published rhetoric on geneticengineering and genetically modified foods. From‘‘miracle seeds’’ to ‘‘mad scientists’’ and ‘‘Frankenfo-ods,’’ it is not difficult to find extravagant claims aboutboth the benefits and dangers of the new biotechnologiesand the hidden agendas and/or fundamental stupidity of

both pro and opposition groups. Nor is it difficult to findsuch claims dressed up as scientifically reputable posi-tions (see also Kleinman and Kloppenburg, 1991;Kloppenburg, 1991; Levidow, 1995). Dr. Bruce Chassy,Assistant Dean for Biotechnology Outreach at the Uni-versity of Champaign-Urbana, for example, suggests thatreluctance to eat genetically modified foods stems froma pair of ‘‘clinical conditions’’ he describes as ‘‘foodneurosis’’ and ‘‘food psychosis’’ (O�Neill, 2001).According to Arthur Caplan, Professor of Bioethics at theUniversity of Pennsylvania, those avoiding geneticallymodified food ‘‘have become susceptible to bogeymannightmares about cuckoo scientists run amok’’ (Stolberg,2002: 16). It is notable, however, in taking a holistic viewof reporting of conflict over genetic engineering andgenetically modified foods that the vast majority ofclaims used relatively moderate language. This wasespecially the case outside of Britain, where direct protestactions such as destruction of GE trials were seen, likefood scares, to be a particularly British phenomenon.

Reporting of conflict over genetic engineering in theUS gave relatively little voice to opponents of the tech-nology, with conflict represented as a reflection of dif-ferences in the regulatory and institutional environmentsbetween the US and European Union. Even though aseries of polls conducted by the Pew Initiative on Foodand Biotechnology (2003) between 2001 and 2002 sug-gested that Americans were more-or-less evenly dividedover the merits of biotechnologies and the reliability offood regulators, major US newspapers seemed to acceptthe assertions of pro-biotech lobby groups that opposi-tion to GE was a peculiarly European ‘‘hysteria.’’According to the New York Times:Genetic modification of food has been a relativelyunquestioned phenomenon in the United States andCanada, with altered ingredients in a range of processedfood from soft drinks to beer to breakfast cereals ... Butits arrival [in Britain] set off alarms and united dem-onstrators from lapsed causes into a powerful protestmovement against what they call ‘‘Frankenstein food’’and the large multinational companies promoting it.There is no government agency in Europe of the reg-ulatory rigor of the United States Food and DrugAdministration to build consumer confidence, andgovernment approval can arouse as much suspicion asit can provide reassurance (Hoge, 1999).

In contrast, Australian reporting of conflict over geneticengineering was as notable for its focus on the threatposed by gene transfer to the rapidly growing organicfood industry as for its focus on the threat posed toecosystems and human health.

It is important to note that the interest of this paper liesnot in the entire discursive field of genetic engineeringbut in those aspects that relate to the ordering of food

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production–consumption networks around concepts ofsustainability. In this respect, it is worth reiterating thatwhile one framing of genetic engineering was as a rev-olution in agriculture that would solve environmentalproblems and feed more people, this particular framingwas secondary to the framing of GE as a focus forconflict over human safety and the morality of ‘‘tam-pering with nature.’’ The environmental and humanitar-ian framing was also criticized (by opponents andproponents alike) for overstating and misrepresenting thebenefits of genetic engineering as it was actually beingapplied. With the majority of commercial applicationsdevoted to herbicide and insect resistance, it was entirelyreasonable, many argued, for potential consumers toconclude that few tangible benefits would flow either tothemselves or to the environment that might justify whatthey perceived as the risks of the technology. Neverthe-less, the future potential of genetic engineering todevelop products that incorporated more environmentaland health attributes was frequently used to frame GE.This approach argued that the benefits did ultimatelyoutweigh the risks in a manner that framing GE as arevolution in agricultural efficiency and profitabilitywould not. In light, however, of the future orientation ofmany of these benefits – and skepticism over the envi-ronmental benefits of herbicide and insect resistantcrops – the major impact of genetic engineering andgenetically engineered foods on the mobilization ofovertly sustainable production–consumption has gener-ally been represented as a stimulus to growth in demandfor organic and other certified GE-free foods. As the datapresented earlier in this chapter on the prevalence ofreporting on these issues shows, this appears to be aplausible conclusion.

Organic food and agriculture

As we have seen in the above sections, organic foodswere constructed in the mass media often in terms ofwhat they were not – genetically engineered or theproducts of industrialized agriculture. However, whilethe link between food scares, genetic engineering, andorganic food was strong, it was certainly not the only, oreven dominant, framing of organic food. Organic foodand agriculture were framed as follows:

• Newsworthy in their own right as reputedly the fastestgrowing sector of the food and agriculture industrieswith significant potential for further market and exportgrowth;

• A fashionable, high quality, and tasty ingredient foundincreasingly both in the offerings of restaurants andretail outlets and in the diets of celebrities;

• The safe and natural alternative to conventionallygrown foods tainted by scares over, among other

things, chemical residues and genetically modifiedorganisms;

• The solution to a host of environmental problemscaused by conventional farming and threatened bygenetic engineering;

• A means of protecting the integrity and viability oftraditional regional cuisines and farming communities,and of connecting urban consumers with those cuisinesand communities;

• An industry that has cynically manipulated publicfears despite offering products that themselves carryconsiderable risks for consumers;

• The focus of considerable scientific controversy overthe real risks and benefits of organic food and farmingpractices.

Framing organic food and agriculture as an alternative togenetic engineering and other industrialized agriculturalpractices was common in the print media of all threecountries. However, while the framing of organics as analternative may conjure up a host of other identities andpractices associated with so-called alternative lifestyles(vegetarianism, intentional communities, and alternativeeconomics), there was also much to suggest that organicswas constructed as increasingly mainstream. The framingof organic food and agriculture as a legitimate marketsegment and as a high quality ingredient establishedorganics as a regular item for reporting and discussionquite independently of its status as an alternative toconventional agriculture. Lifestyle sections, in particular,devoted increasing space to organic foods over thesampling period in a manner that largely avoided theframing of organics as an alternative. The more overtlyeditorial nature of material presented in lifestyle sectionsalso made for some important differences in the wayorganics was represented. With the overt expression ofpersonal opinion and experience far more acceptable inthis format than in news sections of the newspapers, agreat many authors simply presented organic food as aproduct that was self-evidently superior to convention-ally-grown foods in a number of ways. For a number ofauthors this was simply a matter of taste, but for others itwas also a matter of safety, naturalness, and environ-mental protection.

The evidence of mainstreaming apparent in thisacceptance of organic food as a desirable high qualityproduct was augmented by regular news articles ongrowth in the market for organic foods and on theincreasingly diverse consumer base. The Chicago Tri-bune, for example, reported that sales of organic foodsgrew more than 20% per annum over the ten yearsleading up to 2001 when they were estimated at US$9.3billion, and were projected to increase to nearlyUS$20 billion by 2005 (Kaiser, 2002). According toPaddy Spence, CEO of a market research group spe-cializing in natural foods, ‘‘as organic and natural foods

Capturing the sustainability agenda 319

get more distribution points in supermarkets and otherretail outlets, they will become even more mainstream’’(Condor, 2002).

As the most visible alternative to industrially producedfoodstuffs, the industry attracted considerable attentionand criticism. Framing organic foods as themselves risky,and the organic food and agriculture industry as cynicaland exploitative, critics attempted to debunk positivebeliefs towards organics and suggest it is in consumers�own interest to avoid organic products. Claiming themantle of scientific objectivity, critics charged the or-ganic industry with:

• Promoting farming practices that:

– can’t produce enough food to feed growing pop-ulations without massive clearing of the world�sremaining forests,

– deny livestock veterinary medicines essential totheir health and welfare,

– increase the risk to consumers of ingestingmicrobiological pathogens,

– have no proven environmental benefits;

• Overstating differences in the nutritional content andlevels of contamination between conventionally andorganically grown foods;

• Manipulating public fears in order to promote theirown economic interests.

As with genetic engineering, there was no shortage ofextravagant and colorful language. According to a rep-resentative of the Institute of Public Affairs (a politicallyconservative thinktank based in Melbourne) writing inthe Brisbane Courier Mail:YOU have to hand it to the greens. They really knowhow to generate unnecessary public alarm. Their latesttriumph has been with genetically modified crops, or‘‘Frankenfoods’’ as they call them. No doubt most‘‘poo-food’’ farmers are responsible people, but in theirdesire to make a profit, it is a fair bet that some arecutting corners and putting public health at risk. Afterall, greens always claim that this is what large corpo-rations are doing (Brunton, 2000: 30).

Accompanying the increase in articles attempting to de-bunk the organic industry over the sampling period were anumber of articles questioning the integrity and motiva-tions of the organic industry�s critics. Suggesting criticismto be part of an orchestrated campaign to discredit theorganic industry, the Chicago Tribune stated that:A recent front-page headline in The Daily Mail inLondon warned, ‘‘Organic Mushrooms Were Contam-inated With Deadly Bacteria.’’ Not until the fifth par-agraph did the reader learn that the headline was false,that the E. coli found in the mushrooms was notE. coli 0157:H7, which is deadly, but the genericvariety, which is not ... These weren�t the first falsecharges. Last year, according to The Guardian, the

‘‘agri-industrial food establishment’’ mounted ‘‘an ill-informed and unjustified smear campaign’’ that triedto link organic food to the hazardous form of E. coli.The thriving organic movement in Britain must haveagribusiness and biotech industry worried (Burros,2000: 3B).

Despite the confusion that such claims and counter-claims may be expected to invoke, organic food was theonly signifier consistently linked with environment,healthiness, and quality within the print media surveyed.As simplistic a position as it may seem, the over-whelming impression to be gained from this analysis isthat organic foods have been constructed in the printmedia as natural while their competitors have not.

Discussion

Mass media reporting of issues related to the envi-ronmental and safety attributes of food over the sam-pling period was characterized by a polarized debate inwhich organic and genetically-modified foods werepitched against each other as the respectively ‘‘natural’’and ‘‘agro-industrial’’ representatives of everything thatwas good and bad within the food system. Despitecontradictory views on the rationality of food scares –and the linking of new technologies such as geneticengineering to the arguably different practices respon-sible for existing microbiological food hazards – suchscares were attributed the primary causal role behindanti-GE and pro-organic sentiments and consumptionbehaviors.

The fact that food scares frequently were framed asresponsible for anti-GE and pro-organic sentimentamong consumers does not, in itself, prove that such arelationship exists. Certainly, it seems likely that foodscares would have contributed in some measure toincreasing public concern with food production andregulation. However, there is no compelling evidencethat media reporting of food-borne hazards has been theprimary agent responsible for either the level of concernover genetic engineering or the growth of interest inorganic foods. As Figure 5 showed, there has, in fact,been very little correlation even within the media be-tween reporting of food scares and reporting of organicsand genetic engineering. The point here is not that thethreat of food-borne hazards is irrelevant but that asimple linear relationship between microbiologically-based food scares, declining faith in food regulatoryagencies, uncertainty over the long-term implications ofthe new biotechnologies, and rapid growth in the marketfor certified organic food is unlikely. At the very least,this fails to consider: poor consumer understanding oforganic certification and labelling systems; widespreadconfusion over what the term organic means; the

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importance of non-safety related food quality attributessuch as taste and provenance in the organic market; non-safety related concerns over genetic engineering such asthe concentration of intellectual property, destruction ofbiodiversity, and homogenization of food production andconsumption cultures; and, in Australia at least, a wide-spread belief that conventionally-produced foods arereasonably safe (Lockie, 2002; Lockie et al., 2002).

By linking food scares to a simplified binarybetween the organic/natural and the GE/agro-industrial,media-based discourses on food and sustainability werecreated and reproduced so that the multiple approachestaken by agriculturalists to the pursuit of sustainabilityand food quality were largely invisible. Relatively littlemedia discussion of food, therefore, might have beenseen to promote improved public understanding of agri-culture and environmental issues. This has obviousimplications for those promoting conservation farming,integrated pest management, whole farm planning, or anyof a host of other non-organic and non-biotech agri-environmental measures. Whatever their particular ag-roecological merits or appeal to farmers, existing mediadiscourses would do little to help create market valuesand incentives for food produced using these practices.The implications of this binary for promoters of any ofthe new biotechnologies are also obvious enough.Regardless of the reasons for their introduction, anyfoods produced using GE and other biotechnologies arelikely to be seen as threatening and undesirable. Even fororganic producers, the simplicity of this binary must beseen as potentially problematic to the extent that theconstruction of organic food consumption as a defensivemechanism against food scares obscures alternativeconstructions of quality based on taste, nutrition, andtradition. The latter constructions tend to favor relativelysmall-scale production and complex agroecologies overthe more industrialized operations that are coming todominate organic production in some areas (see Guthman,2000, 2004). But if the sole reason for consuming organicfood is to avoid the ingestion of synthetic chemical resi-dues, there is no reason not simply to substitute syntheticchemicals and fertilizers with naturally-derived pesticidesand fertilizers within otherwise conventional productionsystems.

There are those, of course, who regard simplifiedframings of organics and biotech as desirable and useful.The data reported above showed evidence of a number ofgroups who sought to utilize media discourses in order toshape food production–consumption networks in partic-ular ways through the dissemination of emotive signifiersand arguably misleading information. What is mostinteresting here is not the empirical veracity of the var-ious claims and counter-claims made about organics andgenetic engineering but the contradictory, and perhapsunforeseen, outcomes of this contestation. Even within

the biotechnology sector a critique had begun to emergeof the negative consequences – in terms of heightenedpublic mistrust and opposition – flowing from the ten-dency of proponents to overstate the potential short-termbenefits of GE and other innovations. It seems likely thatthe exaggerated negative stereotyping of political oppo-nents often accompanying such polemics only added tothis mistrust and opposition, particularly given thatnegative stereotyping was directed not only towards ‘‘thegreens’’ and other political groups but at the larger bodyof food consumers who were described by some as tooneurotic, hysterical, and vulnerable to make informeddecisions. At the same time, it is possible to speculatethat media attention on the strong market performance ofthe organic industry and its ability to draw on discoursesof economic growth and free enterprise may – despite themisgivings of many participants that this represents the‘‘conventionalization’’ of the sector – have helped tolegitimize campaigns against GE and other forms ofagro-industrialization.

Conclusion

There is a clear disjuncture between those discourses ofsustainability that dominate agriculture and agriculturalscience and those that dominate the mass media. Whileagriculture in the broadest sense is characterized by anumber of competing approaches to sustainability (seePretty, 1998), media discourses often present sustain-ability simply as a choice between organic agricultureand the industrialized, genetically modified, and chemi-cal intensive alternative of conventional agriculture. Thissimplification of sustainability discourse, and the focuson aspects of food related to food safety and nutrition,cannot be considered surprising given the basic journal-istic principle of helping audiences sift through andunderstand the vast amount of information to which theyare exposed by focusing on what is most relevant to themas individuals (Hannigan, 1995). Even those appeals tothe authority of science found in media discourses sel-dom do justice to the complexity of scientific debate onsustainability. However, the point here is not to implycriticism of the mass media, but to show that despite themultitudinous ways in which we might approach agri-cultural sustainability, organic food and agriculture hasbeen the only approach consistently represented withinmedia discourses as the means to promote healthierenvironments and people. Other approaches, rangingfrom integrated pest management to conservation farm-ing, either are absent from these discourses or are rep-resented as antithetical to sustainability (by, for example,using chemicals rather than ‘‘natural’’ means to reducesoil erosion).

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There is, of course, more to knowledge and powerthan those aspects of discourse reflected in the massmedia. In the case of food, it is impossible to ignoreinfluences ranging from the research agendas of scientificagencies to farming culture and government policy.Despite this, the pervasiveness of the mass media and thediscourses circulating through it are reflected both inconfusion among many food consumers over the attri-butes of organic, conventional, and genetically-engi-neered foods (Lockie, 2002; Lockie et al., 2002). Asmedia articles themselves suggest, there is a growinglack of trust among consumers for regulatory agenciesthat are seen as promoting industry over public interests.Contestation over the meaning and operationalization ofsustainability seems thus to have had what may appear atfirst glance contradictory results. For at the same timethat the plethora of competing claims have contributed toconfusion, ambivalence, and a sense of powerlessnessamong some, they have provided fertile ground fororganic food as a straightforward and holistic signifier ofsafety, quality, and responsibility.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Nell Salem for herinvaluable assistance in the collection and processing ofdata for this paper, along with the rest of the GreeningFoods research team, Professor Geoffrey Lawrence, andDr. Kristen Lyons.

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Address for correspondence: Dr. Stewart Lockie, Faculty ofSciences, Engineering and Health, Central Queensland Univer-sity, Rockhampton, QLD, 4702, AustraliaPhone: +61-7-49306539; Fax: +61-7-49309209;E-mail: s.lockie@cqu.edu.au

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