Seguran?a, qualidade e riscos: a regula??o sanit?ria e os processos de (i)legaliza??o dos queijos artesanais de leite cru em Minas Gerais

• Autor(a) principal: Cintr?o, Ros?ngela Pezza
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da UFRRJ
• Texto Completo: https://tede.ufrrj.br/jspui/handle/jspui/1809
• topic: Food Regulation; Raw Milk Artisanal Cheese; Food Safety and Quality; vigil?ncia sanit?ria; queijos artesanais de leite cru; qualidade e seguran?a dos alimentos; Ci?ncias Humanas

The dissertation focuses on conflicts and disputes about the sanitary (il)legalization of artisanal raw milk cheese in the state of Minas Gerais, which have become stronger since the 1990?s. It shows how State apparatus, laws, rules and regulations conceived with the aim of protecting the health of the population and usually presented as neutral and scientific end up, through various and complex ways, serving as instruments to establish barriers to entry amidst the disputes on dairy products? markets. The sanitary regulation of artisanal cheese is analyzed as a part of a process of progressive governamentalization of the State, which favors industrial, large-scale patterns of production, processing and distribution of food. The need to pasteurize and the minimum time for ripening are in the core of the debates and of the international regulations (Codex Alimentarius). In the case in focus, the legitimization of sanitary regulation is achieved by means of standards of ?quality?, ?risk?, and ?food safety? based in laboratory exams that search for the presence, in levels higher than legally permitted, of two groups of microorganisms (faecal coliforms and Staphiylococcus aureus), leading to the legal classification as ?improper for human consumption?. This conflicts with the population?s perception of these cheeses as a tasty and safe food, part of the cultural identity of people from Minas Gerais. As cheese is an essentially ?living? product, that may have ?bad? microorganisms but also has ?good? microorganisms that are responsible for unique characteristics of flavor and texture, sanitary rules based on industrial criteria are in conflict with traditional ways of producing and consuming cheese. Thus, illegalization processes lead to reactions, such as looking for possibilities of legalization amidst legal and institutional tangles that are ever more complex and permit the inclusion of only a minority of cheese-producing families. The majority of these families remain informal, which is increasingly constructed as illegal. Fieldwork was done in two municipalities in the region of the cheese known as Canastra, and the analysis points to a set of elements enabling people to remain in cheese-related activities, both as producers and as traders, in forms that are culturally established as part of a way of life and that ensure the families? social reproduction and their resiliency in face of external pressures. The study of this case thus brings forth more general issues about the relation between State, Law, Science and markets, and about their relation with peasant populations. It also discusses hegemonic notions of risk concerning health and food, and its effects on the way of life of peasant populations and on the consumers? possibilities of choice.