La construction socio-juridique de la traçabilité des viandes bovines, entre politique sanitaire et organisation du marché (1960-2002)

Résumé En Fr

The legal and social construction of traceability in the beef chain : health policy and market organization (1960-2002) The traceability of beef is commonly read as an answer to new consumer requirements relating to safety which emerged after 1996. The BSE crisis led indeed to an extended change in the whole beef chain. However most of the norms and legal procedures which still allow the traceability preceded the crisis. The purpose of this paper is to study the tension between the novelty of this device and the continuance of the rules that support it, through the analysis of their social and legal production. In the 1960s, the legal methods of following-up meat and animals were oriented towards the modernization of beef-market and of cattle-breeding practices. But the connection of these two sides was broken at the slaughter-house level. This break conveyed the representation according to which an animal in good health gave wholesome meat. After 1975, the increased use of veterinary drugs, especially of growth-hormones, called into question the fairness of the market value of meat as well as its safety for consumers. The increasing amount of litigations prompted the construction of scientific and accounting rules which ensured the link between the meat on sale and the inputs used for its production. At that time, the conviction emerged that breeding practices had great influence upon the safety of meat. In the 1990s, traceability was used for both signalling higher-quality meat to consumers and controlling the grant of European quality-targeted subsidies. In addition, the follow-up of cattle was extended for the purpose of health policy towards BSE. This crisis urged on the linkage of these commercial and health aspects of traceability : it stood out as a market regulation device able to articulate the control of trading and a health-policy securing the safety of livestock products. Finally, the evolution of traceability depends on the way institutional and occupational actors seize on the legal rules of follow-up in their economic activities and also on the changes in the representation of health risk. Thus, the health policy conducted through law is always linked to market function.

Cet article propose d’étudier la construction socio-juridique de la traçabilité dans le secteur de la viande bovine, selon une perspective historique attentive aux motifs complémentaires et parfois contradictoires qui prévalent à la mise en oeuvre des systèmes d’identification et de suivi des animaux et des viandes depuis les années 1960. Si une perspective socio-historique conduit à souligner la continuité des règles de suivi, le regard posé sur le droit, comme dispositif ouvert aux mobilisations différentielles des acteurs professionnels et institutionnels, permet aussi de rendre compte des inflexions qu’elles connaissent. En confrontant plusieurs facteurs déterminants dans la construction des normes, il apparaît que la dynamique de la traçabilité s’inscrit à la croisée de l’évolution des relations commerciales, des formes d’organisation du marché et des différents modes de représentation de la qualité sanitaire de la viande.