The Political Space between Words and Things: Health Claims as Referential Displacement

In the EU today, health claims on food labels are regulated as a form of information. Before the 2000s, statements referring to health on packaged food were subject to different national regulations across the EU, with different perspectives on where the boundary lies between food and drugs. The turn to more horizontal legislation in EU food law and increased emphasis on the role of information for the functioning of the Single Market does not in itself explain why, and especially how, health-related statements on food products have been turned into information and what consequences this has produced. Construction of such a European ‘technological zone’, where health claims circulate as a form of information, can be understood as ‘information's constitutive outside’ (Barry, A. (2006) Technological zones, European Journal of Social Theory, 9(2), pp. 239–253; Barry, A. (2013) Material Politics: Disputes along the Pipeline (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell)). This outside hinges on techno-political discussion, lobbying and decisions where the boundary between health and disease is at stake, along with food's materiality. The concept of referential displacement shows how decisions in the regulatory process have transformed controversial references to human health on food labels into ‘health claims’ as an informational category by shifting the relation between the health claim and its material referents: food itself, health and the body. Referential displacement produces a new kind of information that implies similar efficacy to pharmaceutical drugs, without interfering with the zone or market of pharmaceuticals. © 2018, © 2018 Process Press.