Regarding food safety inspection as a mode of requalification made to factor into models of risk-assessment as well as value formation, I ask: what else may be put at risk by the requalifications that mark some items as permissible and others as impermissible to cross national borders?


Certainly, profitis put at risk when brokers, importer and retailers must await the delayed release of a pallet of perishable goods that has been held at the port of New Jersey for further scrutiny. And for every thwarted disease outbreak, how many heartbreaks do airport food confiscations generate? (Paxson 2014)


“[... ] border operations deem some edible materials as appropriate for absorption by the national body politic while rejecting others as filthy, adulterated, infected, misbranded or otherwise unfit. Examining these judgments as the result of synecdochic reason – and more precisely, of competing regimes of synecdochic connection that qualify (different) parts differently to arrive at contingent assessments of wholes – offers a way to account for, and to contest, the cross-border politics of food safety assessment.” (Paxon, 2019)