Health surveillance and the right to communication: Food labeling as a part of citizenship

Abstract

This article is based on a doctoral thesis that sought to understand the communicative process established within the framework of health surveillance, emphasizing the perspective of the citizen’s right to information and communication and taking food labeling as an empirical object. Thus, the study investigated the three segments with some degree of involvement in defining, implementing, and monitoring public policies on labeling, the public, the production sector, and organized civil society, as well as the academic sector, due to its contribution in the context of scientific studies. Based on the confluences and divergences, it proposed a system of communication regarding labeling that best ensures the citizen’s right to information and communication without disregarding the interests involved. It is a qualitative health study, following the case study method. For the research problem and data analysis, the main theoretical framework employed was the social production of meanings, particularly the conceptual framework that considers communication as a symbolic market. Some of the obtained results indicated that the communicative practice cannot satisfactorily meet the citizen’s demands, that market values override the right to information and communication, and that when faced with demands of risk the sectors seek immediate solutions. There also exist intrasectoral and intersectoral conflicts that disturb the communicative flow and hinder guaranteeing the citizen’s right, such as failures in regulatory applicability by the productive sector and strong advertising appeals to the consumer, few partnerships to develop strategies for disseminating information; difficulties in monitoring labeling, and few channels capable of bringing regulatory agencies and academic research together. The proposed system suggests a better definition of the following: the legal responsibilities between the regulatory agencies, an ethical commitment from the sectors, media sensitization for disseminating information to society, expansion of the monitoring of labeling, effective punishment of offenders, and including the number 800 on labels to contact the agency responsible for the standards. The different interests of the various actors involved in the food production system are concentrated and represented on labels.