INTRODUCTION

This chapter explores some issues at the intersection of regulation and religion, as they apply to food. It examines the regulations and values that affect choices at food and drink outlets in an inner suburban street in Sydney.

Three case studies explore this range of intersecting claims and responsibilities. Religious requirements may be regulated by a religious council, Beth Din or Ulama; food safety is monitored by government and industry bodies; while consumer and animal rights organisations may be involved in demands for particular standards and the reliability of various claims for food. There is continuous negotiation between government, industry, religious or ethical bodies and consumer advocates over label­ling and other regulations. Since food is ultimately a matter of consump­tion (indeed, it is the ultimate form of consumption), even religious regulation has much in common with other forms of consumer protec­tion. The consumer wants to know, with some guarantee of the reliability of the certification or labelling, whether their food is safe, free range, halal, healthy, and so on.

While this may be seen as a fairly straightforward exercise in regu­lation for consumer protection, at another level it casts light on one of the most contentious issues of our time: the relations between reason, religion and law. These have been questioned anew, with the recent challenges to the ‘secularization thesis’ which suggest that it is ‘overly simplistic and grossly inadequate’.^[1117]

[C]an we reconcile the enduring presence of religion in western societies with the dominant assumption that law is a logical, rational and objective enter­prise, free of any connection to spiritual belief?^[1118]

This question is often put in terms that reflect or question the traditional separation between faith and law, or church and state: an ideology of secularism.

Underlying my interest in the interaction of various (perhaps compet­ing) value systems in the development of regulation is the hope that I can cast some light on the contemporary problems of secularism. I respond to the challenge of the secular, prompted by several recent themes and concerns in the discourse on secularism.

We hear a certain nostalgia, or worse, from many liberal or secularist scholars. The very aggression of the secularist counter-offensive has prompted me to explore new ways of conceiving secularism, whose purported neutrality and peaceful promise have been compromised by the divisive diatribes of authors like those whom Terry Eagleton (2010) has called, collectively, ‘Ditchkins’.^[1119] This militant secularism may accept religion confined to the private sphere, but is more likely to identify it as a troublesome irrational force which is to be excluded from public life lest it corrupt impartiality and sow seeds of unrest and conflict. The very diversity of contemporary societies is invoked in support of this view. In once-Christian societies which are now home to substantial minorities of non-believers and believers in other religions, the very notion of religion is seen as inflammatory and potentially divisive. It plays the role in the politics of fear that ethnic identification of Australian soccer clubs was supposed to have when they were called ‘Croatian’, ‘Serbian’ or ‘Hakoah’. Names like ‘Melbourne Victory’, ‘Brisbane Roar’ or the ‘Sky Blues’ are presumed to be sufficiently neutral to overcome the threat of religious conflicts and ethnic brawls. In the same way, criteria for choice of public goods compete to be secular and innocuous, ‘evidence-based’ and perhaps even ‘value-free’.

Elsewhere I have questioned the universalism of secularism in light of its Christian origins.^[1120] While that is not an argument against secularism as such, it does prompt further inquiry into the role of secular values as an alternative to religious ones in an ethnically and religiously diverse world.

Another response to the crisis of secularism is the view that it has been superseded by a ‘post-secular’ age, in which religious motivations and spirituality are rediscovered. This approach questions whether the secular universe of reason and science provides sufficient grounds for making hard moral and ethical choices. Thinkers as diverse as Jürgen Habermas (2008), Rosi Braidotti (2008) and Steven D. Smith (2010) welcome a ‘post-secular’ polity (in the case of the first two), or one in which religious values are admitted as a ground for ethical or even political claims (in the case of Habermas and Smith).^[1121]

I am sceptical about such alternatives. I have already expressed my concerns over a militant and divisive secularism. Likewise, we need a more nuanced approach to value choices in public life than those put forward in the name of competing established religions. In this I agree with feminists like Braidotti or Margaret Davies (2011),^[1122] who both advocate a richer framework for ethical debate than those sanctioned by traditionally accredited religious or political leaders. I am also interested to understand the legitimate role that might be played by rational and scientific discourse if they were to enter into the stimulating arena of public debate as engaged and valued participants and not just ‘conver­sation stoppers’.^[1123]

II.