“It’s a Horrible Coincidence”: Corporate Responsibility and the 2007 Pet Food Recall

摘要

The 2007 pet food recall has perhaps become best known for marking the beginning of the barrage of recalled items produced in China. The importance of this case, however, extends well beyond that distinction. The recall received extensive media coverage, its implications are vast, and the threads of corporate malfeasance woven throughout are plentiful. The pet food recall therefore provides an instructive case for examining discourses of corporate responsibility and crime in the media. To this end, an analysis of newspaper accounts of the recall in Canada, where the primary pet food manufacturing company involved is located, and in the United States, where the bulk of the affected pets and owners reside, is undertaken in this paper. Building on previous research examining mediated discourses of corporate crime, this paper documents a shift in the depictions of responsibility for the recall over time. However, a continued reluctance to invoke a “social vocabulary of corporate crime” is observed in the descriptions of certain actors’ actions, particularly once juxtaposed against the behavior of constructed “folk devils” in the case.