Toxic Foods: An Ethnographic Exploration of Processes of Food Contamination in Bangladesh

This project will qualitatively investigate how substances harmful to human health are added to food in Bangladesh.

Weak state enforcement enables widespread overuse of nitrogen fertilisers and banned imported pesticides, as well as chemicals to ripen fruit and formalin to prevent food from spoiling.

Quantitative studies highlight how more than half of food in Dhaka is adulterated with harmful chemicals and is perceived as bhejal [adulterated, impure] and bishakto [toxic] and contributing towards ill-health and disease such as stroke, cancer, liver, and kidney problems. The project will ethnographically examine the everyday practices of how food becomes bhejal.

It will do so by interviewing farmers and agrochemical sellers in rural areas, conduct participant observation with food sellers at three markets with different distances between consumers and the food of origin (a rural town, district market and the national capital), and through open-ended interviews with state officials at agricultural production and food safety agencies.

An anthropological understanding of the individual motivations and considerations, formal and informal ways, in which food becomes bhejal may illustrate the connections between intensive agricultural practices, environment, food and health risks in ways that support potential solutions for food production of both sufficient quantity and safe quality.

Achieving both goals is essential for truly sustainable development in the Global South.