Race and Process: Certifying Iberian Pigs and Invisibilising Humans

Abstract

This article is based on on-going fieldwork in Extremadura, Spain and printed material produced by the producers’ association: a producer’s handbook, a guide to the genealogical registry, a trade journal, and current legislation. In a context of global market oriented commodity production, the Iberian Pig undergoes several processes of classification and certification, governmental as well as from the private sector, that aim to assure certain racial and processual characteristics of the finished products. In this article I analyse the mythical-historical, scientific, and legislative construction of the Iberian Pig breed. I ask, in the ever-widening distance between farm and fork, not only what the processes of certification bridge, but also what fails to make it through, as well as what these processes contribute towards concealing. I argue that, in an attempt at constructing it as natural, the process of certification renders invisible the agency of modern human intervention in the making of the Iberian Pig.