Street Food

Culture, economy, health and governance

Ryzia De Cassia Vieira Cardoso, Michèle Companion, Stefano Roberto Marras

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317689911
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Biological Sciences

Prepared foods, for sale in streets, squares or markets, are ubiquitous around the world and throughout history. This volume is one of the first to provide a comprehensive social science perspective on street food, illustrating its immense cultural diversity and economic significance, both in developing and developed countries.

Key issues addressed include: policy, regulation and governance of street food and vendors; production and trade patterns ranging from informal subsistence to modern forms of enterprise; the key role played by female vendors; historical roots and cultural meanings of selling and eating food in the street; food safety and nutrition issues. Many chapters provide case studies from specific cities in different regions of the world. These include North America (Atlanta, Philadelphia, Portland, Toronto, Vancouver), Central and South America (Bogota, Buenos Aires, La Paz, Lima, Mexico City, Montevideo, Santiago, Salvador da Bahia), Asia (Bangkok, Dhaka, Penang), Africa (Accra, Abidjan, Bamako, Freetown, Mozambique) and Europe (Amsterdam).

Part I

Governance

Policies and politics

1 Comparative analysis of legislative approaches to street food in South American metropolises

Stefano R. Marras

Abstract

Street food trade plays an important role in contemporary urban areas in South America. It represents a viable employment opportunity for vulnerable groups and ensures food access for a large part of the middle- and low-income working classes. Nonetheless, food safety is often at risk and widespread informality undermines the development and legitimacy of the sector. Street food stands at the crossroads where three equally fundamental rights meet: the individual right to work, the collective right to access and use public spaces, and the right to food security—a crossroads where risks of clashes are lurking, and issues of priority arise. How do policy-makers face this tangled phenomenon? What drives their policy-making? How do legal frameworks shape street food vending?

The author analyzes the legislation regulating the trade of street food enacted by local administrations in six major South American capital cities: Buenos Aires, Bogotá, La Paz, Lima, Montevideo, and Santiago. By comparing them, the author explores how each city’s history, socio-demographic composition, economic and productive structure, and political tradition shape the approach of authorities towards street food, and how and to what extent legislations enacted shape the sector.

Despite the differences, all legislations analyzed share three elements: first of all, a pauperistic notion of street trade as a marginal, possibly temporary economic sector suiting poor people only, especially in the emergency of economic crisis. Second, an exclusive tendency banning vendors from the city centers, coupled with the general limitation to deploy which inherently characterizes street vending. Finally, a hygienistic approach aimed at ensuring food safety through vendors’ sterilization only, neglecting the role of consumers’ awareness and habits, and seldom envisaging the provision of services and infrastructure where vending takes place.

Keywords: Street Food, South America, Legislation, Policy.

Introduction

Street food vendors are estimated to number a few million throughout Latin America (de la Peña, 1990; Arámbulo et al., 1995; Flores, 1998; ILO, 2002; Roever 2006; Jutting and Laiglesia, 2009; Rincón, 2010; Itikawa, 2010; OECD, 2012). They are an ubiquitous element in the urban landscapes of the area between the tropics, i.e. Mexico City, Bogotá, Lima, Salvador Bahia, La Paz. They are less widespread in the cities of the southern region, such as Montevideo, Buenos Aires, and Santiago de Chile.

Despite differences in numbers, Latin American vendors share common traits. First, they belong mainly to groups that are socially and economically vulnerable. This includes lower classes, ethnic minorities (e.g. indigenous people and African descendants), internal or regional migrants, elderly people, and women (Flores, 1998; ILO, 2002; Valenzuela, 2005; Jutting and Laiglesia, 2009; World Bank, 2009; Esquivel, 2010; OECD, 2012; Herrera et al., 2012; WIEGO). These groups are affected, directly or indirectly, by long-standing policies and practices that are unsupportive, marginalizing, or discriminatory on the basis of gender, ethnicity, cohorts, and geography. These individuals face barriers as they try to access waged jobs in urban contexts, where employment competition is high due to population growth.¹ In addition, secondary and tertiary sectors require more technological and specialized skills, and recurring economic crises shrink the labor market.

Self-employment represents the only viable solution to making a living (Bosch and Maloney, 2010; Portes, 1995), with many working in the service sector, mainly in commerce. Street food vending is appealing, as it requires little training, minimum start-up investment, low overheads, and no rent. Its mobility allows an unparalleled just-in-time and just-on-place production–sale flexibility. Home-based food preparation allows the involvement of unpaid family members. Women, by seizing and redefining their traditional gender-based role of pantry-keepers, can find personal and social emancipation as entrepreneurs (Valenzuela, 2005).

The spread of street foods is fostered by a correspondingly wide consumer base. Inherently quick and cheap, street food responds to the demand of those people with time and financial constraints. Increasingly, consumers are members of the growing urban, economically active, middle-class population (McCann Worldgroup, 2012) who are forced to spend their whole day away from home and their kitchen.

Street food also has a positive impact on local economies and ecosystems, because it is mostly traditional and thus made with locally sourced foods. Less traditional hot-dogs and hamburgers are re-invented in almost infinite local variations to meet the taste of local people (Lovera, 2005; Albala, 2011). By doing so, vendors support local economies, foster bio-diversity, and play an important role in achieving food sovereignty,² food security,³ and a sustainable urban food chain (Boucher, 1989; Montgomery et al., 2004).

Despite this, issues hinder the development of this sector. First, legal and political disputes over vendors’ rights to use public space are widely unsettled. It is not just a simple legal matter, but a concern at a constitutional level (Herrera Vergara, 2007). In fact, street vendors’ fundamental right to work collides with the equally fundamental recognition of public spaces as owned by everyone and no one, and, therefore free from private interests. Decisions typically belonging to a venture’s owner (e.g. size of the business, marketing strategies, selling points’ aesthetics, vendors’ apparel, etc.), are controlled by public authorities in the case of street-based vendors. The scope and extent of such interference has resulted in political battles across the continent.

A second issue is related to the informality of the sector. In the 1980s, Latin America was hit by the most severe financial crisis of its history (the década perdida or “lost decade”), resulting in masses of informal vendors pouring onto the streets. Since then, social scientists have been discussing the pros and cons of the informal sector (Abel, 2008). Drawbacks of informality are many. First, it translates into administrative invisibility, which impedes public control over minimum wages, child labor, health and safety, and other basic rights (Abel, 2008). It also restricts public administrators’ ability to plan and implement effective development schemes to enhance the sector. Uncoordinated vending and cut-throat competition may be economically counter-productive for vendors. Their activities may impede pedestrian and vehicle mobility or cause environmental pollution. By eluding taxes, informal vendors have unfair competitive advantages over formal vendors of similar products (Bar-Din, 1995).

Nonetheless, others argue that informality is economically desirable and socially fair when the formal rules (taxes, permit requirements, spatial limits, etc.) result in excessive limits to economic activities that may be beneficial to both vendors and the population as a whole (De Soto, 1986; Lubell, 1991; Bar-Din, 1995; Sarghini et al., 2001; Pérez, 2004).

Finally, the safety and nutritional quality of street food is hotly debated (de la Peña, 1990; World Bank and IMF, 2012). Related to this is the issue of food hygiene and risk of contamination. In 1985 the Pan American and World Health Organizations (PAHO and WHO) organized a workshop on the issue in Lima, Peru. A few years later, in 1991, a severe cholera epidemic struck the Peruvian country and the surrounding Andean region; street food was considered to be the major carrier of the disease (Ries et al., 1992; Panisset, 2000). Ever since, the assessment of bacterial contamination levels in street foods has drawn the attention of scholars, authorities and organizations throughout the continent (Schubert, 1992; Arámbulo et al., 1995; Costarrica et al., 1996; Morón and Schjtman, 1997; Moy et al., 1997; Evans and Brachman, 1998; López Rivera et al., 1998; FAO and WHO, 2001; Hanashiro et al., 2005; Larralde and Sciutto, 2006; FAO, 2009a; Méndez et al., 2010).

Several factors potentially contribute to bacterial contamination of street food. Beside the dust, pollution, and insects that are lurking in the streets, risks may arise where street food is home-prepared by those vendors living and selling in underdeveloped settlements—“callampas” in Chile, “rachos” in Venezuela, “favelas” in Brazil, “villas miserias” in Argentina—where water and sanitation infrastructures and services are often deficient (UN-Habitat, 2003). When vendors have low or no schooling, their knowledge and awareness about bio-medical guidelines for handling food safely may be limited.

Despite knowledge of the risk factors, actual harm to consumers’ health is yet to be fully proven and understood. Due to difficulties in tracking cases and the lack of disease-reporting systems, follow-up studies proving actual connections between street food consumption and food-borne diseases are still very few (e.g. Flisser, 2013). Little attention has been devoted to consumers and their eating habits, behaviors, and awareness. The fact that social and geographical origins largely determine consumers’ physiological adaptation and reaction to foods—whether contaminated or not—is neglected in the literature.

Thus, street food stands at the crossroads where three equally fundamental rights meet: the individual right to work, the collective right to access and use public spaces, and the right to food security (Marras, 2013). This crossroads is a scenario ripe for issues of priority and potential political clashes. How, then, do policy-makers in South American metropolises address this? What drives their policy-making? How do legal frameworks shape street food vending? These questions will be explored below.

Research methodology

Comparisons allow a greater understanding of how each city’s history, socio-demographic composition, economic and productive structure, and political tradition shape the approach of authorities towards street food. This also illuminates the extent to which enacted legislation influences and shapes the sector. In this perspective, legislations regulating the trade of street food, as enacted by local administrations in six major South American capital cities (Buenos Aires, Bogotá, La Paz, Lima, Montevideo, Santiago), are analyzed.

Presently in force, both organic and scattered rulings (i.e. laws, ordinances, decrees, regulations) coping with street trade enacted by the local governments are taken into account. All of them are publicly accessible from each city’s online legal archive.⁴ Legislations are analyzed starting from their premise and opening considerations. Specific rules regulating vendors’ formalization procedures, points of sale, trade, foods, and public health are then examined. For each one of these issues, authorizations, obligations, prohibitions, and exceptions set by the law are analyzed.

This analysis is intertwined with historical accounts about political debates and governmental practices. These are drawn from existing literature and from in-depth, semi-structured, individual interviews conducted between February and May 2012 in the six cities covered by this study with thirteen street food vendors and fifty-four professionals directly involved either in the governance of street food trade or in the study of related issues—19 public managers operating in local and national departments in charge of street trade management (6), socio-economic development (8), public health (5); 17 scholars and researchers in the fields of food and nutrition sciences (6) and social sciences (12); 9 representatives of street food vendors’ associations; 3 union organizers; 4 NGOs’ representatives; 2 FAO officials, both at the FAO’s regional headquarter in Santiago de Chile. Eight interviews took place in Buenos Aires, 13 in Bogotá, 15 in La Paz, 12 in Lima, 6 in Montevideo, 13 in Santiago. All interviews were video-recorded and subsequently transcribed, lasting between 20 and 60 minutes each.

Historical framework

Legislation regulating the trade of street food in Spanish-speaking South American capital cities has been taking shape since the 1970s. Between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s, the pace sharply accelerated to cope with the spread of street vendors generated by the dramatic economic crisis known as década perdida (“lost decade”) (Boucher, 1989; de la Peña, 1990; Muñoz de Chávez et al., 2000). During the first decade of the twenty-first century, new economic crises and the consequent expansion of street vendors spurred new laws. With the exception of La Paz, each local government has adopted an organic law concerning street vending; that is, a thorough and comprehensive legal framework regulating at once all aspects of the sector.

La Paz’s first act regulating street food dates back to 1980. Legislation intensified between the mid-1990s and the beginning of 2000s. La Paz’s administrations have issued a number of municipal ordinances and administration regulations and guidelines that make up a dispersed, slightly consequential system of rules concerning specific and contingent issues and situations.⁵ In 1994, the local government announced a forthcoming Reglamentacion de Mercados y Asentamientos (Regulation for markets and selling points).⁶ In 1997, it proposed regulation of vending areas, outlet characteristics, selling times and pos...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Notes on editors and contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I Governance: policies and politics
• Part II Subsistence and enterprise
• Part III Women on the front line
• Part IV Cultural tastes
• Part V Food safety and nutrition
• Index