Unwrapping The Northern Sea cheese - Enacting place in the Danish dairy food sector

The Nordic foodscape has changed radically over the last decade. In Scandinavia there is massive focus on a Nordic gourmet food evolution in general and in Denmark specifically also a cheese revolution. Notions of terroir and place specific foodstuffs are rapidly gaining interest in the Nordic countries. In the fall of 2008 Thise Mejeri won an annual Danish gourmet dairy prize with their speciality cheese ‘Vesterhavsost’. The judges noted that: “The cheese has character, and it has the “terroir” that we search for. It means that it is characterized by the origin of the milk, as well as the area of production and maturing. It has a good story” . The Vesterhavsost (Eng. ‘The Northern Sea cheese’) was thus inscribed in an (it seems) ever-growing trend towards food related site-specificity

Enacting New Nordic terroir as rootless American innovation or soiled European tradition?

The governing of food quality and food security is often intertwined with regional development and the notion of terroir pivotal - not least when considering cheese production. Terroir, however, is primarily understood in a strictly European sense, accentuating soil and tradition. Drawing on readings of ‘dairy produce strategies’ and deploying a possible world induced STS attitude, a crude model for differentiating American and European enactments of terroir is investigated in this paper. I claim that in the US, geographical claims are ‘uprooted’ and generally highlight alethic modalities – centerstaging individual competence and innovation. Geographical claims in EU, on the other hand, steers towards communal practices and deontic modalities grounded in soil and tradition. Both food systems make use of sustainable claims, but render their authority from different institutions of legitimacy. In Europe the concept of collective regional enterprises or consortiums flourishes. In the US collective patrimony is less propagated, whereas privately owned farms and production facilities secure personal recognition through intellectual property

Empirical Prints - Verfremdung & Fabrications

From the introduction: ‘Empirical Prints’ was initiated as an open-ended experimental project. The craft based research project served no clear-cut purpose and had no unequivocal resolutions in mind. However, it was devised with a multitude of sensitivities. As a non-conventional printmaker and STS scholar, I aspired to introduce and experiment with the practice of printmaking in an academic setting. Furthermore, I was intrigued by STS’s long standings concern with materiality and especially the focus on the relational quality of materiality (E.g.: Bennett 2010; Coole and Frost 2010; Weibel and Latour 2005). Lastly the project grew out of an interest for ways of re-enchanting otherwise forgotten and “invisible objects”; litter, garbage, mundane items etc. Inspired by both STS and theatre theorist & play writer Bertolt Brecht, I aimed at making the natural look surprising

New Nordic Rurality. Enacting terroir as rootless American innovation or soiled European tradition

The Nordic foodscape has changed and a new reservoir for rural enactments emerged. In this new Nordic reservoir the notion of terroir seems pivotal - not least when considering cheese production. Terroir, however, is primarily understood in a strictly European sense, accentuating soil and tradition. Drawing on readings of ‘dairy produce strategies’ and deploying a possible world induced STS attitude, a crude model for differentiating American and European enactments of terroir is investigated in this paper. I claim that in the US, geographical claims are ‘uprooted’ and generally highlight alethic modalities – centerstaging individual competence and innovation. Geographical claims in EU, on the other hand, steers towards communal practices and deontic modalities grounded in soil and tradition. Both food systems make use of sustainable claims, but render their authority from different institutions of legitimacy. In Europe the concept of collective regional enterprises or consortiums flourishes. In the US collective patrimony is less propagated, whereas privately owned farms and production facilities secure personal recognition through intellectual property

Terroirizing North Sea Cheese

This paper investigates the construction of the geographical claim that “the cheese has terroir”. Drawing on food-centered science and technology studies and on actor-network theory, I first propose terroirizing – a verbal noun for enacting terroir – as an analytic device in the exploration of how the origins and history of food are made tangible and how place and imaginaries are invoked to bind and fasten products and produce within specific geographical and sociocultural settings. Terroirizing, I argue, is a valuable analytic device for investigating enactments of place and the practice of terroir in regard to food and foodstuffs. The paper goes on to investigate the geographical claims promoted by a Danish dairy in order to terroirize a cheese and thus to advance a particular coastal place-specificity in a Danish foodscape with few strong affiliations with geographical claims. The terroirizing of Thise Dairy’s North Sea Cheese reveals that terroir and place are heterogenous constructs which are dependent not just on microclimate or measurable ecosystems, but also on the construction and circulation of specific imagery and materials. I demonstrate how cheese wrappings, advertisements, the North Sea itself, a ventilation technology, aerosols (sea-spray particles), and salt crystals are all brought together to form an assemblage – a cheese with a Nordic coastal terroir.&nbsp

Mediemad, køn og et ruralt etos : Inklusion af agrikulturelle færdigheder i mediemadens køns-forhandlinger

Through cross-media exemplification this article investigates how a rural ethos and agricultural proficiencies seem included in contemporary media food and how this challenge clear-cut gender distinctions by changing the centre of attention from gendered consumption and preparation of food to a less clearly demarcated domain of food production. In the increasingly popular media foodscape, gender stereotypes are continuously orchestrated clearly as either feminine or masculine: The feminine media food is domestic, light, easy and characterized by healthy, modest and quick ferial solutions. The masculine media food is ‘festal’, dark, exclusive, time consuming and promotes unconcerned hedonism. However, the area of agricultural proficiencies seems to entail less unequivocal gender enactments that warrant closer inspection

Introduction DASTS 2022 special issue

This STS Encounters special issue is a collection of articles that has been developed from conference papers presented at the bi-yearly Danish Association for Science and Technology studies (DASTS) conference in 2022. The conference was held at the Department of Digital Design and Information studies, Aarhus University and hosted by the STS center at Aarhus University on June 2-3. 2022. The theme of the conference was: 'Living with Ruptures: Repair, Maintenance, and (Re)Construction'.&nbsp

Humoral and cellular immune responses eleven months after the third dose of BNT162b2 an mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine in people with HIV – a prospective observational cohort study

BACKGROUND: We investigated long-term durability of humoral and cellular immune responses to third dose of BNT162b2 in people with HIV (PWH) and controls. METHODS: In 378 PWH with undetectable viral replication and 224 matched controls vaccinated with three doses of BNT162b2, we measured IgG-antibodies against the receptor binding domain of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein three months before third dose of BNT162b2, and four and eleven months after. In 178 PWH and 135 controls, the cellular response was assessed by interferon-γ (IFN-γ) release in whole blood four months after third dose. Differences in antibody or IFN-γ concentrations were assessed by uni- and multivariable linear regressions. FINDINGS: Before the third dose the concentration of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies was lower in PWH than in controls (unadjusted geometric mean ratio (GMR): 0.68 (95% CI: 0.54-0.86, p = 0.002). We observed no differences in antibody concentrations between PWH and controls after four (0.90 (95% CI: 0.75-1.09), p = 0.285) or eleven months (0.89 (95% CI: 0.69-1.14), p = 0.346) after the third dose. We found no difference in IFN-γ concentrations four months after the third dose between PWH and controls (1.06 (95% CI: 0.71-1.60), p = 0.767). INTERPRETATION: We found no differences in antibody concentrations or cellular response between PWH and controls up to eleven months after third dose of BNT162b2. Our findings indicate that PWH with undetectable viral replication and controls have comparable immune responses to three doses of the BNT162b2 vaccine. FUNDING: This work was funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation (NFF205A0063505, NNF20SA0064201), the Carlsberg Foundation (CF20-476 0045), the Svend Andersen Research Foundation (SARF2021), and Bio- and Genome Bank Denmark

Levels of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies among fully vaccinated individuals with Delta or Omicron variant breakthrough infections

SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern have continuously evolved and may erode vaccine induced immunity. In this observational cohort study, we determine the risk of breakthrough infection in a fully vaccinated cohort. SARS-CoV-2 anti-spike IgG levels were measured before first SARS-CoV-2 vaccination and at day 21–28, 90 and 180, as well as after booster vaccination. Breakthrough infections were captured through the Danish National Microbiology database. incidence rate ratio (IRR) for breakthrough infection at time-updated anti-spike IgG levels was determined using Poisson regression. Among 6076 participants, 127 and 364 breakthrough infections due to Delta and Omicron variants were observed. IRR was 0.29 (95% CI 0.15–0.56) for breakthrough infection with the Delta variant, comparing the highest and lowest quintiles of anti-spike IgG. For Omicron, no significant differences in IRR were observed. These results suggest that quantitative level of anti-spike IgG have limited impact on the risk of breakthrough infection with Omicron

Comparison of vaccine-induced antibody neutralization against SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern following primary and booster doses of COVID-19 vaccines

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has, as of July 2022, infected more than 550 million people and caused over 6 million deaths across the world. COVID-19 vaccines were quickly developed to protect against severe disease, hospitalization and death. In the present study, we performed a direct comparative analysis of four COVID-19 vaccines: BNT162b2 (Pfizer/BioNTech), mRNA-1273 (Moderna), ChAdOx1 (Oxford/AstraZeneca) and Ad26.COV2.S (Johnson & Johnson/Janssen), following primary and booster vaccination. We focused on the vaccine-induced antibody-mediated immune response against multiple SARS-CoV-2 variants: wildtype, B.1.1.7 (Alpha), B.1.351 (Beta), B.1.617.2 (Delta) and B.1.1.529 (Omicron). The analysis included the quantification of total IgG levels against SARS-CoV-2 Spike, as well as the quantification of antibody neutralization titers. Furthermore, the study assessed the high-throughput ACE2 competition assay as a surrogate for the traditional pseudovirus neutralization assay. The results demonstrated marked differences in antibody-mediated immune responses. The lowest Spike-specific IgG levels and antibody neutralization titers were induced by one dose of the Ad26.COV2.S vaccine, intermediate levels by two doses of the BNT162b2 vaccine, and the highest levels by two doses of the mRNA-1273 vaccine or heterologous vaccination of one dose of the ChAdOx1 vaccine and a subsequent mRNA vaccine. The study also demonstrated that accumulation of SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein mutations was accompanied by a marked decline in antibody neutralization capacity, especially for B.1.1.529. Administration of a booster dose was shown to significantly increase Spike-specific IgG levels and antibody neutralization titers, erasing the differences between the vaccine-induced antibody-mediated immune response between the four vaccines. The findings of this study highlight the importance of booster vaccines and the potential inclusion of future heterologous vaccination strategies for broad protection against current and emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants