Thesis (Ph. D.)--Simon Fraser University, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 351-374).

In the spring of 2005, a Vancouver Island Health Authority Inspector tried to stop the sale of ungraded eggs at the Saltspring Island Farmers' Market. This event, and the actions that followed, came to be known as the "Saltspring Island egg wars." Using the egg wars as a starting point, I explore the inner workings and contradictions of the egg sector in British Columbia by asking the question "how is it that food grown locally in sustainable ways is seen to be less safe by regulatory food regimes than food produced in the industrial food system?" To do this I take up the standpoint of egg farmers who "farm otherwise." From this grounding I rely on the insights of these farmers, civil servants, and social theorists Antonio Gramsci, Michel Foucault and Dorothy Smith to understand the ordering of power, knowledge and the social in relationships between sustainable egg producers and the British Columbia egg scheme.