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Globalization is a complex, chaotic, multiscalar, multitemporal and multicentric set of processes operating in specific structural and spatial contexts (Friedman 1994; Jessop 1999), affecting everything from communication to office relocation and, of course, food. Globalization is not just a fashionable idea, it is ‘a concept with consequences’(Hirst 1997: 424). Contemporary globalization ‘refers both to the compression of the world and to the intensification of the consciousness of the world as a whole’(Robertson 1992: 8). Globalization has had the effect of changing the ‘rules of the game’in the struggle for competitive advantage among firms, destinations and places within, as well as between, countries and regions (Hall 1997; Higgott 1999). However, globalization should be seen as an emergent, evolutionary phenomenon which results from economic, political, socio-cultural and technological processes on many …