Why has the French food safety agency been particularly mobilized on zoonoses like bovine spongiform encephalopathy ("mad cow disease") or highly pathogenic avian influenza ("bird flu") ? Because sanitary crisis make explicit an ambivalent relationship between humans and animals (animals being perceived alternatively as providers of goods and as bearers of threats), and to the circulation of life in general (the contaminated blood crises being due to the rapprochement of blood giving and blood receiving). The sociology of risks needs therefore to reintegrate the idea of an intention of the risk bearer (risk with enemy), and the sociology of alimentation needs to reintegrate the analysis of the conditions of production. Mad cow disease is the paradigmatic food safety crisis because it brings together the poles of production and consumption, of animals and humans. It therefore belongs to anthropology.