A Casualty of the Drought

I was surprised to learn that Cargill is shutting down one of its large beef processing plants (it processed over 4,500 head daily) in Plainview, TX.  I grew up about 15 miles from this plant (and about 2 miles from a large feedlot that supplies it).  Here is one source on the causes and impacts of the closure:

Cargill Meat Solutions said declining livestock supplies at the plant because of years of drought would force it to shut down operations, putting 2,000 workers out of a job.

I suspect there are those who would rejoice in the closure of a plant that slaughters cattle.  And, I suppose, they have some cause for celebration.  But, I think about all those families who lost jobs (Plainview has about 8,000 jobs, so this plant closure represents about 1/4 of the total work force), the farmers whose cattle now wont fetch as high a price, and the cattle who have to travel farther to reach another packing plant.  

Those aren't reasons to keep the plant open.  Cargill, after all, has to turn a profit to stay in business.  But, it does show how the effects of a drought and high feed prices (also partially due to ethanol policies) have undesirable effects that trickle down and even hit close to home.

Do Food Consumers Vote Differently Than They Shop?

According to some research I just published in the Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics with a former graduate student, Kate Brooks, who is now an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska, the answer is "yes."  

Our research suggests caution in using people's shopping behavior (as, for example, indicated by grocery story scanner data) to infer which public policies they may or may not support.  In the particular application we studied, people were willing to pay large premiums to avoid milk and meat from cloned cows when asked what they wished to buy when shopping in a grocery store.  One might conjecture from this behavior, then, that the consumers would approve of a government ban on use of clones in meat and milk production.  

According to our research, that conjecture would be wrong.  The majority of consumers did NOT favor a ban on cloning in food animals.  In fact, most people would demand compensation if a ban were enacted (rather than be willing to pay to have the ban).  This finding defies many of the explanations often given for differences in voting and shopping behavior, such as the consumer-vs-citizen hypothesis or the hypothesis that consumers perceive the existence of externalities.  The behavior is more consistent with the notion that people have an option value (they don't want to get rid of a technology that may produce some promising result in the future even if they don't want it now) or that people respect the freedom of others to arrive at their own choices even if they happen to be at odds with one's own preferences.     

The other interesting thing about our finding is that is exactly the opposite of what has been observed in other food issues.  For example, in California, 63.5% of voters voted in favor of Prop 2 in 2008 to effectively ban battery cages in egg production.  Yet, the retail market share of cage free eggs is less than 5%.  In this case, shoppers aren't willing to shell out the extra bucks for cage free eggs in the grocery store, but they enthusiastically voted to ban the product they normally buy in the voting booth.  Why?  Hard to say.  My feeling is that the costs are much more salient in the store than in the voting booth.  Another possibility is that the universe of voters is different than the universe of shoppers (all voters shop but not all shoppers vote).  There are, of course, other possible explanations.  

Gaining a better understanding why people behave differently when shopping and voting is a key area of future research for food economists.  And, the fact that people often behave so differently in the two environments represents a key challenge for food economists who conduct regulatory cost-benefit analysis and advise policy makers.  

What Do Cage Free Eggs Have to Do with Gay Marriage?

Brandon McFadden, one of my inquisitive Ph.D. students, stopped by today and asked if I'd looked at the county-by-county breakdown of the vote on Proposition 37 on mandatory GMO labeling.  I hadn't, so we pulled up the maps.

Here is the county-by-county outcome for Prop 37 on mandatory GM labeling.

Brandon astutely pointed out that this map looked very similar to  the one on the gay marriage proposition back in 2008 (a no vote on Prop 8 was essential a vote in favor of gay marriage).

Back in 2008, there was also a ballot initiative (Prop 2) that (in essence) banned battery cages in egg production.  This map also looks very similar to the one above on Prop 8 in 2008.  So, Brandon down loaded the data from Prop 2 and Prop 8 in 2008 and did a little analysis somewhat like one we conducted earlier (the final voting tallies for Prop 37 aren't yet available in downloadable format).

Here is what he found:

(fraction of county voting for Prop 2 in 2008) = 0.326 + 0.572 x (fraction of county voting NO on Prop 8).

A hypothetical county with everyone voting no on Prop 8 (for gay marriage)  would be expected to have 32.6+57.2=89.8% voting yes on Prop 2 (for banning battery cages).  By contrast, a hypothetical county with everyone voting yes on prop 8 (against gay marriage  would be expected to have  32.6% voting yes for prop 2 (against banning cages).  

This little equation explains a remarkable 87% of the variation in voting outcomes associated with Prop 2!  A vote against Prop 8 was almost a guaranteed yes vote for Prop 2.  The people who want gay marriage are apparently also the same people who want cage free chickens.  

So, that raises the question I posed as the title of this post: What do cage free eggs have to do with gay marriage?  I might similarly ask: What does GMO labeling have to do with gay marriage?

Ostensibly, gay marriage has nothing to do with eggs or GMOs.  Yet, there seems to be a clear underlying factor (probably political ideology) that is driving votes on all three issues.  But, the facts on these propositions are so very different that is hard to imagine most reasonable people falling in line on all three.  

The results seem to suggest interesting areas of research related to political ideology and food choice.

It's Gonna Get a Lot Harder to Eat Ethically

NPR ran a story a couple days ago on a move to recognize "plant rights" in addition to "animal rights."  I was a little surprised by some of the claims in the story:

After all, plants can sometimes exhibit humanlike behavior. . . . Some plants respond well to music. Some "smell" other plants. Still others seem to shrink away when touched.. . . . 

Plants display remedial types of memory and possess "anoetic consciousness" — the ability of an organism to sense and to react to stimulation . . . 

Some plants (such as chili peppers) may be able to "hear" other plants (such as sweet fennel). "We know that plants recognize what is growing next to them, . . . Plants can warn other plants of a predator by releasing a chemical, and the warned plants can release chemicals to make themselves unpalatable to the predator.

For those who are concerned about the harms caused by their diet, these sorts of findings aren't good news.  What's left to eat?  Water?

Gestation Crates, Selective Breeding, and the Danger of Anthropomorphic Reasoning

​A friend forwarded me a link to this page, which allows you to virtually experience life as a sow living in a gestation crate.  I encourage you to check it out.

​It is a powerful tool for those attempting to phase out gestation crates.  In fact, if I were trying to convince someone of the inhumanity of gestation crates, I'd be hard pressed to think of a more effective message.

That being said, the experience provided at the link can be misleading.  You are not a pig.  And, how we project ourselves feeling in those cages may or may not correspond to the way pigs feel who have been selected to live in those environments.  

I was reminded of this when reading Haidt's most recent book when he wrote:

In the 1980s the geneticist William Muir used group selection to get around this problem.  He worked with cages containing twelve hens each, and he simply picked the cages that produced the most eggs in each generation.  Then he bred all of the hens in those cages to produce the next generation.  Within just three generations, aggression levels plummeted.  By the sixth generation, the death rate fell from the horrific baseline of 67 percent to a mere 8 percent.  Total eggs produced per hen jumped from 91 to 237, mostly because the hens started living longer, but also because they laid more eggs per day.  The group-selected hens were more productive than were those subjected to individual-level selection.  They also actually looked like the pictures of chickens you see in children’s books – plump and well-feathered, in contrast to the battered, beaten-up, and partially defeathered hens that resulted from individual-level selection.

​Haidt was making a point about how genetic selection works not only at the individual level but also at the group level in humans and animals .  But, he also mentions another important point.  The animals we have on farms today are specifically selected for the environments in which they live.

I wrote a paragraph exactly on this point for our recent book on animal welfare that ultimately wound up on the cutting room floor.  Here it is resurrected:​

Seeing a picture of a pig living out its life in a small cage can invoke strong emotions, but we must recall that the pig was genetically selected, in part, because it was relatively unbothered by such living conditions. Some people do not mind spending all day lounging on the couch. Others of us cannot sit still. Animals exhibit similar diversity in their need and desire for movement and exercise. An animal that is constantly fidgeting and stressed about living in confined quarters is an animal that will not rapidly gain weight. Because farmers want just the opposite, they have purposefully selected and bred animals that are not terribly troubled about living in a crate.This does not mean that such animals would not prefer a larger pen or to live outdoors, but it does suggest it can be dangerous for humans to transpose their needs and emotions on farm animals, especially those animals that have been purposefully bred for the environments in which they live.

None of these comments necessarily justify gestation crates, but they do at least suggest caution in making decisions based on anthropomorphic thinking.