No Need to Fear the Horse Meat Burger

Today, the Oklahoman (the largest newspaper in the state), ​ran an editorial I wrote on the European horse meat scandal.  I also touched on the consequences of the end of horse slaughter in the US.  Here are a few snippets:

An expanding European horse meat scandal has left many Americans wondering whether the same could happen here. Americans are unlikely to find a horse burger. Before celebrating, it might do some good to learn why.

Because horse slaughter ended in the US in 2007.  The consequences?

Unable to find a home for aged or crippled horses, ranchers faced high prices for euthanasia and disposal. Many horses were abandoned and left to starve. Investigations into horse abuse, for example, increased 60 percent in Colorado following slaughter cessation. Our research suggests that slaughter cessation caused a 36 percent drop in horse prices at a major Oklahoma auction and resulted in losses of $4 million per year in the yearling quarter horse market.

and

Americans are unlikely to find horse meat on their plate because we no longer produce any. It's possible that mislabeled products could be imported, but about 90 percent of the beef eaten by Americans is homegrown. If mislabeled products were found here, the answer wouldn't be, as we've seen, to ban horse slaughter. However much we are culturally predisposed to abhor eating horse, the reality is that it's safe and perfectly tasty. Just ask the French

and:​

. . . if a food retailer lies, there are legal remedies. The mere knowledge of liability, not to mention lost reputation, incentivizes truth telling. More vigilance might have stopped the faux beef sellers in Europe. But no government can prevent us from all harm. Nor should we want it to. Vigilance is costly and our governments are already doing too much.

in conclusion

The lesson from these equine scandals isn't necessarily that the government should have been doing more. Rather, politicians should learn what every good horse intuitively knows: Look before you leap.

The Market for Animal Welfare

That's the title of a magazine article about a talk I gave a couple months ago in Canada.  The talk (and the academic paper I published about it in the journal Agriculture and Human Values) delves into an idea I've been developing for a while that attempts to release some of the steam from the animal welfare debate using a bit of free-market economics.  

The idea, in short, is to create a separate market for animal welfare that is decoupled from the market for eggs, meat, and milk.  Farmers have a product they're supplying (animal welfare) that is only indirectly (and poorly) reflected in the price of food.  Animal advocacy groups have a product they want to buy (higher animal welfare) but there is currently no mechanism for them to achieve this outcome in a market setting.  It is no wonder then, they they often turn to bans, litigation, and protests.  The idea is create an index of animal welfare being produced on the farm and assign "credits" or "units" based on production that can be sold in a newly constructed market.  The idea somewhat analogous to pollution trading markets, and I argue that it could be more effective than bans on production processes (like gestation crates), meat taxes, and other policies that are currently on the table.  

If you want more details, see my paper.  I'll leave you with the conclusion from the  article in Canadian Poultry Magazine:

Coming back to the concept of Animal Well-Being Units, would people be willing to buy animal welfare? Lusk asked. For those who feel strongly about animal welfare but have already changed their diet to reflect their preferences, buying welfare credits is an option that could appease their need to support animal welfare: they can’t not buy eggs anymore if they’re already not buying eggs. Agribusiness, animal welfare groups, you and me, we could all buy AWBUs and producers could participate and make money for doing so.

“The current market price for animal welfare is zero,” says Lusk. “Therefore not many farmers are going to sell it.”

From this economist’s perspective, we’ve just got the price wrong.

Animal Welfare and Food Safety

Food Safety Magazine just published an article Bailey Norwood and I wrote on animal welfare and food safety.  

Here are a few excerpts:

The premise of [the movie] Contagion is that raising hogs on “factory farms” encourages the emergence of deadly pathogens. How accurate is this caricature? In reality, a bat is more likely to drop food near hogs or chickens raised outdoors. Would the movie have been more realistic if the bat infected a pig raised on an organic farm, a farm where animals roamed “free range,” or a farm owned by a small producer slaughtering his own animals and selling locally? Or would a more accurate film show the bat shedding feces near a field of broccoli, sickening people consuming fruits and vegetables instead of meat? Is it true that animal welfare and food safety are trade-offs, or are they instead complements? When we pay more for humane meat, are we also getting safer food or are we accepting greater risk? These are the questions we investigate in the present article.

and

Americans today consume more poultry than any other meat product so even if a meal containing poultry is safer than beef or pork, more illnesses may result from poultry consumption simply because chicken is consumed on such a large scale. Using the data in Table 1 to claim poultry is risky is a bit like claiming roads in Texas are more dangerous than those in Wyoming simply because more Texans die in car crashes—however, the population size of the two states would seem the more logical culprit. Analogously, the volume and value of the food should be taken into consideration when comparing risks. Consumers might voluntarily accept riskier food if they value it more.

and in summary:

In general, production systems that provide animals outdoor access have the potential to expose animals to pathogens, viruses and other parasites. In some cases, it appears that this potential is realized. However, in other cases, perhaps due to effects of lower stocking densities or better managerial competence, the risks can be alleviated or even reversed. In short, animal housing conditions are but one factor, and a far from deciding factor, affecting food safety.

However, consumers don’t always see it that way. Consumers conflate perceptions of safety with perceptions of animal welfare. They are not necessarily irrational in doing so, as care and managerial competence in one domain are likely to be correlated with meticulousness in another. 

God Made a Farmer

A while back, Mark Bittman at NYT wrote a blog post claiming to celebrate farming, but it was actually a back-handed complement because he wasn't talking about most of the real, flesh-and-blood farmers working today; rather he said  we needed more "real farmers" that will grow the stuff Bittman wants in the way that he wants it grown. (At the time, I thought of writing a post asking for "real food journalists" but thought better of it).     

It is against this backdrop that the much-discussed Dodge Ram commercial - God Made a Farmer - appeared (see below if you haven't yet watched it).  I follow quite a few agricultural blogs and twitter feeds, and they all responded enthusiastically to the commercial.  I suspect part of the reaction is the that many in this community feel beleaguered by comments like Bittman's, not to mention the cultural notion that has arisen that you're somehow "evil" if you have some large farm implements. 

One last comment about the commercial.  Look at the parting scene (at about 1:50 into it).  Dodge wants you to look at what is in the foreground.  I want you to look at what is in the background.  It is some kind of confined animal feeding operation.  I can't tell exactly what kind of housing it is, but I'm guessing those barns are housing either hogs or poultry.  Stated differently, it's one of those "factory farms" you hear so much about.  Somehow these kinds of farms don't seem as bad as they're often portrayed when seen in the larger context of the commercial. 

http://CherryHillRAM.com And on the eighth day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, "I need a caretaker." So God made a farmer. God said, "I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the field, milk cows again, eat supper, then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board."

Meet Your Meat

I just returned from giving at talk at the International Production and Processing Expo (IPPE) in Atlanta.  According to the organizers, there were over 25,000 people in attendance from all aspects of the livestock, poultry, and egg production and processing industries.  I don't think it would be much of an exaggeration (in fact it may be an under-estimation) to say that there were two football field sized halls full of exhibits.  

While the expo was filled with lots of folks involved in livestock and meat production, I wish the "average" food consumer could have walked through the place (you can get a brief glance by checking out the video at the bottom of this page).  What they would have seen is an overwhelming number of technological marvels designed to make meat and eggs safer, tastier, healthier, and less expensive.  There were new insulated boxes to make shipping safer and more convenient, egg production facilities that were larger and provided more amenities for hens, automated technologies that keep workers from having to engage in some of the more unpleasant parts of the slaughter process, new medicines to improve animal health, technologies to improve worker health, new spices and flavors to improve taste, and on and on.  

There are those who seem to want agribusiness and large farms out of agriculture.  But, where do they think improvements in health, safety, and quality originate?  I hear a lot about the need to improve transparency in agriculture.  My advice to the event organizers for next year?  Give out a slew of tickets to the general public.  If the general public is more troubled than comforted by what they see, the meat industry really is doomed.  

PETA has a video and exhibition featuring Paul McCartney called "glass walls."  McCartney claims that if meat processing facilities had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian.  There are thousands of years of human experience (during which the typical person was "closer" to animal agriculture) that would seem to contradict McCartney's claim.  Although I could be wrong, I think a visit to something like the IPPE (and making the walls glass) would have exactly the opposite effect McCartney claims.