Moral Intuitions on Food

I’m about half-way through Jonathan Haidt’s new book, The Righteous Mind.  In the book, he makes the case that our moral judgments are mainly based on intuitive reactions.  We only make up logical reasons for our judgments later (if we can) to justify our initial intuitions.  Bailey Norwood and I made a similar case in terms of how we think about the rightness or wrongness of caging farm animals in chapter 6 of our recent book, Compassion by the Pound.  

What struck me as I read Haidt was his discussion on moral disagreement.  It is very had to change someone’s intuitions about what is right or wrong.  If we can’t even articulate the reasons why we think something is wrong, how can someone possibly make a compelling, reasoned counter-argument?  Haidt argues that trying to use reason to change someone’s moral intuition is a bit like trying to make a dog happy by grabbing its tail and wagging it. 

So, how is it that I intuitively feel so differently about various aspects of food production (e.g., biotechnology, irradiation, pesticides, herbicides, etc.) than others who are revolted by the same issues?  When I think about these issues, I am not appalled; I don’t feel any disgust.  But, I suspect I’m in the minority of Americans. 

I gave the Shepard lecture last night to a group of students and faculty at Kenyon College about the future of food.  Although we had a civil, productive discussion, it’s safe to say that many of the students in the room had different moral intuitions about these topics and I do.  Their moral intuitions are that many modern food technologies are self-evidently wrong (while other issues like local, organic, and natural are self-evidently right). 

How is it that our moral intuitions can be so different?  I grew up around “big ag.”  I’ve personally sprayed Monsanto’s Round-Up on hundreds of acres of cotton weeds.  I’ve personal castrated farm animals to limit aggression and off-tasting meat.  I’ve personally had to throw away thousands of pounds of salsa that grew mold because adequate levels of preservatives weren't added.  I’ve personally met and know people who work for Monsanto, Cargill, ADM, etc.  I grew up going to school with kids whose parents were immigrant farm laborers living at or below poverty. 

Now, that doesn’t necessarily make my intuitions about modern food production somehow objectively correct.  But, I at least can lay claim to the fact that they are based on actual life experiences and insights. 

That said, I suspect there were more than a few pre-civil war southerners whose life experiences led them to believe slavery was o.k.  On the flip side, there are many examples of people having faulty (at least what many of us would now say are faulty) moral intuitions on topics for which they had very little experience (e.g., the wrongness of eating pork).  Actual life experience with the issue in question may or may not correlate well with faulty moral intuitions.

I don’t know exactly where that leaves us except to say that Haidt argues that moral persuasion tends to work more on the social level than the cognitive.  According to Haidt, If you think I’m a nice guy, you’re more likely to give my moral intuitions a test-drive. 

Here’s hoping that, despite the facts and logical arguments given in my talk last night, I came across as a nice guy.

Compassion by the Pound

Over at Freakonomics.com, James McWilliams graciously referred to the (in his words "superb") book Bailey Norwood and I wrote last year, Compassion by the Pound​.

​The question he raises in his post is whether it is profitable for farmers to adopt higher animal welfare standards.  There is a common  belief in the agricultural community that happy animals are profitable animals.  And that is partly true.  But as we argued in our book, and in more detail in this recent journal article  entitled Animal Welfare Economics, farmers aren't necessarily interested in maximizing individual animal profitability but the profitability of a group of animals housed on a fix amount of land.  When the goal is to maximize the total profit calculated over all animals, we show that a producer will sacrifice some individual animal welfare to achieve higher group output.  The intuition is straightforward.  A larger group of slightly sadder animals can produce more output than can a smaller group of slightly happier animals.   

School Lunch Mess

With school back in session, there is a lot of consternation being expressed over the new school lunch rules being implemented by the USDA  as a result of the new policy promoted by Michele Obama.  Ironically one of the biggest complaints of the "Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act" is that kids are hungry because of calorie restrictions.  

Another complaint is that kids don't like (and won't eat) some of the foods served.  Even before the law was fully implemented, one school official noted​:

Nothing is achieved when money is spent on food that children won’t even be able to consume and nothing is more disheartening . . . than to see perfectly good and perfectly untouched food thrown into the trash.

​And, yet another complaint is the rising cost of school lunch, which encourages kids and parents to future substitute away from the government-subsidized meals.  

As I put it in my forthcoming book, The Food Police​, the school lunch program is trying to do to much:

So, we have a mess - a convoluted mix of policies that try to get enough calories in the bellies of poor kids so they’re not starving at night while simultaneously trying to get the richer kids who can have anything they want at home to eat a few more carrots at school.

    ​and (footnote omitted):

My point isn’t that parents and local school boards shouldn’t think about how to improve their children’s health. My question is who is in the best position to make this determination? It’s easy for someone in Washington to enact mandates without any knowledge of the location-specific costs and trade-offs. As a USDA report put it, “Policymakers face hard choices because the children served by NSLP have diverse nutritional needs, making a single policy for all difficult to craft.”

​

Is it Always Better to Use Local Ingredients?

Does Prop 37 Impose Zero Tolerance?

​A bit of a debate has heated up in reference to one of the provisions of California's Prop 37, which would require mandatory labeling of GE foods.

Parke Wilde at Tufts put up a post a few days ago​ in which he says:

The editorial, which was widely published in other newspapers, claims that the proposal has a zero-tolerance for accidental GMO content in foods that aren't labeled as containing GMOs. Such a policy would force producers of essentially non-GMO products to use the label "may contain GMOs," simply out of fear of litigation.  But the editorial is mistaken. The initiative rightly allows foods that do not intentionally contain GMOs to carry a "non-GMO" label. 

​The story was picked up by Michele Simon at the Huffington post, who took the opportunity to disparage several top-notch economists at UC Davis.  (in full disclosure, in a previous post, I too made the claim about zero-tolerance in reference to Prop 37).  

There seems to be very little room for reasonable debate here.  Proponents of Prop 37 say there will be trivial costs and no lawsuits.  Opponents of Prop 37 say the opposite.  Proponents point to the literal text of the law.  Opponents tend to point to the dynamic interactions between firms an consumers that may occur as (perhaps unintended) consequences of Prop 37.  Thus, both can claim to be "right" and the public is totally confused.  

I personally​ don't know what will be the ultimate consequences of Prop 37.  But, I think any reasonable person must go beyond a literalist interpretation of the proposition language if they want to understand the potential consequences.  In one of his most well-known books, Thomas Sowell argues that to really understand the economic effects of a policy, you have to move beyond stage-one thinking and ask "and then what happens?"

It is true Prop 37 doesn't literally force processors and retailers to adopt more expensive non-GE products but that may be the ultimate consequence (or it may not - but we have to keep open the possibility).  It is also true that Prop 37 doesn't literally impose zero tolerance but that may well be the ultimate consequence.  

Truth is we don't really know.  But, consider a possible chain of events at some point in the future.  Despite the wording of the law, some individual in CA tests and finds that a non-labeled product contains GE (ANY trace of GE no matter how small).  The manufacturer of the product is then sued.  Then, it would be up to the manufacturer to provide all the sworn statements of unintentional use of GE.  But, then how do you prove “unintentional” or "accidental"? This is especially when every farmer (who provides the sworn statement) knows there is some chance the seed they plant contains at least some small traces of GE.  Even if the manufacturer withstands the legal challenge, non-trivial legal costs must be incurred to prove innocence.  Moreover, if one reads the full text of the law, they can see  that after July 1, 2019, the exception for "unintentional" use disappears - making the tolerance effectively zero at that time, 

It is that sort of reading and reasoning that I think folks are referring to (or at least that I am referring to) when saying that Prop 37 imposes zero-tolerance.