GMOs and the Precautionary Principle

Much has been written about Nassim Taleb's coauthored paper arguing that the precautionary principle dictates that we should avoid GMOs.  Given the prominence of the author and his willingness to berate detractors, the paper has received more attention than the ideas in the paper merit.  

This piece by Stuart Hayashi raises an excellent point.  The issue shouldn't be about the presence of risk per se but about risk on the margin.  How much riskier (or less risky) are GMOs compared to other techniques?  As Hayashi point's out, Taleb's argument is akin to running an experiment without the control.  There is an implicit assumption that using GMOs (the experiment) are unambiguously riskier than not (the control).

Hayashi's post had an summary description of Taleb's main argument, which also shows how the same sort of logic can be used to argue that GMOs should be adopted.  I've taken Hayashi's description of Taleb's argument and replaced a few of Hayashi's words with my own in brackets:

"The argument is as follows. If we talk about the risk [likelihood] of a GMO doing damage [creating benefits] on any one particular day, it seems that that risk [potential benefit] is minuscule. But what is the statistical risk[likelihood] of a GMO inflicting harm [being created that creates enormous benefits] one day . . . eventually? As time advances, that risk[likelihood] of a GMO eventually causing turmoil [great good] increases exponentially . . . Therefore, the argument concludes that as long as transgenic technology is employed, it is inevitable that one day, something devastating [wonderful] concerning GMOs will occur. Therefore, the one method whereby we can guard [help secure] ourselves against this otherwise-impending harm [benefit] is to avoid [promote] usage of genetic engineering"

Even if Taleb's argument is right, it must also be right for any number of other possible risks we face: from say, new diseases that come about from interacting with domesticated or wild animals, from risks of using alternative energy sources (curiously, Taleb says nuclear energy is excluded because "the nature of these risks has been extensively studied"), from risks of potentially electing a warmongering despot, from risks of developing robots and artificial intelligence, from risks of comets passing by the earth, from risks of returning from space travel, risks from conventional plant breeding, etc, etc.  It is not an argument that is anyway unique to risks from GMOs.  Maybe Taleb is right and we are all just sitting around waiting for some worldwide disaster.  Even if that's true, I seriously doubt it will be the GMOs that get us.

Organic Yields and Nitrogen Use

David Tribe has an interesting post on organic crop yields.  In short, he asks: from where does the nitrogen come?  For organic crops, it's often manure.  But, where does that come from?  Often from animals fed conventional grains made possible by synthetic fertilizers. He also raises an interesting point about the need to count cover crops as an input into production of commercial organic crops when considering overall productivity.  

It is an important point that has been addressed by others such as Adam Merberg who humorously noted now synthetic nitrogen is "laundered" to make it fit for organic agriculture:

“However much nitrogen exists in manure today, much of it has been fixed industrially before being taken up by corn plants and laundered through the guts of conventionally-farmed animals. Vasilikiotis does not explain how that manure might come to be in an organic world. To do so would require demonstrating the potential for sufficient biological nitrogen fixation”

A while back, I discussed some of the issues involved in comparing organic and non-organic crop yields, and included the following figure and explanation:

“Here is the basic point conveyed in the picture above: a non-organic farmer is free to use any of the practices available to an organic farmer (e.g., no-till or low-till farming, cover crops, etc) but an organic farmer can only use some of the practices that are available to a non-organic farmer. Thus, the range of possible production practices, costs, and outcomes for organic must be a sub-set of that of non-organic.

Being an organic farmer implies following a set of rules defined by the USDA. These rules restrict the practices available to an organic farmer relative to a non-organic farmer. Organic farmers cannot use “synthetic” fertilizer, Roundup, biotechnology, atrazine, certain tillage practices, etc., etc. It is a basic fact of mathematical programming that adding constraints never leads to a higher optimum.”

Lost Pleasure

I'm confused by this article by Sharon Begley that appeared in Reuters yesterday.  She writes:

“U.S. health regulators estimate that consumers will suffer up to $5.27 billion in “lost pleasure” over 20 years when calorie counts on restaurant menus discourage people from ordering french fries, brownies and other high-calorie favorites.

The lost-pleasure analysis, which is criticized by some leading economists and public health groups, was tucked into new regulations published last month by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration which require chain restaurants, grocery store chains selling prepared food, large vending machine operators, movie theaters and amusement parks to display calorie counts.

Public health advocates alerted Reuters to the inclusion of the analysis, which they say makes such regulations more vulnerable to challenges by industry because it narrows the gap between the government’s projections of a regulation’s benefits and costs. ”

Here's the problem - I can't find any evidence the FDA did such a thing in relation to calorie counts on menu labels.  Here is the FDA's final rule, which puts total costs at about $1.7 billion, which is far less than the $5.27 billion from "lost pleasure" cited in the article.  Indeed, the net benefits cited in the final rule are only $510 million - far less than the supposed "lost pleasure". Maybe there is another cost-benefit analysis not mentioned in the federal register?

Also, the article makes reference to a paper by Jason Abaluck, but the only paper of his I can find that seems to have any relation to this topic is this one, and it includes no such "lost pleasure" calculations that I see in my quick look at it.  Again, the paper may very well be out there and I've overlooked it. 

What I can find, after a bit of internet searching, is much concern about including "lost pleasure" in relation to tobacco labeling policies from back this summer, including the concern mentioned by some economists about using "lost pleasure" in this context.  

It's clear why many public health advocates don't like the idea of "lost pleasure" in a cost benefit analysis.  However, a good cost benefit analysis needs to include ALL the costs and ALL the benefits; and it must also consider the longer-term second order effects.  Moreover, many of the articles seems to suggest that "good economists" would never include "lost pleasure" in a cost benefit analysis - an implication that is wholly false.   

A lot of the discussion in these articles, including the one in Reuters, seems to suggest that "consumer surplus" is an invalid way to measure the benefits/costs of a policy.  That's baloney.  And, indeed I think you'd have a hard time finding many economists who wouldn't say that any policy analysis of food (or tobacco) taxes or bans SHOULD use "consumer surplus" which captures "lost pleasure" from being unable to consumer the same consumption bundle as was the case pre-policy.    

At issue seems to be the question of whether the same holds true for a mandatory labeling policy.  The argument is that information does not change prices or available options per se, and as such more information can only make consumers better off (more consumer surplus).  On the surface that's true - and I suspect that is the point the cited economists are making in objecting to using "lost pleasure" in this particular context.  However, it is not unreasonable to include "lost pleasure" in a cost benefit analysis of a label or information policy if:

• food/tobacco companies respond to the new law by removing some options;
• food/tobacco companies respond to the new law by changing prices; or
• consumers continue making the same purchases after the policy, but only do so now with more "guilt" (there can only be a value of information if people change behavior; if you just reduce the pleasure they get from buying a product without changing behavior, then there is indeed "lost pleasure").

Vitamins made by GMOs?

At NPR's blog The Salt, Dan Charles has some interesting discussion on the change in the nutritional profile for Cheerios after they went "non-GMO." 

“Remember when Cheerios and Grape-Nuts went GMO-free? That was about a year ago, when their corporate creators announced that these products would no longer contain ingredients made from genetically modified organisms like common types of corn, soybeans or sugar beets.

When they actually arrived on supermarket shelves, though, there was a mysterious change in their list of ingredients. Four vitamins that previously had been added to Grape-Nuts — vitamins A, D, B-12 and B-2 (also known as riboflavin) — were gone. Riboflavin vanished from Cheerios.”

Charles speculates on what caused the change.  One possibility is that some vitamins these days are apparently produced with genetically modified bacteria and yeast.  These microbes can reproduce quickly, and as a result they can efficiently produce vitamin B-12 or riboflavin, if they've got the right genes.  It's a fascinating process that holds much promise in other applications as well.   

Charles ends with what may be an interesting irony for companies who go GMO and maintain the same vitamin content:

“That leaves one method of vitamin production that’s cheap, industrial-scale, and reliably non-GMO: synthetic chemistry. Vitamins are commonly manufactured from scratch in chemical factories, using ingredients that cannot be linked to any genes or biological process at all. That technology may not inspire great affection, but it does, at least, qualify as non-GMO.”

Assorted Links

I watched part of the live stream of the Intelligence Squared debate last night on GMO foods.  The "pro-GMO" side won the audience vote handily.  I'll link later to the video/podcast when it is put up. You know the debate went bad for the "anti-GMO" side when their own supporters throw them under the bus afterward.  

A new report warning again about livestock and climate change.  While they do mention possibility to address the problems with improved technology (something I've previously argued), it is only done so dismissively.

I really enjoyed this NPR: Planet Money podcast on cattle rustling in Oklahoma