I just ran across The Food Ethics Blog by Chris MacDonald. It looks very interesting, and I was especially intrigued by a couple posts on whether we have the right to know what's in our food and whether food companies have a moral obligation to label GMOs. Be sure to read the back-and-forth in the comments section, which is just as good as the original posts.
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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.
Peru’s Congress Approves 10-Year GMO ban
According to this source:
Peru’s Congress announced Friday it overwhelmingly approved a 10-year moratorium on imports of genetically modified organisms in order to safeguard the country’s biodiversity.
It is always useful to look beyond a country's (or a person's) stated reason for an action for the real motivations. Peru says it wants to ban imports of GMOs to protect biodiversity. I notice they didn't point to health or safety concerns - probably because the World Trade Organization has already ruled that such issues were not a valid trade barrier for GMOs (see here for the WTO ruling in relation to the US-EU debate more than a decade ago).
So, if it isn't really about biodiversity (or only partially about biodiversity), what is motivating Peru's actions? Here I can see two possible (additional) motives at work. The first, is that this is a standard non-tariff trade barrier. Peru can't slap a standard tariff on corn and soybean imports without running afoul of international trade laws. But, they can protect their domestic producers (at the expense of domestic consumers) by putting other trade restrictions in place that limit competition from international producers (Argentina and Brazil are big, nearby growers of GM corn and soybeans) . The second is alluded to in the above story. Peru is apparently a large exporter of organics. The cost of maintaining segregated supply chains increases with a larger GMO market. So a non-tariff trade barrier helps Peru maintain a relative advantage in international trade.
I raise these issues because there will no doubt be some anti-GMO activists who emerge to say things like "see even countries like Peru have decided GMOs are too risky for human health and the environment." But, as you can see the motives are far more complicated than that.
This is Why I'm Optimistic About Biotechnology
Developments like these are where the future of food biotechnology lies (HT: Tyler Cowen):
Researchers have developed a genetically modified tomato that produces a certain peptide which will lower the plaque buildup in the arteries of mice. This could also work in humans.
and
With 2.2% of the rodent’s diet comprised of the GM tomato, the researchers found that the mice had lower levels of blood inflammation, higher activity of the anti-oxidant enzyme paraoxonase, boosted levels of high density lipoproteins, decreased lysophosphatidic acid and less atherosclerotic plaque.
It's hard to know whether something like this could be commercially viable (or even work in humans), but I suspect that there were more developments like these, GMOs would lose the bad rap.
Prop 37 Defeated
I've written a lot on this blog and elsewhere about Prop 37, which would have required mandatory labeling of GM foods in California.
According to the California election web site, it appears that with 98.5% of precincts reporting, Prop 37 was defeated 53% to 47%.
As I discussed earlier, there had been a strong downward trend in support over the past month, but I must say that I am surprised that the proposition failed to pass.
No doubt proponents of mandatory labeling will decry the money spent by Monsanto, Dow, etc. And there is little doubt that this money, and the ads it created, turned the tides. Is this good or bad? Apparently people were susceptible to the message in the "No" ads and people voluntarily changed their mind: as it is often said "a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still." The counter-argument will be that the ads were deceptive. But it's hard to argue this point because the arguments made on the yes and no sides were both based on conjectures, extrapolations, and assumptions. I personally thought there were more misleading claims made by the "yes" side than the "no."
At the end of the day, real, thinking people placed real votes that defeated the proposition. We can't on the one hand say that these people were unreasonably influenced to vote against Prop 37 while saying they were reasonably influenced to vote for Obama. If one wants to fault the money of corporations, they also have to fault the people who change their minds as a result. I'm not willing to go that far.
In any event, the good news for those who wanted Prop 37 is that there are lots of organic and GM-free products already for sell on the market, which are voluntarily labeled. Prop 37 supporters didn't get what they wanted in the voting booth, but they can get it at the grocery store.