Urban Chickens

A USDA report on urban chickens (from a survey conducted in four US cities): 

Overall, 0.8 percent of all households (0.6 percent of all households excluding single-family homes on 1 acre or more) owned chickens. Chickens were ownedon 4.3 percent of single-family homes on 1 acre or more. Excluding single-family homes on 1 acre or more, the percentage of households with chickens ranged from 0.1 percent in New York City to 1.3 percent in Miami.

While less than 1 percent of households had chickens, nearly 4 percent of households without chickens planned to have chickens within the next 5 years, illustrating the growing acceptance of urban farming (range: 2.0 percent of households in New York City to 7.4 percent in Denver).

Overall, about 4 of 10 respondents were in favor of allowing chickens in their communities and would not mind if their neighbors owned chickens (44.4 and 39.3 percent, respectively). These percentages were inversely related to the age of the respondent. Denver had the highest percentage of respondents in favor of allowing chickens in the community (62.5 percent).

Although over half of respondents (55.6 percent) believed that chickens in urban areas will lead to more illnesses in humans, about two-thirds of respondents in Los Angeles, Miami, and New York City and three-fourths of respondents in Denver believed that eggs from home-raised chickens are better for you than eggs purchased at a grocery store. Denver respondents were the least likely to believe that chickens in urban areas will lead to more illnesses in humans.

What do farmer's market chickens, motorcycles, and unpasteurized milk have in common?

A friend sent me a link to a new study in the journal in the Journal of Food Safety. The study shows that 90% of the chicken sold at a farmer's tested positive for Salmonella.  By contrast, only 52% of non-organic grocery store chickens and 28% of organic grocery store chickens tested positive for Salmonella.  In addition, the study found that for another illness-causing bacteria, Campylobacter, 28% of farmer's market chickens were positive but only 8% of non-organic grocery store chickens and 20% of organic grocery store chicken.  So regardless of whether you buy conventional or organic chicken at the grocery store, it is likely safer than that bought at the farmers market (at least the farmers analyzed in this study).   For one bacteria (Salmonella), organic is safer, for another (Campylobacter), conventional is safer. 

Why is this result interesting?  Because the findings are likely to be strongly at odds with most people's beliefs.  I suspect (but do not know for sure) that if asked, most people would say they think foods from farmers markets are safer than from grocery stores.  They would also likely assert organic is safer than conventional.  Yet this evidence (and other studies like it) is at odds with people's beliefs.  

I don't have a problem with people eating at farmer's markets.  Go for it!  But, ideally one should act knowledgeably, knowing full well the risks they're undertaking.  And I fear all the hype often causes people to mis-perceive the true benefits and risks of conventional, organic, and local foods.  

A similar problem exists with unpasteurized milk (or raw milk).  Although it is illegal in many states, many people want to buy unpasteurized milk.  Again, I say go for it (as long as they are two consenting adults; kids may be a different story at least if they're not your own).  But, let's not be glib about the safety risks.  Sure, it might be possible that pasteurization kills some healthy bacteria but it is certainly true, and scientific studies clearly show, that pasteurization kills illness-causing bacteria.  

So, why do we have government regulations that ban unpasteurized milk but promote farmer's markets?  Maybe the risks are larger or are more well known in one case (raw milk) than the other (farmers market meat).  One of the proper roles of government, I believe, is to provide objective-science based information.  What people do with that information is up to them.  But, it does bother me a bit when certain foods attain a moral status that causes people to under-estimate risks and over-estimate benefits.  Kahneman talked about this problem in his book Thinking Fast and Slow: something that seems good is therefore perceived unrisky and vice versa.  It also troubled me that many calls for food policies by food activists seem to be based on inaccurate perceptions of risks and benefits.  

What does this have to do with motorcycles?  Regulations in many states don't allow people to ride without helmets (helmet-less riding is banned) .  Clearly, riding a motorcycle without a helmet is risky.  How much riskier is it than eating farmers market chickens or drinking unpastuerized milk?  I don't know.  Strangely, in Oklahoma, we allow motor cycle riding without a helmet.  But, sales of raw milk in grocery stores is banned (my understanding is that it can be bought direct from the farm in OK).  So, people are presumed smart enough to weigh the risks of riding a motorcycle without a hat but not smart enough to buy raw milk from a grocery store?  Seems like a consistent paternalist would outlaw both.  Or a consistent libertarian would make both fully legal.  Either way, shouldn't we all want the best information to make choices?  

Beware the High Priests of Local Food

That's the title of the article I wrote with Henry Miller of the Hoover Institute at Stanford University, and just published in the Institute's journal, Defining Ideas. ​

Here is the last little bit:​

The underlying principle is—or should be—this: Your local farmer is probably better at growing some things than ours is, and vice versa.

We favor eating delicious and nutritious foods, but if we are to live by the locavore’s mantra, and only consume what can be made locally, we had better resign ourselves to an expensive, narrow and boring diet—especially if we live in climates with harsh winters and short growing seasons.

No one should be opposed to patronizing nearby farmers’ markets for fresh products in season—or, for that matter, to individuals opting to adopt fad diets or home remedies. But it is abusive for governments to subsidize the locavore movement, in which the state has scant economic interest and for which legislators should have little appetite. 

Why Do People Want Local Food?

That was the question motivating some research ​I conducted with a couple co-authors that is forthcoming in the journal Ecological Economics.  A lot of the previous research in this area had simply interviewed people at farmers markets and asked why local food was desirable.  This sort of approach is problematic for a number of reasons.  For one, people at farmers markets are not a random sample of the population and likely have different preferences and desires than the average consumer.  Another problem: we don't always know why we do what we do even though we're good at making up post hoc stories.  

To address these challenges, we conducted some research with a randomly recruited group of German consumers (located in Bonn Germany) who spend real money to buy real food.  ​Our research strategy was to pick two different kinds of foods for which freshness is related to distance traveled for one but not another.  The idea is that this would let us sort out the extent to which desires for freshness are driving desires for local food.  We picked apples (where distance traveled is related to freshness) and wine (where distance traveled is not related to freshness) and asked how much people were willing to pay (WTP) for different apples and bottles of wine that had traveled different distances.  

Here is our key result:​

These findings imply that ‘a mile is NOT a mile’. The data in Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 indicate that discounts for km traveled (especially in percentage terms) are higher for apples than for wine — a fact that suggests freshness is one driver of demand for ‘local’. In fact, comparing the change in bids across apples and wine suggests that of the total drop in WTP that occurs from moving from 20 to 1000 km, about 28.5% can be attributed to freshness (i.e., (1 − 0.35 / 0.49) ∗ 100 = 28.5%). In the following we will present additional evidence that people perceive freshness to be more related to distance traveled for apples than wine . . .

Big Goverment and Small Potatoes

That was the tentative title of a chapter in my forthcoming book, Food Police, that ultimately wound up on the cutting room floor.  I spent a good portion of the book, and have many posts here on the blog, where I defend Big Food and Big Ag.  That's not because they are blameless or perfect, but because they are so often mischaracterized and are the scapegoats for many of societies perceived evils.  

But, it would be a mistake to think that food freedoms are threatened only by government regulation of Big Food and Ag.  In fact, one can often see the plain injustice at work when you look at the impacts of intrusive government regulations (and the crony capitalism sometimes promulgated by Big Food) on small potatoes - food trucks, farmers markets, and small operators just trying to make a buck.  I chose not to focus heavily on this in the book because they represent such a small part of our overall food economy, but I'm glad to see some attention being devoted to the issue.  

The American Enterprise Institute is hosting a conference title "Big government and big food vs. food trucks, foodies, and farmers markets."  Here's their promo:

If you like your food local, organic, or from a truck, government regulation might be your biggest obstacle. American restaurants lobby to choke off food trucks, and federal regulation of food safety leads to more consolidation in the industry. Moreover, farmers markets struggle to survive under the heavy hand of government.

What if food safety regulation is not about limiting the germs in our dinner, but is rather about limiting competition in America’s food industry? What if federal and local rules actually protect incumbent businesses instead of consumers?

​If you want to whet your appetite, I highly recommend this article from a few weeks back, entitled, Tea Party Libertarians and Small Organic Farmers Make Strange Political Bedfellows.  Here are some spinets:  

Laura Bledsoe didn't set out to join a political movement, she merely wanted to serve what she considered a sustainable meal.

In October 2011 she and her husband Monte decided they wanted to host what they called a "farm to fork" event in their home. They own a small farm 50 miles outside of Las Vegas.

then:​

Trouble began two days before the event was to take place. They received a call from the Southern Nevada Health District Office, who wanted to know if the farmers had secured a health permit for the event. "We didn't know we needed to," Laura says.

Then a health inspector came:​

The health inspector raised several concerns, but chief among them was the meat the Bledsoes were preparing to serve. Because the event was advertised as a "zero mile footprint," the meat hadn't been sent through a USDA processing plant, as is required for any meat purchased at a grocery store or restaurant, so the inspector deemed it illegal to serve.

The article tells several stories of a similar nature - check it out.​