Here is an interview I recently conducted on the Food Police with Oklahoma Horizon TV with aired on Oklahoma Public TV and on RFDTV.
Interview with Oklahoma Horizon
Blog
Food Fear Mongering
A colleague forwarded me this story from NBC news. It's really hard to know where to start in on all the misleading claims and innuendos. There first couple paragraphs will give you a sense of the tone:
American eaters, let’s talk about the birds and the bees: The U.S. food supply – from chickens injected with arsenic to dying bee colonies – is under unprecedented siege from a blitz of man-made hazards, meaning some of your favorite treats someday may vanish from your plate, experts say.
Warmer and moister air ringing much of the planet – punctuated by droughts in other locales – is threatening the prime ingredients in many daily meals, including the maple syrup on your morning pancakes and the salmon on your evening grill as well as the wine in your glass and the chocolate on your dessert tray, according to four recent studies.
At the same time, an unappetizing bacterial outbreak in Florida citrus droves, largely affecting orange trees, is causing fruit to turn bitter. Elsewhere, unappealing fungi strains are curtailing certain coffee yields and devastating some banana plantations, researchers report.
Strictly speaking, each of the above examples does indeed correspond to a real challenge faced in each of the above industries. But, does it represent a "food supply under assault" as the title of the article suggests? Are each of these the cause of global warming? The author later blames problems on "mono-culture" agriculture but that doesn't fit well any of the commodities described above.
Much of the paranoia seems to stem from an interview with one professor of public health at Johns Hopkins who is quoted as saying things like:
We need to regard all of these (examples) as a very powerful motivator to try to work on the carbon emissions, to start pushing that parts per million of carbon dioxide back down
and
“Maybe seeing this impact all this has on our ability to raise the food we depend on will get us to the tipping point of real policy change and real action,” Lawrence said. “I hope so.”
Another professor of environmental science is quoted as saying:
We’re in a situation where the food supply is more vulnerable than it has ever been
Providing a few anecdotal stories does not constitute scientific evidence. If we are indeed so vulnerable, why is it that crop prices in the US have come down off their highs a year or so ago. If late corn planting were really a sign of disaster (as this article suggests), it would be reflected in high corn prices but that's not what we're seeing.
Moreover, why didn't the author actually go to the data and look at per-capita food availability (which can be found here), which doesn't reveal any general lack of scarcity. Or, why didn't they turn to the research on the projected impacts of climate change on agricultural production, which suggests it may be beneficial for agriculture (for some counter evidence, see here). Either way, yes climate change will likely hurt some regions and some commodities, but it will also help other regions and commodities. Growing corn and melons in Canada will become much easier (and less costly) if it gets warmer there.
Its this sort of fear mongering based on anecdotal evidence, rejection of modern technology, followed up by ill-advised (and under-researched) policy recommendations that largely motivated me to write the Food Police.
Lusk vs Moss
On May 15, the Michael Medved Show aired a "debate" between myself and the Food Police book and Michael Moss and his book Salt, Sugar, Fat (one of these two books was on top of the NYT best seller list and if you're wondering it wasn't mine!).
You can download the podcast (gated) of the discussion (titled "food debate" at the link), which went on about an hour. I found it enjoyable and was pleased to have the opportunity to engage with someone having such an influence on the national food debate. If you want to get a sense of some of my critiques of Moss's work, you can see my previous column in Townhall.com.
Assorted Links
Julie Gunlock reviews Bittman's review of Pollan
Bittman on Dr. Oz Promoting his new Boog VB6
The HSUS-UEP agreement on cage eggs appears to be failing in the Senate
A scientific (and very critical) review of Lustig's book Fat Chance (Lustig is perhaps the most vocal proponent of the "toxic sugar" argument)
Sunstein on GMO labeling
At Bloomberg.com, Cass Sunstein sensibly weighed in on the ongoing state and federal proposals to mandate labeling of GMO foods. He argues that mandatory labels are a bad idea. His reasoning is that the science shows biotechnology to be safe with few unique environmental concerns; however, requiring a label would "signal" that something is unsafe.
Here is Sunstein:
GM labels may well mislead and alarm consumers, especially (though not only) if the government requires them. Any such requirement would inevitably lead many consumers to suspect that public officials, including scientists, believe that something is wrong with GM foods -- and perhaps that they pose a health risk.
His arguments are virtually identical to those I published in a paper with Anne Rozan in the Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics back in 2008 entitled "Public Policy and Endogenous Beliefs: The Case of Genetically Modified Food." We wrote then:
Our argument is that policy can serve as a signal about the safety of GM food
and, conceptually:
Believing the government imposes a mandatory labeling policy on GM food could be consistent with a belief that GM food is perhaps not as safe as traditional food, but it is not so unsafe that GM food should be completely banned. Depending on a consumer's prior beliefs about the safety of GM food, the imposition of mandatory labeling could be taken to imply GM food is safer than previously thought (in the case where one's prior was that GM food is so unsafe it should be banned) or might be taken to imply GM food is riskier than previously thought (in the case where one's prior is that GM food is safe enough to warrant no labeling at all).
Empirically, we found:
that individuals who believed the government imposed a mandatory labeling policy for GM food believed GM food was less safe and were less willing to eat and buy GM food than consumers who either believed no policy was in place or were uncertain on the matter
As we discussed in that paper, and as I've discussed elsewhere, such findings make cost benefit analysis really complicated. How much would consumers "benefit" from a mandatory GMO label? That depends on how much they are willing to pay for non-GMO food. But, if our arguments are right, willingness-to-pay for non-GMO food depends on which policy is in place. Thus, the benefits (and costs) of the policy are not independent of whether the policy is in place. The act of passing (or failing to pass) the policy changes the benefits and benefits. Thus, there are no "objective" or "true" benefits and costs.
Although I agree with Sunstein on this point, I find it a little ironic coming from him. He has advocated using government "nudges", for example to change defaults or opt-in/opt-out options, to get people to make "better" choices that presumably the citizens themselves would prefer. But if his theory on GMO labeling is right, a "nudge" might very well serve as a signal about what is the appropriate behavior. Thus, a "nudge" isn't simply changing the default. It is changing people's preferences, and presumably toward that desired by the regulator/nudger. Thus, nudges aren't just getting people to make choices that presumably better match their "preference" - it might be very well changing their preference. I find that problematic both from a philosophical standpoint but also from a public choice perspective. You can get a sense of why in chapter 4 on behavioral economics in The Food Police.