TED talks and GMOs

A friend sent me a link to this TEDx talk about GMOs by Robyn O'Brian in 2011.  The speaker strikes me as incredibly earnest, very persuasive (the video has been downloaded 760,000 times!), and ultimately very wrong.  The speaker, after finding one of her children had food allergies, came to the conclusion that the answer must be GMOs or hormones used in milk or some combination of those things.  But, this is sheer illusory correlation and she cites no credible scientific study to make such a link.  She also uses a number of persuasive and scary but misleading story lines.  Some examples.

She says that the US has the highest rates of cancer compared to anywhere else on the planet.  I'm not sure whether that's true or not (presumably people in many countries don't live long enough to develop cancer).  But, what I do know is that CDC data shows that age adjusted cancer deaths and incidence rates have been falling over time in the US.  Falling at the same time we have adopted GMOs and other technologies that worry O'Brian.  So much for that link. 

She doesn't mention that rBST use in milk fell dramatically after the initial adoption phase and that almost any grocery store sells milk without rBST (in fact milk without rBST is all many stores offer).

She says that the concept of "substantial equivalence" used in the US regulatory process was invented by the tobacco industry.  I don't know whether that's true or not but that is simply an ad hominem argument trying to falsely equate GMOs and tobacco.  She also claims that other countries took a more precautionary approach than the US to GMOs.  That's true.  But, what she doesn't say is that in Europe, despite their different regulatory process, many GMO varieties are approved. 

I could go on but I believe the point has been made.  

Taking a step back, I found it interesting to see what the TED organizers put up on their web site as advice to organizers of TEDx events (independently run events that license the TED brand name) to avoid pseudo-scientific presentations:

2. Red flag topics

These are not “banned” topics by any means — but they are topics that tend to attract pseudo-scientists. If your speaker proposes a topic like this, use extra scrutiny. An expanding, depressing list follows:

Food science, including:

• GMO food and anti-GMO foodists (EDIT 10/3/13: “Foodist” was the wrong word here and we recognize it was offensive to many.)
• Food as medicine, especially to treat a specific condition: Autism and ADHD, especially causes of and cures for autism

Because of the sad history of hoaxes with deadly consequences in the field of autism research, really look into the background of any autism-related talk. If you hear anything that sounds remotely like, “Vaccines are related to autism,” — RUN AWAY. Another non-legitimate argument: “We don’t know what works, so we have to try everything.” Pretty much all the time, this argument is designed to cause guilt in suffering parents so they’ll spend money on unproven treatments.

Curiously, it seems there were conspiracy theories upon conspiracy theories because the TED site added the following last month:

If you’re coming to this post because of an allegation that TED has “banned discussion of GMOs” or has a relationship with Monsanto, please know that these rumors are not true. We have not banned these topics, and we have no relationship with Monsanto. 

In fact, we have many great talks on food and health that challenge entrenched ideas in smart and creative ways. 

Now is the time that I should add that I talked about GMOs in my own TEDx talk (and judging by the mere 1800 downloads, I must not be nearly as convincing as O'Brian) and have also let it be known that I don't work for Monsanto.

Colbert on GMOs

It is little wonder the general public is so misinformed on effects of GMOs when this is where they get their news on the subject.  Of course it is funny and meant to be satirical, but for the average watcher who doesn't know much about the subject, what is message they're being sent?

Food Demand Survey - November 2013

The latest issue of the Food Demand Survey (FooDS) is up.

Interestingly, consumers reported hearing less in the news about all 16 food issues we track in November relative to October. The drop was particularly dramatic for Salmonella, which is likely a result of the the stories in the news last month related to foodborne illness from poultry.  There was an associated drop in concern for Salmonella and an almost 5% drop in the number of people reporting to have had food poisoning.  

One interesting issue relates to awareness and concern for lean fine textured ground beef.  Although consumers reported hearing less about it in the news, their stated level of concern jumped 4.62% (interestingly concern for "pink slime" only rose 2.02%).  The change may be due Cargill's announcement to label lean fine textured beef.  

Consumer willingness-to-pay for most food products was up in November, although less so for higher value cuts such as steak and pork chops.  

Is Meat Production Wasteful?

About a month ago, The Council for Agricultural Science and Technology (CAST) put out a report on Animal Feed vs. Human Food.  I just got around to reading it and it has some interesting calculations and statistics.

The report addresses the common claim that livestock production is wasteful because crops that could be fed to humans (e.g., corn, soy) instead go to animals.  For example, here is an old quote from David Pimentel, a former Cornell Professor:

If all the grain currently fed to livestock in the United States were consumed directly by people, the number of people who could be fed would be nearly 800 million

For another example, here is PETA:

It takes up to 13 pounds of grain to produce just 1 pound of meat

I think one of the most colorful ways I've heard this criticism expressed is that eating meat is like going to the grocery store and buying 13 (or 6 or 3 depending on which source you read) boxes of corn flakes and throwing 12 down the garbage.

This discussion misses at least three important issues.  First, many animals (particularly cattle) eat things we humans can't - mainly grass and hay.  Second, one needs to look at more than just calories in and calories out because there are other nutrients - particularly protein - that our body needs.  I'll get to the third issue in moment.

Jude Capper had some interesting graphs in her presentation of the CAST report that directly address the first two issues.  The graphs focus on the input-output relationship between human-edible protein and calories.

The above graph shows that dairy and suckler beef (that's their name for grass fed beef I believe) generate more protein than they consume from human-edible sources.  

The next graph shows the results for calories (or energy as it is titled).  They report that dairy produces about twice as many calories as it takes in from human-edible sources

Still, even these statistics suggest that it is "wasteful" to consume certain types of meat and animal products because they yield less energy or protein than they consume.

That brings me around to the third reasons why some these comparisons are a bit misleading: they focus only on costs and ignore benefits. Here is what I had to say about that a few months ago:

One fact that is often forgotten in meat debates is that it isn't sufficient to look at the amount of energy (or crops) expended to get beef.  We also have to look at what we get.  Most people really like the taste of meat.   

Almost no one looks at their iPad and asks, "how much more energy went into producing this than my old Apple II." The iPad is so much better than the Apple II.  We'd be willing to accept more energy use to have a better computer.  Likewise a nice T-bone is so much better than a head of broccoli.  I'm willing to accept more energy use to have a T-bone than a head of broccoli.    

Now, if my T-bone consumption is imposing costs on others, let's talk about that.  But, here the focus would be on the issues causing the externality (e.g., CO2) not on meat per se.  

Transfat Ban

No doubt most of you have heard by now of the FDA's plans to ban transfats .  I've had a few reporters ask about my thoughts on the issue, so I thought it would be useful to pass them along here.

First, from my reading of the research (and I will admit to being no expert on the issue), it does seem that consumption of "synthetic" transfats have deleterious health effects.  Interestingly, however, a few studies show that "natural" transfats from animal sources may not be as unhealthy, despite having similar chemical compositions as the "synthetic" transfats.  

The question before us isn't whether certain transfats are unhealthy - they are - but rather: what is the government's role in regulating transfats?  The move in recent years to educate the public on the scientific evidence, and even to require labeling of transfats on nutritional facts panels, is reasonable in my opinion given the established safety risks.  And indeed, almost every story I've read on the issue shows that these efforts alone caused a significant voluntary drop in use and consumption of transfats.  The trouble comes when some third party - the FDA in this case - moves from informing public about risks to making the decision for us.  The government has moved from the role of impartial referee conveying the rules of the game to a player in the game picking sides.

Many of the news stories point to the number of "lives saved" if a ban on transfats were implemented.  But, this is misleading when discussed without context.  We could save many more lives each year if the government banned driving.  Many lives could also be saved if we banned alcohol and went back to prohibition.  Skydiving is risky - why not ban that too?  The reasons is that many risk activities convey benefits to the public that must also be considered.  

What are the benefits from the use of tranfats in food?  Taste.  Mouthfeel.  Cost.  Improved shelf life.  What would be the costs of removing transfats?  Higher food prices.  Manufacturers may have to add more sugar or salt or more saturated fat to compensate for the loss of transfats.  The point is that any discussion of the benefits of a ban on transfats must be considered in the context of the costs of the ban.

Even if a ban passed a narrow cost-beneft test, I think we'd also want to ask whether the infringement on freedom of choice can be justified on logical grounds.  Stated differently, where is the market failure? Normally, economists identify market failures if there are price-altering market powers, externalities, public goods, or information asymmetries.  Only the later of these, in my opinion, has any credibility, but with the existence of labels, even that is no justification.  That leaves only one primary motive for the ban: the dim view that the public is unable to properly weight the risks themselves and are in need of paternalistic intervention.  Of course, government officials won't come right out and tell us that their motivation is our perceived ineptitude  because we'd rightly rebel against such a condescending attitude.       

One last point: it seems pretty clear that the provision of information via labels, and resulting consumer demands, induced innovation by food companies to come up with ways to do without transfats.  But, is it possible that a ban could hinder innovation?  As I've already mentioned, all transfats are not created equal.  Is it possible for scientists to develop new fats that convey some of the same beneficial properties as existing "synthetic" transfats without the health risks?  I don't know.  And we may never know if we institute a blanket ban.