Corporate Ethics, Evidence, and Fructose

Posted on August 11, 2010 by Chris MacDonald

Evidence seems to be mounting that not all sugars are created equal.

See this story by Leslie Beck, writing for the Globe & Mail: Fructose can trigger cancer cells to grow faster, study finds

It’s been blamed for a host of health problems including obesity, diabetes, high triglycerides (blood fats), metabolic syndrome and fatty liver.

Now, a study published last week in the journal Cancer Research adds to the growing controversy over the potential health risks of fructose, a form of sugar added to thousands of foods and soft drinks.

According to researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles, the sweetener triggers pancreatic cancer cells to grow more quickly….

I’m not entirely convinced yet (as a non-expert) that the health difference between fructose and sucrose is critical. After all, the science reported here is pretty preliminary. Perhaps more importantly, both fructose and sucrose are pretty bad for you, so it may be a matter of splitting hairs to worry about which is worse. The point is you should eat less of both. (See my blog entry about this from last year: Ah Sugar Sugar!)

But as the debate goes on (and as evidence mounts) it’s worth considering at what point there is sufficient evidence for the dangers of an ingredient (e.g., fructose) to start talking about an obligation on the part of food packagers to avoid using it.

And, in a world in which farm subsidies play an important role in how much of which crops get produced, it’s also worth asking at what point governments have a moral obligation to shift subsidy patterns to make better ingredients cheaper.

(For an example of a difference that food packagers shouldn’t care about, see this blog entry of mine, about “genetically modified” sugar: Sugar is Sugar.)

Posted in ethics, nutrition, science | Comments Off on Corporate Ethics, Evidence, and Fructose

Are Labels the Answer (to Everything)?

Posted on August 6, 2010 by Chris MacDonald

An increasing number of issues are generating calls for labelling of food and beverages. In addition to the labelling required by most governments (size, ingredients, nutritional characteristics) there are now calls for labelling nation of origin, carbon footprint, water footprint, genetic content, and so on. The list seems endless, and is growing.

Some calls for labelling make pretty good sense, such as when the public seems likely to make entirely the wrong assumptions about the product in question (sometimes pushed in that direction by marketing efforts of food producers and packagers).

See for example this article by Leslie Samuelrich, which calls for clearer labelling of bottled water (and in particular labels that reveal when bottled water is in fact just plain ol’ tap water turned into a luxury good through the magic of good marketing): Bottlers need to label source of their water, tell truth

Why are such steps [honest labelling of water] so critically important to consumers?

For one, each year the bottled water industry reaps billions in profits, buoyed by marketing claims that differentiate what’s in the bottle from what comes from the tap (see Nestlé’s “Born Better” advertising campaign).

But as the Government Accountability Office found in a report last summer, bottled water is, in fact, much less regulated than our tap water. Consumers have a right to know what’s in their bottles….

As I said above, this kind of labelling requirement makes sense to me. But I wonder about the limits of labelling as a strategy. To begin, for any particular kind of labelling requirement, there are going to be questions about whether they are in fact informative (and especially about whether consumers will understand the information provided). But further problems arise given the proliferation of calls for labelling. It seems implausible to me that consumers are best served (or even well served) by a food label that bombards them with the information about 20 different value-laden characteristics. And surely there are far more than 20 different characteristics that someone or other might care about with regard to any given product.

Are there better ways of protecting consumers from bad choices, and promoting consumer autonomy? One option is to find various kinds of “meta-labels”, single descriptors that bundle together a ranger of characteristics. Brands are one way of doing that. So are well-recognized methods of agriculture, as represented by words such as “organic.”

So what do you think? Are there limits to the impulse to label things?

Posted in certifiction, consumerism, labeling | 2 Comments

Food Labelling and Discrimination

Posted on August 5, 2010 by Chris MacDonald

Food labelling is generally thought of as kind of an obviously good thing. Labelling provides information. And information, as they say, is power. And (spelling out the unstated premises, here) it is good to give consumers power.

But power (as is also commonly said) can be used for good or for evil. And so (connecting the dots) it’s at least possible, in the abstract, that labelling will at times give consumers information that they will use badly. Whether there are instances in which consumers do use information for bad purposes is a separate question. So far, all I’m pointing out is the possibility.

So, here’s a possible example. According to this story in the Sydney Morning Herald,
Fish farmers want new labelling rules, fish farmers in Australia are asking the government there to impose stricter country-of-origin labelling requirements on restaurants. Why? The Australian fish farmers want their product labelled so that consumers can discriminate against foreign fish. It’s pure nationalism and protectionism, of a kind that stifles trade and tries promotes the interests of one group of fish farmers over the (equally important) interests of another group.

It’s worth noting that there are probably cases where nation-of-origin labelling isn’t just xenophobic. But I don’t see any evidence that this is one of those cases. Is there some ethically-compelling reason why consumers at Australian restaurants need to know that the grilled barramundi they’re considering ordering was farmed in the U.S., rather than in Australia? Maybe there’s a food-miles argument here, but given the efficiency of international shipping, I’d have to see that argument spelled out to believe it.

So, two different points are on the table, here.

First: the point that labelling can provide information that can be used for bad purposes.

Second: that labelling by nation of origin may provide a case in point.

Posted in farmers, fisheries, labeling, local | 2 Comments

Ethical Birthing for Calves & the Micromanagement of Farming

Posted on August 3, 2010 by Chris MacDonald

If you thought the only ethical issue about the treatment of calves was the way veal calves are raised, think again.

Here’s the story, from TVNZ: Calf-killing practice sparks mixed debate.

A Close Up poll of almost 10,000 people tonight revealed many people take farming practices and ethics into account when making shopping decisions.

The question was asked of viewers after ONE News revealed on Monday, that some farmers are prematurely birthing their calves so cows produce milk earlier. Around 200,000 calves are induced each year….

I don’t have anything to say on the practice of inducing. But I’m interested in the issue of consumers & regulators micromanaging farm practices. And in principle I’m neither for nor against that, but I do wonder about its limits, and this story provides a good example. The modern dairy industry (by which I mean not just the modern, tech-heavy dairy industry, but the dairy industry of say the last 50 years) consists of a complex set of interwoven practices. Some of them are arguably cruel. Some of them just look odd from the outside. Some of the practices that look odd from the outside are likely “mere” traditions that could or ought to change, and others are essential but hard to explain.

What I’m curious about is just how many practices there are (like inducing labour in dairy cows) about which consumers (more-or-less informed) would have an opinion, if asked. And how feasible is it for consumer opinion to shape farm practices? It seems to me that consumer opinion (or preferences or desires) can plausibly shape practices when what consumers want are what we might think of as entire ways of farming: e.g., if some consumers want organic produce, then farmers who want to cater to that market can do organic farming, because organic farming (at least as traditionally understood) is kind of a set of practices.

But is there a plausible mechanism by which consumers can a) learn about, and b) express a preference about, each of the hundreds (thousands?) of individual practices that make up modern farming, and about which they might have ethical or aesthetic preferences?

Posted in agriculture, animal welfare, consumerism, ethics, farmers, values | 1 Comment

Natural Chicken

Posted on August 2, 2010 by Chris MacDonald

When is a “natural chicken” not a natural chicken, and what does that mean, anyway?

Here’s the story, from Food Safety News: The Truth Behind ‘Natural’ Chicken

A disagreement among poultry producers about whether chicken injected with salt, water, and other ingredients can be promoted as “natural” has prompted federal officials to consider changing labeling guidelines.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture had maintained that if chicken wasn’t flavored artificially or preserved with chemicals, it could carry the word “natural” on the package; however, after some producers, politicians, and health advocates noted that about one-third of chicken sold in the U.S. was injected with additives that could represent up to 15 percent of the meat’s weight, doubling or tripling its sodium content, the agency agreed to take another look at its policy….

Mostly what this story illustrates is the uselessness of the term “natural” as a descriptive or evaluative term. The word “natural,” as has often been pointed out, cannot plausibly be taken as even a rough synonym for “good” or “healthy”, as is sometimes thought. After all, arsenic is natural, as is cancer. But nor is it even a clear descriptive term. Some people may take “natural” to imply “found in nature, unmodified by humans.” But then chickens themselves don’t count, since the various breeds of chicken (all members of the species Gallus gallus domesticus) have been bred and hybridized by humans over the last 10,000 years or so. Others might take “natural” to mean “raised & packaged in they usual way, the way I picture when I close my eyes and think of chickens.” And most of us don’t picture salt water etc being injected into chickens as part of the “normal” process. But then the meaning of word “natural” (or just about any other single-word descriptor you choose) is effectively relative to what individuals have in mind, which makes it pretty useless as a food label.

Now, of course, clear regulations can help define words like “natural.” But two problems remain. One is the proliferation of adjectives that stand in need of regulatory standardization: “natural,” “all-natural,” “free-range,” “organic,” “farm-raised,” etc etc., limited only by the ingenuity of marketers (who are always going to be a step ahead of regulators). The second problem is that regulatory definitions aren’t necessarily going to line up well with consumer expectations. And if the regulatory definition of “natural” is not the same as what consumers (all of them? most of them? any of them?) take that word to mean, then the label remains (or maybe becomes!) misleading.

Posted in agriculture, ethics, labeling, nutrition, regulation | Comments Off on Natural Chicken

Milk and Meat from the Offspring of Clones

Posted on August 1, 2010 by Chris MacDonald

OK, so lots of people are put off by the idea of eating cloned cows or pigs, or drinking the milk of cloned cows. Some of those people have genuine ethical concerns; others are just subject to the “yuck factor.”

But what about eating the beef of the grandson of a cloned cow or pig, or maybe the milk of the great-great-granddaughter of a cloned cow? That’s what’s at issue in this story, by James Kanter, for the NYT: Cloned Livestock Gain a Foothold in Europe

…In Europe, government officials say that anyone who wanted to market meat or dairy products from clones would need to seek permission under the European Union’s “novel foods” regulations, which were generally meant to cover newly developed ingredients. So far, no one has.

Meat and dairy products from the offspring of clones, however, currently receive no prior assessment or approval….

I don’t think any of the objections to cloning animals or food makes much sense, though I’ll leave a detailed rebuttal for another day. (Here’s a start: the animal welfare concerns seem ridiculous against the backdrop of a food-production system that involves massive amounts of animal suffering. If you want to improve animal welfare, cloning is a lousy target. And as for the worry that cloning will reduce biodiversity… well, it’s at least somewhat instructive that the Wikipedia page for agricultural biodiversity contains not a single reference to cloning.)

But at any rate, any attempt to critique food-animal cloning needs to distinguish carefully between a) the ethics of cloning animals, b) the ethics of selling cloned animals for food, and c) the ethics of using cloned animals as breeding stock, because those 3 activities will likely be subject to very different worries.

Posted in agriculture, animal welfare, biotechnology, cloning, ethics, international, regulation, science | 2 Comments

Safety of Louisiana Fish & Shrimp

Posted on July 31, 2010 by Chris MacDonald

In the wake of the BP oil disaster, the fisheries off the Gulf Coast are doubly important. They’re a big source of jobs for folks in the Gulf states, and the health of the shrimp and fish there is an important indicator of the overall environmental impact of the spill.

So, news that at least some affected areas of the Gulf are being opened to fishing is important news.

Here’s the story, via the L.A. Times’ Greenspace blog: Gulf oil spill: Louisiana fish and shrimp get thumbs-up

Is Louisiana seafood safe to eat? U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Margaret Hamburg on Friday heartily endorsed the decision of Louisiana fisheries officials to reopen wide swaths of state coastal waters to commercial fishing and shrimping.

“We all feel very confident with the reopening of this water to the fishing of fin fish and shrimp,” she said at a news conference on New Orleans’ riverfront. “This is our first major opening of the state waters to commercial fishing, so it really is something to celebrate.”

The reopened areas, about 2,400 square miles, are mostly east of New Orleans and the Mississippi
River Delta. Areas south of the delta, including Terrebonne and Barataria bays, are still being slimed with oil and remain shut….

The main issue being evaluated (as the FDA Commissioner points out) is food safety — not any of the other ecological measures we might be interested in. But as anyone who has thought about it for more than a minute or two knows, safety isn’t a binary, all-or-nothing characteristic. When foods are declared safe, it usually means “safe enough” or “relatively safe” or “safe, as far as we can tell.” And it’s the FDA’s job to make that value-laden decision, and it’s not an easy one. So, question for discussion: what level would be set as the “safe-enough” level (for fish from an oil-spill-affected area), if that level were to be set by:

  • A bureaucrat at a government agency with the FDA‘s mandate?
  • Someone who works on a shrimp boat?
  • Someone who owns a shrimp boat?
  • Someone who owns a seafood restaurant in New York?
  • Someone who owns a seafood restaurant in New Orleans?
  • You?
Posted in ecosystems, environment, ethics, fisheries, regulation, safety | Comments Off on Safety of Louisiana Fish & Shrimp

Ethical Principles for Infant and Young Child Nutrition

Posted on July 30, 2010 by Chris MacDonald

Researchers at the McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health in Toronto have recently published a paper advancing ethical principles for the important topic of child nutrition.

Here’s the paper, by Jerome Amir Singh, Abdallah S Daar, and Peter A Singer: “Shared Principles of Ethics for Infant and Young Child Nutrition in the Developing World”

Abstract:

Background
The defining event in the area of infant feeding is the aggressive marketing of infant formula in the developing world by transnational companies in the 1970s. This practice shattered the trust of the global health community in the private sector, culminated in a global boycott of Nestle products and has extended to distrust of all commercial efforts to improve infant and young child nutrition. The lack of trust is a key barrier along the critical path to optimal infant and young child nutrition in the developing world.

Discussion
To begin to bridge this gap in trust, we developed a set of shared principles based on the following ideals: Integrity; Solidarity; Justice; Equality; Partnership, cooperation, coordination, and communication; Responsible Activity; Sustainability; Transparency; Private enterprise and scale-up; and Fair trading and consumer choice. We hope these principles can serve as a platform on which various parties in the in the infant and young child nutrition arena, can begin a process of authentic trust-building that will ultimately result in coordinated efforts amongst parties.

Summary
A set of shared principles of ethics for infant and young child nutrition in the developing world could catalyze the scale-up of low cost, high quality, complementary foods for infants and young children, and eventually contribute to the eradication of infant and child malnutrition in the developing world….

I think the last 2 principles they propose — Private enterprise and scale-up; and Fair trading and consumer choice — are particularly interesting and worthy of discussion.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Ethical Principles for Infant and Young Child Nutrition

Ethics, Meat Eating, and Animal Pain

Posted on July 24, 2010 by Chris MacDonald

From Science Daily: Conflicted Meat-Eaters May Deny That Meat-Animals Have the Capacity to Suffer, Study Finds.

A new study from the University of Kent has found that people who wish to escape the ‘meat paradox’ — i.e., simultaneously disliking hurting animals and enjoying eating meat — may do so by denying that the animal they ate had the capacity to suffer….

So, what’s the mental process going on, here?

Loughnan also explained that, broadly speaking, their study has shown that when there is a conflict between people’s preferred way of thinking and their preferred way of acting, it is their thoughts and moral standards that people abandon first — rather than changing their behavior. “Rather than change their beliefs about the animals’ moral rights, people could change their behavior,” he said. “However, we suspect that most people are unwilling to deny themselves the enjoyment of eating meat, and denying animals moral rights lets them keep eating with a clear conscience.”

Note that, technically, there are 3 ways out of this dilemma (i.e., the dilemma presented by feeling bad about something you enjoy).

One way is to stop doing what you’re doing (i.e., in this case, stop eating meat).

The second is to stop feeling bad about what you’re doing (in this case, by denying that there’s anything to feel bad about, i.e., denying that animals feel pain or perhaps just denying that they suffer “much”).

The third way, in principle, is to deny that there’s a dilemma. I wonder how many people simply feel that there’s no inconsistency between their beliefs about animal pain and their desire to eat meat? Whether that’s tenable or not depends on one’s views of the ethical significance of pain — either pain in general, or the pain of others more specifically, or the pain of animal-others more specifically still.

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Pollan vs Hurst

Posted on July 23, 2010 by Chris MacDonald

From Iowa Public Television’s “Market to Market”, Pollan and Hurst Debate the Future of Agriculture (The link goes to a 10-minute video, with transcript.)

…nutrition is only one aspect of a larger debate over America’s entire food system. And production agriculture has been blamed for everything from pollution of the nation’s waterways to Americans’ ever-increasing waistline.

Market to Market recently caught up with two of the drama’s protagonists: Michael Pollan, an outspoken critic of America’s food system who wrote The Omnivore’s Dilemma; and Blake Hurst, a Missouri farmer who countered Pollan with a piece he calls The Omnivore’s Delusion.

Producer Andrew Batt examined the merits of production agriculture with both men and filed this report.

And here’s a link to Hurst’s famous article: The Omnivore’s Delusion: Against the Agri-intellectuals.

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