by Jayson Lusk
Normally the price mechanism is used to ration scarce resources and to show us how to allocate resources over time. Rising prices for increasingly scarce resources such as oil and fertilizer cause us naturally to back away from consuming those resources—thereby resulting in a “sustainable” future. The fact that we are now using a lot of oil and fertilizer in agriculture means these resources are currently in ample supply relative to demand. When the prices of oil and fertilizer rise, we’ll use less of them. The sustainability movement largely represents an elitist attempt to ration scarce resources using social pressure, guilt, and regulation.
If the benefits of organic are really so small and the costs so high, why all the fuss? Organics are the ultimate example of a culture that has turned eating into a status-seeking enterprise. Martha Stewart recently remarked, “Food has become more than one of life’s great pleasures. It has become a signifier of style, too … These days, it often seems that you are what you purchase in the supermarket or at the farmer’s market; your grocery list is a reflection of your values and your identity.”32 Not only does she hit the nail on the head; she’s driving the hammer.
In our modern world of variety and abundance, eating should be a pleasure, and not a guilty one. It used to be said that you are what you eat, a motto that stressed individual choice and responsibility. But now it seems that what you eat conveys who you are. What we eat, where we shop, and how we cook have become symbols for who we are as individuals. The modern consumer is forced into a search for meaning in her daily food choices. We are no longer able to define ourselves separately from what we eat. Eating is no longer a decision about how to fill our bellies; it has been made out to be a symbolic choice with moralistic overtones.
The food police have pronounced eating at McDonald’s a sin, not because there are tastier or healthier alternatives elsewhere but because eating at McDonald’s is a fashion faux pas. It would be unthinkable to question someone’s moral character because they chose not to drive a Mercedes or carry the latest Louis Vuitton bag. But when it comes to food, those who cannot display the appropriate level of status through what they eat are pitied and vilified. Martha Stewart doesn’t pull any punches when she reveals, “What’s in your pantry and on your plate have become a form of self-expression much like a fabulous pair of Christian Louboutins, or absolutely anything vintage.”33 Now that the progressive food elite have defined the morally acceptable food, it is said that it is unjust that the poor cannot afford to live up to the standard. A Newsweek article recently opined that “[a]s more of us indulge our passion for local, organic delicacies, a growing number of Americans don’t have enough nutritious food to eat.”34
Not only are the poor unable to keep up with the foodie Joneses, but the food police apparently think the poor are too dumb to realize what’s best for their pocketbooks. New York Times columnist Mark Bittman says “junk food” isn’t actually cheaper than what he calls “real food.”35 In a back-of-the-envelope calculation that is supposed to be taken for serious scholarship, he figures that a family of four can eat roasted chicken and vegetables at home more cheaply than dining at McDonald’s.
His comparison is utterly flawed because he fails to count the time costs of cooking and cleaning. Instead, Bittman calls cooking a virtue. Tell that to the single mom working sixty hours a week! It is of course possible to spend less money by eating at home, even factoring in time costs, but did Bittman ever stop to think some people eat at McDonald’s not because it’s cheaper but because they want to? It was Adam Smith who reportedly noted that “[v]irtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.”
The paradox of the food police is that they have turned food into a status-seeking game while simultaneously asking why the poor don’t have enough nutritious food to eat. It’s like the rich kids at school honestly wondering why everyone isn’t wearing the most fashionable jeans.
Status seeking and shame are two of the primary tools used by the food police. Just ask your kids. Apparently oblivious to the need to ensure competence in reading, writing, and arithmetic, many schoolteachers and administrators find time in the day to preach about local foods, social justice, and recycling. One mother interviewed by the New York Times about schools’ attempts to go green reported that “the social pressure her children felt regarding recyclable products was palpable.” Her sin was to use plastic bags in the lunchbox, an infraction so heinous as to invoke a teacher’s wrath. Said the mom, “That’s when the kids have meltdowns, because they don’t want to be shamed at school.”36
The progressive food movement will not meaningfully help the poor or the environment or public health: it is a way for a modern generation far removed from the farm to give meaning to their lives in how they define themselves and others through food. It is a movement that has turned food choice into a status-seeking enterprise, shaming people who will not play the game. As a result, platitudes are mistaken for pragmatic solutions, and hypothetical survey responses are interpreted as signs of market failure. Now that the food police have pronounced what is trendy and have made the media rounds to persuade the masses, a culture has been created in which people will say and believe all kinds of things to fit in.
The truth is that we often bloviate in dinner groups or give responses on surveys because we want to look good to the audience, never stopping to consider our own actions. We even want to look good to ourselves—and why not give yourself the chance to feel good by saying you support organic or local foods in a survey, especially when you don’t really have to pay the cost? It leads to the same kind of hypocrisy (or perhaps just plain elitism) illustrated by Al Gore spewing carbon out the back of his jet traversing the country telling the rest of us about his inconvenient truths.
I saw the social pressure to buy fashionable food firsthand a couple years ago when a colleague and I conducted a study asking consumers whether they’d like to buy two grocery items: environmentally friendly dishwashing liquid and locally grown organic ground beef. We asked the study participants if they wanted the new products or the more traditional brand-name products such as Dawn and Palmolive. Some people answered the questions hypothetically, and others actually had to put their money where their mouth was.37
Then came the vital stage of the study. We actually put the trendy dishwashing liquid and beef for sale in a local grocery store. The big difference was that the shoppers had no idea these new products were part of our research study. They thought they were out for a routine shopping trip, unaware we were watching what they chose.
So, how did our recruited participants, who knew they were taking part in a research study, compare with regular shoppers who had no clue that their decisions were being scrutinized? The choices made by the participants who knew we were watching them led us to predict that the store would sell 386 pounds of the organic ground beef in a month’s time. In reality, only 12 pounds were sold in the store—32 times less than predicted! Apparently, people told us they liked organic beef much more than they actually do. Likewise, the participants who knew they were being studied chose the environmentally friendly dishwashing liquid 25 percent of the time over Joy, Dawn, and Palmolive. But not a single bottle of the fashionable soap was sold in the store! It seems people want to project the image of being the kind of people who buy environmentally friendly products—but only if they know someone is watching.
We want to appear to be the kind of people who buy organic and environmentally friendly foods. But deep down, it’s not really about organics or costs and benefits. It’s about keeping up with the Joneses. Despite what we say, many of us buy organic not because we think it improves the environment or our health, but because it makes us feel good about the kind of people we tell ourselves we are. What this means is that we undertake a lot of potentially wasteful activities just to fit in.
This kind of status-seeking consumerism or conspicuous consumption, as the economists call it, arises when we buy things simply to
improve our relative social standing. My Ford Taurus is likely to seem just fine—until my neighbor pulls up in a Cadillac. No doubt a new Lexus will be in order. Rather than curtail this kind of behavior, the food police have promoted it.
At the end of the day, choosing whether to buy organics is a tough trade-off. Organics are neither tastier nor healthier than nonorganics. While organics tend to use lower amounts of pesticide, they are not free of pesticide use, and the health risks from pesticides rank pretty low relative to the other risks we face in life. Organic production might be relatively better for the environment depending on yield response and the extent of conservation tillage practices conventional farmers already use. One thing is sure: organics cost much more. This is no easy choice, and I won’t disparage anyone for whichever apple I find in their cart. All I’m asking is that the food police do the same.
FRANKEN-FEARS
I clearly remember the first time I saw a genetically modified plant. I was a freshman in college working for an agricultural extension agent who had planted some demonstration plots for local farmers. I had never before heard of biotechnology or genetically modified organisms (GMOs), but when I saw the luscious green rows of herbicide-resistant cotton standing next to the browned and wilted conventional variety, I was overjoyed. The reason? It meant the end to a job I had grown to hate: walking miles and miles in the sweltering sun earning calloused palms hoeing cotton weeds. A single tractor ride through the field and a squirt of herbicide could now put an end to my misery. Apparently the farmers were equally impressed, because within ten years virtually all the nation’s cotton crop would be genetically modified.
Only later did I learn that the same crop that brought me such delight was greeted with shock and horror by the food police. These are the same food police who tell us they’re worried about the environment and our health but who ignore the science showing that genetically modified crops can improve both. Many of these same people call any restriction on stem cell research an affront to science and reason; and yet, if the same research is used to create faster-growing wheat that reduces the price of bread for consumers, it is deemed an unholy revolt against nature.
Local food activist and celebrity chef Alice Waters not only outlawed biotech foods from her own restaurant, but she also persuaded the Berkeley, California, public schools to do the same. However, she might want to double-check the grilled Paine Farm squab with Chino Ranch peppers and sweet corn fritters that was recently listed on the menu of her restaurant Chez Panisse. You see, the genetics of the corn used in those fritters are nothing like what Mother Nature originally created. About ten thousand years ago, the ancestor of a modern corn cob was no longer than your thumb. With our forefathers and -mothers repeatedly picking and planting only those cobs that were tasty and big enough to merit the effort, we eventually ended up with corn cobs that today average about a foot long. So, when you hear you’re eating natural food at Chez Panisse, you might ask which century of nature they’re talking about. Like it or not, our ancestors genetically modified corn. Perhaps they didn’t do it with the tools we now have, but make no mistake about it, we’ve been altering genes since Adam spat the first seed on the ground.
The fascination with “natural” food bears almost no relationship to the historical reality of food. Ten thousand years ago, wild rice was little more than a stalk of grass, which Asian hunter-gatherers had to pounce on before the edible seeds shattered or blew away with the wind.1 Only by interfering with Mother Nature did we reach the point where rice can now account for one fifth of the world’s total caloric intake. The modern potato contains a small amount of natural toxins that are mostly harmless, but it reached its current edible state only after centuries of selective breeding. The first “natural” potatoes were more toxic and often required ancient Peruvians to lay the spuds on the cold ground overnight to help remove the toxicity.2 How’s that for ancient freeze-drying?
Rather than trying to debate the facts, the food police have resorted to scare tactics and name-calling. We are told that biotech products are Franken-foods. But watch one of the Frankenstein movies and see who’s scarier: the artificial monster or the foaming-at-the-mouth mob of protesters with pitchforks. Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, the Sierra Club, and a host of other activist groups want us to imagine Mary Shelley’s beast and pick up our torches upon mention of the technology, but the reality is something closer to Herman Munster from the 1960s sitcom: an amiable creature who can do a lot of good in the world if only properly understood.
We’ve been told for more than a decade that biotech crops will bring about environmental Armageddon. None other than Britain’s Prince Charles, being the eminent scientist that he is, has warned that biotechnology “will be guaranteed to cause the biggest disaster environmentally of all time.”3 But we’ve been planting the stuff for almost two decades now. In 2011 about 90 percent of all corn, cotton, and soybean acres in the United States were planted with genetically modified seeds.4 Where is the catastrophe? Perhaps there’s a better question: Where is the accountability for all those who wrongly prophesied gloom and doom?
Rather, when we look at the scientific research, a much different story emerges. USDA studies show that farmers who plant insect-resistant biotech corn and soybeans reduce insecticide use. Moreover, the adoption of herbicide-resistant soybeans is associated with increased use of conservation tillage, which helps prevent soil erosion and reduces the need for irrigation.5 A careful study reported in the prestigious journal Science showed that in rural India, the growing of biotech cotton reduced insecticide use by almost 70 percent while simultaneously increasing yield by more than 80 percent.6 So, yes, while there are potential environmental risks, there are demonstrably real environmental benefits from using biotechnology.
The National Research Council of the U.S. National Academies recently concluded, “Many U.S. farmers who grow genetically engineered (GE) crops are realizing substantial economic and environmental benefits—such as lower production costs, fewer pest problems, reduced use of pesticides, and better yields.”7 After all the hype and misinformation about dying Monarch butterflies and the dire warnings of toxicity and allergenic effects, and after more than a decade of our eating biotech foods, there has not been a single scientifically confirmed case of human illness that can be attributed to food biotechnology. Claims that current biotech foods are less safe, less nutritional, and less tasty than their non-biotech counterparts have absolutely no grounding in scientific evidence, according to virtually every major scientific authority on the subject.8
Let me be clear. I am not necessarily trying to convince you to eat genetically modified food. I am personally convinced that the current biotech products on the market are safe and are net-plus for the environment. But you don’t have to agree with me. If you don’t want to eat products made with biotechnology, then buy the organic products certified to be GMO free. “But organic is much more expensive,” you say. Yes, that’s because it is more expensive to produce food without biotechnology. You don’t have to like my decision, but don’t ask me to subsidize yours—and have the courage to let others arrive at a different conclusion from yours.
It is true that, when asked, most people say they prefer to avoid foods made with biotechnology, at least the herbicide-resistant corn and soybean varieties. But my research clearly shows that there are many people who would be willing to switch for a small price discount. Even in a country such as France, which is supposedly vehemently anti-GMO, research shows that 23 percent of consumers are indifferent to foods made with biotech and another 42 percent are willing to purchase GMOs if they are sufficiently inexpensive. So, when the food police decide to limit and ban applications of food biotechnology, remember that they’re making a choice for others that many would not have made for themselves.
After all, nobody’s saying biotechnology shouldn’t be regulated. And regulated it is. New biotech crops have to go through three regulatory agencies: the USDA, the EPA, and the FDA. Ther
e have been reams of reviews by groups such as the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the U.S. National Research Council, and the World Health Organization. Farmers who want to plant insect-resistant biotech corn must also plant “refuges” without the technology (refuges are small patches of nonbiotech corn planted around the larger fields of biotech corn), to mitigate against development of insect resistance. Insect resistance, by the way, is a problem with all types of insecticides, whether “natural,” synthetic, or biotech. Companies introducing new food biotech products have to submit safety evaluations to the FDA for approval and must establish “substantial equivalence” between the new product and the unmodified variety (which basically means they must show that the new, modified variety is exactly the same as the old variety in every way except for the new modification).
I’ve never quite understood the argument that biotech crops are underregulated. Rather, it seems that there are those who’d stop at nothing to prevent biotech crops from being planted and who wish they’d rigged the process to yield a different outcome. A common refrain is that companies are not required to prove there are no “long-term” risks, but it is never specified exactly what such critics mean by “long-term”—a target in constant motion. There’s also the common complaint that biotech companies don’t have to prove the new products won’t cause illness. Logic dictates that you can’t prove a negative. Alas, logic has never been a strong suit of the food police.
Rather, the food police are constantly calling for a ratcheting up of regulatory standards for approval of biotech products. All the while, they fail to realize their efforts serve only to strengthen their most hated adversary: Monsanto. Do an Internet search for Monsanto—the maker of the herbicide Roundup and the producer of most of the genetically modified seeds used in the United States—and the first adjective Google will suggest is the word evil. Such has been the influence of the food police that the most commonly coupled search term with Monsanto is the descriptor normally reserved for Satan himself. But who benefits from stricter regulations that make it harder for new biotech seeds to enter the market? It certainly isn’t the small start-up firms trying to break down entry barriers to get their new invention on the market. Rather, it’s the established behemoths who have teams of lawyers and lobbyists who can absorb the regulatory costs that keep out their smaller competitors. Adding regulatory hurdles hasn’t dampened Monsanto’s market power; it has enhanced it—another unintended consequence brought to you by the food police.