Tag / big food

by crmayes

The limit of labels: ethical food is more than consumer choice

Over the past hundred years, industrial agriculture and the globalised food system have produced cheaper, longer lasting and more diverse food items. We can now enjoy tropical fruits in winter, purchase whole chickens at the price of a cup of coffee, and eat fresh bread long after it was baked.

Once celebrated as the benevolent results of food science and ingenuity of farmers, these cheap and safe foods are dismissed by critics as the tainted fruits of “Big Food” – the culinary version of Big Tobacco and Big Oil.

Food is no longer simply a matter of taste or convenience. Our food choices have become ethical and political issues.

An innocuous but central strategy in these debates is the food label.

No Logo by Naomi Klein
Picador

In recent years there has been an explosion of ethico-political food labels to address concerns such as slavery, nutrition, environmental degradation, fair trade and animal cruelty. These disparate concerns are unified by their connection to the amorphous culprit “Big Food”.

The idea is that by knowing what is in our food and how it was produced, we will reject unethical food corporations, buy from ethical producers and thereby promote justice.

But is this necessarily so?

The power of truth to awaken the slumbering consumer giant has been in place since at least the mid-1990s. In the introduction to her landmark book, No Logo (1999), Naomi Klein outlines her hypothesis:

that as more people discover the brand-name secrets of the global logo web, their outrage will fuel the next big political movement, a vast wave of opposition squarely targeting transnational corporation, particularly those with very high name-brand recognition.

According to Klein, when the veil is removed and people discover the “secrets” behind their consumer products, an outrage will be unleashed that will transform the global web of capital.

We see this logic in calls for food labels to reveal unethical food production practices of Big Food. By giving consumers more information, it is believed they will use their buying power to force change. Perhaps.

Limits of ethico-political consumption

First, a danger of ethico-political consumption is that citizens are transformed into consumers, and political action is reduced to shopping. Rather than holding companies and governments to account for unethical practice, it becomes a matter of consumer choice.

For example, most of us would consider a proposal to use consumer choice as a way of resolving slavery in the American cotton industry during the 19th century to be a perverse idea. Slavery, we like to believe, should be outlawed. It is not an issue to be solved through consumer preference. Yet today we find ourselves in a situation where we are trying to solve issues of slavery and exploitation through consumer choice.

Today, 45.8 million people are living in slavery. According to the Global Slavery Index, 4,300 are working in Australian food production or sex industries. Many more work in the global food system, of which Australia is a part.

As Nicola Frith has previously argued in The Conversation, the slavery used in the global food system that supplies prawns to UK and US supermarkets should not be considered an issue of consumer choice but a crime.

A second problem with ethico-political consumption is that the consumer response is susceptible to co-option by the very corporations that are being protested. Due to the vast array of products sold by trans-national corporations, it is possible for corporations to maintain highly profitable but “unethical” products, along with less profitable but “ethical” products.

For example, Pace Farm is one of the largest producers of cage-eggs in Australia, yet they also sell free-range eggs. They also have other brands that are not obviously associated with Pace Farm, like Family Value.

In 2013, Oxfam launched Behind the Brands. This campaign draws attention to the influence of multinational food corporations on the global food system and negative impacts on women, workers, farmers, land, water and climate. Although the campaign uses a variety of strategies to critique these corporations, much of the focus falls on consumers.

A popular image associated with the campaign shows the way hundreds of popular food brands are actually owned by ten corporations. It’s worth noting this chart is several years old and some of the listed brands have changed hands, but its point remains.

The illusion of choice. CLICK TO ENLARGE
Oxfam/Behind the Brand

The image has been repeatedly shared on social media and is commonly accompanied with the text “the illusion of choice”. However, clearly there is choice here – there are hundreds of brands, each with thousands of products. Of course, the sentiment of the “illusion of choice” statement isn’t simply that we have only a single choice of soft drink or cereal, but that all choices lead to one of ten transnational corporations.

The more troubling illusion, however, is not that the thousands of products lining the supermarket shelves are owned by ten corporations, but that political consumption – the proverbial “voting with your wallet” – is illusory.

The illusion of consumer food choice as an ethico-political act is not the pernicious creation of food corporations, but co-creation of public health experts, consumer advocates, governments, food ethicists and a host of others.

Even if these labels serve to disrupt corporate brands, they also trap individuals into responsibility for systemic and global issues, such as public health, global poverty, animal welfare or fair working conditions. This isn’t to say we are absolved, but the idea that more consumption will solve the problems of consumption is self-defeating.

Using labels or apps to draw attention to the political and ethical features of consumer choice is a fine objective, but largely symbolic. If certain activities of food corporations and the global food system are considered unethical, then a plurality of approaches is needed – one of which needs to be international and domestic legislation.

As the American economist Robert Reich argues,

Companies are not interested in the public good. It is not their responsibility to be good…if we want them to play differently, we have to change the rules.

For the past decade, there has been an over-reliance on self-regulation and naïve expectations about corporate social responsibility. This needs to change, and not by simply adding a new label to our food.

The Conversation

Christopher Mayes, Post-Doctoral Fellow in Bioethics, University of Sydney

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

by crmayes

Morally Indigestible Listicles: Food, Experts, and the Burden of Choice

Never Eat

The Sydney Morning Herald (via the Telegraph, London) has published another “no-nonsense-straight-shooting-science-based” listicle of the foods YOU SHOULD NEVER EAT AGAIN! These lists seem to appear at least once every week on some form of news website.

This current list is prefaced with references to recent British Medical Journal studies that turned upside down “everything we thought we knew about eating and drinking healthily”. Instead of saturated fats being “the killer”, it turns out carbohydrates are!

Put down that bacon & egg roll and get yourself a KFC Double-Down sandwich!

Surprisingly the article doesn’t question why these new claims have a stronger knowledge base than previous claims or how we can be sure that in a week there won’t be another “nutritional revolution” that will turn this all on its head and finger protein as Grandpa’s real killer.

Leaving aside the science-base of these claims – not to imply this is unimportant – what is most disturbing about these articles (and this article in particular) is the emphasis on individual food choices as the determining factor of health. “Expert” claims that “every bacon sandwich you eat knocks half an hour off your life” reinforce ideas that my heart disease or your diabetes are reducible to that sandwich or chocolate bar eaten six years ago.

When these factoids are spoken by folks in white coats during times of austerity cuts to health services there is a real danger of compounding already existing public health policy problems by pretending that structural influences can be addressed via a nice social marketing campaign or a Jamie Oliver TV show that teaches people how to cook, garden and “never eat those foods again”.

In the UK (where this article originated) David Cameron recently flagged that sick benefits may be cut from people who are obese and do not lose weight. The rationale for this idea is that obese people can lose weight simply by making “correct” and “healthy” food choices. However, according to Cameron, they aren’t making these choices because life is too good on benefits. Hence, cut the benefits and healthy food choices will be made.

While these listicle articles may be dismissed as “not too serious” or “a bit of fun”, they depend on and reinforce a moralistic and biopolitical perspective on the relation between food, choice and health. This perspective is often used to justify budget cuts to health services due to the expectation that health is simply a matter of individuals making the right choices.

In an article for Public Health Ethics, my colleague Donald B. Thompson and I argue that this perspective is morally and scientifically unjustified. Below is the introduction. If you’d like read the whole thing but the pay wall gets in the way send me an email.

Continue reading →

by crmayes

Lifestyle Intervention and the Aesthetics of Obesity and Smoking

The sustained concern over obesity as a threat to population and economic security has led to a proliferation of medical and non-medical experts intervening in the daily lives and practices of individuals. These interventions commonly fall under the rubric of lifestyle. Seen as both the cause and solution, the modern lifestyle is the target of modification strategies and techniques.

Of course, interventions into lifestyle are not entirely new or exclusive to obesity. Smoking, homosexuality, extreme sports or drug-use have all been described as lifestyles with associated health risks that justify outside intervention. Yet, I contend that obesity is unique in its characterization as a political, economic, aesthetic and public health problem that emanates from individual choices and practices.

The uniqueness of obesity is partly evidenced in comparison to smoking. While smokers have attracted a significant share of vitriol and harassment, much of the blame for smoking and the associated health impacts is reserved for “Big Tobacco”. If repentant, smokers can be characterized as the victims of industry deception and chemical addiction. Although there is anger directed toward “Big Food”, obesity is primarily framed as the result of individual choice and lack of control.

Furthermore, there is an aesthetic difference that distinguishes obesity from smoking. While there are active efforts to counter the “coolness”of smoking, the iconic images of Humphrey Bogart or Audrey Hepburn with cigarettes in hand continue to influence Western aesthetics. And the more recent fictional characters, Don Draper and Joan Halloway stubbornly resist the cliché that “kissing a smoker is like kissing an ashtray”. In contrast, the aesthetics and celebrity of obesity are comical, grotesque or both. Cartoon characters like Homer Simpson or Peter Griffin who eat anything within reach, from a week old sandwich to the legs of a paralytic friend, serve to confirm the message that obesity is grotesque in form and the result of lack of control.

This aesthetic also carries with it a judgement on the ability of an individual to self-govern and also to govern others. Kim Beazley, the former leader of the opposition in Australia was once told by Prime Minister Bob Hawke that the Australian people wouldn’t elect a fat prime minister. A contemporary example in the US is Chris Christie. Since at least the 2012 Republican primaries Christie’s weight has been a continual talking-point. These discussions are set to increase as speculation grows over his intentions to run for President in 2016.

Contemporary concerns about obesity and its relation to aesthetics, self-governance and the governance of others resembles regulations over sexual conduct in Ancient Greece. In examining the problematization of sexual practice in Ancient Greece, Michel Foucault outlines the link between a husband’s sexual conduct, household management and governance of the city. According to Foucault, the Greek husband’s authority and control over his home (of which his wife was a part) reflected his ability to have authority and control over himself and the life of the city.  While the husband was free to engage in sexual practice outside of the conjugal relation, “having sexual relations only with his wife was the most elegant way of exercising his control” (HSII, 151). Further, when Aristotle condemns extra-marital sexual relations as dishonourable it is not that the activity deviates from a moral law or order, rather such action demonstrates the husband’s inability to conduct himself in relation to the ethical substance of pleasure with the appropriate degree of self-control and mastery.

The example of Nicoles the ruler of Cyprus illustrates this point. According to Isocrates, Nicocles explains his conjugal fidelity in saying, “I am the king, and because as somebody who commands others, who rules others, I have to show that I am able to rule myself.” Therefore if Nicocles wishes to rule others and the city with glory and authority then he must rule himself first. Foucault argues that for the Greeks the mode of subjection was politico-aesthetic in which “political power, glory, immortality and beauty are all linked together at a certain moment.” Thus the Greek free man is at liberty to engage in sexual activity with someone other than his wife, however if he has accepted the politico-aesthetic mode of subjection, if he wishes his existence to be characterized by self-mastery and beauty, then he will recognize the particular rules of conduct that are constitutive of that subjectivity.

In a somewhat similar fashion, the American (or Australian, or any citizen of a Western liberal democracy) is free to indulge in whatever culinary and dietary activity he or she wishes, however, in return the society will discount beauty and the capacity for self-governance and the governance of others and thereby justify interventions into their daily choices, activities and practices.

Continue reading →