» The Ethical Choice is Factory Food
Andrew Potter gives a scathing criticism of both eating organic and eating local in Macleans. It turns out that the nutritional benefits of organic do not appear in laboratory tests. The economies of scale from industrialized farming make it better for the environment than either niche food (remember: your intuitions about environmental cost are wrong).
This makes it clear that the underlying reason people consume niche food is to be cool. And that doing so harms other people.
The only touted advantage he doesn’t address is “food security”. I’ve always taken it to be a kind of joke to refer to growing vegetables at city hall by the same term that serious people use to refer to anti-starvation measures. But if it’s the only area open for debate I guess I need to take another look at it…
It is true, our intuitions about environmental cost are wrong. I’ve long felt that touting the 100-mile diet is unethical because it plays on those false intuitions and causes people to stop questioning their food sources. It’s not as simple as all that though. Economies of scale aren’t always more efficient – the types of food being grown and the farming methods play a large part in the equation. What’s unfortunate is that the industrialized food system is so complex and so opaque that the average consumer has virtually no way of finding out the actual environmental cost of their food in order to make an informed, responsible decision. This is a problem I’ve been troubling over and researching pretty much all year.
I take issue with a couple of things you’ve said though. People don’t just eat organic or local because they want to be cool. Maybe some do, but to say that all do is kind of offensive. I eat organic, I don’t eat factory-farmed products (in fact, I don’t eat meat at all anymore), and I eat local SOME of the time, when it seems like the appropriate choice. I don’t bother with local tomatoes because I know that to create the conditions to grow those tomatoes here creates more carbon than to bring them in from a more appropriate climate. That’s not the case with every vegetable. But it’s not all about carbon either. The other aspect of eating locally-sourced food is that it supports local business. If it’s a responsible environmental choice, I’d rather send some money the way of Madrona Farms than to some multi-national corporation.
Plus, organic isn’t only about health. (Although I’ve read recent studies that do show the health benefits of organic, so who’s lying?). Another benefit of organic farming is that it’s better for soil health. That’s pretty important too.
And issue the third: factory food can only be the ethical choice if your ethics include consuming toxic chemicals, unnecessary antibiotics, and promoting animal abuse and labourer exploitation.
Let’s not oversimplify this complex issue.
tara
14 Dec 09 at 11:13 am
@tara
I have respect that you know enough about this issue to know how the impact of growing tomatoes near the BC coast compares to shipping the tomatoes in from a more suitable place – I certainly don’t. I do remember reading recently, regarding the 100-mile diet and “eat local” movements, that the costs (in terms of dollars and carbon dioxide emissions) of transportation was only a small part of the overall cost of producing most foods.
As you said about economies of scale, “the types of food being grown and the farming methods play a large part” in those statements about factory food. I’m assuming that by factory food, you mean any sort of large-scale, mass-produced, industrialized food growing, production, and processing. To me, consuming toxic chemicals at the levels found in most foods is an a-ethical question. In certain types of food or with certain large-scale production methods, anitbiotics, animal welfare, and labour issues are not problems. I’m not trying to defend factory food against the ethical choices you’ve listed, just to say that I think that such a blanket statement against factory food in general is itself an oversimplification.
Don
14 Dec 09 at 11:45 am
I purchased some Aveda cosmetics from the local salon yesterday by way of making them a gift to a lady of close acquaintance. First I tried products from The Body Shop and Fruits & Passion, but the ingredients therein are wholly unintelligible to me, aside from the shocking presence of carcinogenic parabens. I settled on Aveda when I came across a bar of their soap with annotated ingredients indicating both provenance and purpose of anything listed by its scientific name.
I eat organic when I can because the food system, and food science, have lost my trust. This is a communication problem on the part of those groups and will take decades of campaigning, or careful labeling and disclosure as per Aveda’s soap, to repair.
I also eat for aesthetic reasons, yes. For this I make no apology: Should everyone wear prêt-à-porter?
[Edit: Ah, I see Mr. Potter is as contemptuous of bourgeois attitudes as I. Tally-ho.]
Jack
14 Dec 09 at 2:33 pm
i’m not sure why, but it seems in the larger media outlets there is a (semi-)organized attempt to discredit a number of the accepted principles of contemporary environmentalism. the whole ‘hacked emails’ storm-in-teacup is the most high profile (who ‘hacks’ into a very-specific scientific institution’s email accounts, anyways? don’t try to tell me there is not some serious carbon-intensive industry money behind this!!) mr. potter’s article is a lower scale assault in the same vein. i’m not sure why you fellows feel the need to join in; especially when it is in a series of vaguely supportive postings like this.
just because nutritutional value is the same (well, i guess a potato is just a potato, GMO or not!!), the quoted article does not address issues of taste, texture and freshness. all of which make locally produced food better, at least as long you pick the right stuff in the right season. not to mention the local, organic food promotes the very bourgeois idea of self-sustaining micro-economies (that local farmer may buy your photo one day, ‘Jack’).
maybe it is ‘cool’, but that cool is certainly not necessarily harming other people.
stewartworks
14 Dec 09 at 3:30 pm
@Don – you are absolutely right, that was a blanket statement I threw in there and it has no place in my argument. The point I really wanted to make was that there isn’t a single ethical choice to be made, each situation has its own intricacies to consider. When we start making decisions on something as giant and complex as “food” there won’t be an ethical code (on either end of the spectrum) that always works. The danger with the industrialized food system – much as Jack put it – is that facts are obscured so consumers can’t make informed decisions. And don’t get me wrong, it’s not like there aren’t “organic” and “ethical” producers who are complicit in some of this, despite their labelling. I think the most important thing for us to do is to consider each individual product we buy as best we can
Part of where my earlier generalization about factory food came from is that I have yet to come across a mass-produced, conventionally-farmed product (that I have taken the time to individually research) that doesn’t involve at least one of those issues somewhere along the production chain (chemicals, antibiotics, abuse). But I’m not ready to say never because that probably wouldn’t be true. For all intents and purposes, an organic company like Cal-Organic is also a large-scale industrialized producer. They mass-produce food without chemical fertilizers or pesticides, which is better for the soil and our health even though it might not necessarily be better in terms of carbon emissions. We are faced with choices that bear on so many different issues and values that no choice can ever be perfectly ethical. Although I’m tempted to say eating factory-farmed meat can’t ever be the ethical choice – but that’s my choice. If someone were to come forth with a suitably convincing (and rational) argument to the contrary, I’d at least listen.
And let’s face it, food production IS political – it’s not just a misguided campaign on the part of the left to politicize it, as Potter seems to think. He just makes himself sound stupid and reactionary with that point.
tara
14 Dec 09 at 4:53 pm
[...] Local farmers don’t need the money. Canada offers plenty of other careers. Many of the farms within 100 miles of my location aren’t even profitable enough to be a sole source of income: the gentlemen farmers dabble in argiculture in order to get property tax breaks on their estates (an agricultural subsidy). Only small organic farms are economically sustainable, which is another market failure. [...]
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