by frog
Being able to make informed decisions about what we eat is a pretty basic democratic right, and Sue Kedgley’s Consumers Right to Know ( Food Information) Bill is a major step in that direction. Sue K.’s private member’s Bill was pulled from the ballot this week, and it seeks to strengthen our food labelling laws.
Under its provisions, the GM ingredients in food would have to be identified. Also, the country of origin labelling would make it easier for customers to buy locally produced goods over imported ones. In future, people buying eggs would be able to make purchase decisions based on knowing whether the hens are kept in cages, barns or are free range. At a a wider level, government will also have to make available the information it gathers on residue levels in food caused by pesticides, heavy metals, industrial chemicals, and other contaminants.
Published in Health & Wellbeing by frog on Fri, March 31st, 2006
Tags: environment
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
If you’re so concerned about basic rights, how about the basic property right of the producers to decide whether or not to add certain information about the ingredients of the product?
Who made the basic right about what we eat?
What about those who don’t care what ingredients are in their food; surely they shouldn’t be punished by price rises for the paranoia of a minority?
Why can’t consumers who are against products which don’t label ingredients not buy foods that don’t have food labels? There seems to be a large enough minority of you out there for some producers to cater for your wants.
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The trivial desires of manufacturers to hide information on the possible harm they are doing to the environment, human health or animals can in no way be compared with the more vital needs (and indeed responsibilities) of consumers to make informed, ethical choices about their purchases. If manufacturers have nothing to hide, then why are they worried? Egg manufacturers for example insist that battery cages provide the best welfare for hens. So why are they not proud to label their eggs “caged eggs”?
The extra costs of printing country of origin labels or any other labels is vastly exaggerated. What worries manufacturers far more is the loss of earnings that will result when consumers have more information.
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Ahhh yes, those precious property rights. So a small country which is far enough away so that it really SHOULD NOT be importing food, and whose consumers have miniscule impact on the corporations that manufacture the purported nourishment, can have no way to control even the information that its citizens receive. Yeah… THAT’S the ticket, set it up so you can treat us like mushrooms. Keep us all in the dark and feed us s*!t.
The reason we have government is to accomplish collectively the things we cannot do separately, and this is one of them. I want to know when something is NOT from NZ, and I want to know what the F is in it. You want to introduce something in commerce and sell it across this nations borders? You have to tell us what it is and where it comes from.
BJ
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How on earth is the ability to make informed decisions a ‘basic right’? Even the U.N. charter did not come up with something so ridiculous (actually they probably did). To go on and call this right democratic…what? How is that anything to do with democracy?
Bjchip’s comment, ” a small country which is far enough away so that it really SHOULD NOT be importing food”, is even more ridiculous. Why shouldn’t we import food? It’s cheaper. Moreover, there are various things that we cannot or do not grow in New Zealand. Would you force people to work in inefficient industries just so you can buy local produce?
If you want to know where things comes from, then that’s the beginning of a demand. That will be matched by supply. The fact is we are already given some information about our food. What’s the problem?
“The reason we have government is to accomplish collectively the things we cannot do separately, and this is one of them”. No it’s not. The only justifiable reason and the true role of government is for the protection of individual rights. Your definition suggests the government should steal – mine suggests it shouldn’t.
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Stephen,
The obvious reason why we shouldn’t be importing inferior food is that we grow and manufacture alot of extremely good food ourselves, which should not merely be exported, so that the local populace can eat cheaper imported (and produced in inferior manufacturing/quality processes) foods, which contravene the standards our own country legislates.
Transporting foodstuffs from one end of the country or planet to the other is hugely inefficient for everyone except the bloated transport industry and marketing middlemen everywhere.
Eating local is healthier for the humans involved and also for the planet.
Katie
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“The obvious reason why we shouldn’t be importing inferior food is that we grow and manufacture alot of extremely good food ourselves” you presume that for some bizarre reason we are stopped from eating the food we want. We’re not. The thing is, when people go to the supermarket they can choose between New Zealand produce, and typically cheaper produce from overseas. Ignoring your claim that foreign food isn’t as good quality as ours, even if that’s true, we still buy it becauise it’s cheaper.
Are you suggesting that we should force people to buy local food even when they don’t want to?
Transporting foodstuffs isn’t inefficient – if it were, it wouldn’t occur. It’s hugely inefficient to force people to make a farm just around the corner for their “local food”. The fact is it’s cheaper to grow coffee overseas and transport it here and it is to grow it here and not pay transport costs. So they do. What don’t you understand?
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Stephen
Firstly, agreeing with Katie here, BJchip presumably meant we should not be importing foods because it would be inefficient to do so, were the market prices of imported food to reflect the real costs of its production.
You seem to think that because imported food is cheaper, NZ food producers who charge higher prices must be inefficient. I think Bjchip is making the point that if all environmental costs (the harm from emissions and pollutants generated during transport, the harm to waterways from runoff, pesticides, etc, the cost of destruction of valuable forests, etc) were included in the price of imported food, it might be more expensive. His “should not” statement refers to achieving efficiency, and moreover I think the statement was of a general tendency (eg “we should import less food”) not an absolute. He’s probably talking californian oranges more than columbian coffee.
Straightforward right? You accept the idea of externalities, and agree that private costs of transport and agricultural production don’t reflect their social costs?
Secondly, “The only justifiable reason and the true role of government is for the protection of individual rights.”
Do you understand the concept of “public goods”? Goods which provides value to consumers of them, but for which consumers cannot be charged for, or prevented from consuming. A lot of people think that one role for governments is to provide these goods, because markets will fail to do so yet the provision of them increases overall welfare. So can you explain why “protection of individual rights” should be the states only concern?
Thirdly, heres my take on food labelling and your arguments:
Stephen, you and the other guy above seem to think that enforcing full labelling on food products would be an example of the government regulating what characteristics products should have, even though the market might not value those characteristics. That is, you reckon labelling on the product is just another aspect of what makes the product what it is. You consider that “full labelling” fits in the same category as, say, “pink fluffy icing” or “ripeness” – that is, they are characteristics of the product, and consumers have different preferences across these characteristics. So just as the government would not compel food makers to put pink fluffy icing on everything to please those people that like pink icing, they should not compel labelling. Instead, those characteristics which are most valued (ie people prefer food with those characteristics) will tend to be produced more because they’ll fetch a higher price. If people valued “full information labelling” enough, they would be happy to pay for it and firms would be happy to provide…we’d all be happy. This is what I can make of your argument.
The problem with this, I think, is that “information” (in the form of full labelling) should not be considered as just another characteristic, for the reason that information, in and of itself, is not what gives people utility. Instead, the characteristics of food which actually give the consumer utility or disutility include such things as “high in Vitamin C”, “GMO free”, “made in NZ”. Information in the form of labelling is only useful in that we learn more about the characteristics of each product and can tailor our purchases to give us greater utility.
Now unlike pink fluffy icing, or ripeness, important characteristics like “GMO free” or “high in vitamins” can’t be observed just by looking at the good, or even by purchasing and trying it. So consumers with some positive preference for these characteristics (ie they like them to some extent) aren’t able to make informed choices between goods, unlike the person who cares only for pink icing and ripeness and who easily observes these (or the person who cares only for taste and can observe this with minimal search costs…ie trying it and learning).
This is an asymmetric information problem – producers and consumers aren’t equally clued up as to what all the characteristics are of the product they’re transacting. And when consumers don’t know exactly what they’re buying, they aren’t able to spend their money on those things which give them the greatest benefit* – this is the source of the efficiency loss. The rationale for regulation is that by forcing a small cost on one group (producers, and hence all consumers) with compulsory labelling, a larger benefit is provided to another group (all those who read labels and gain utility from having NZ-made / vitamin-high / GMO free food).
(*Whether you like it or not, whether you think its irrational, or whether it fits the theoretical models, at least some consumers care about the CoO of their food…just as others care about the vitamin content, say.)
We already do this in lots of areas, eg nutritional content and ingredients labelling. I can’t see any distinction between those labelling requirements and the GMO/CoO ones.
Did that all make any sense? If not, perhaps just think: is compulsory nutritional/ingredients labelling a good idea? Why or why not? And what is the conceptual difference between it and CoO or GMO labelling?
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Just realised how long that was. Apologies for the rant
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Ironically, compulsory food labelling imposes a higher compliance cost on small producers than the “big evil behemoths” that the socialist/ecologist lobby loves to loathe.
Secondly, there is the statement “You accept the idea of externalities, and agree that private costs of transport and agricultural production don’t reflect their social costs? ” . The biggest problem with the idea of externalities is that it is always quoted for negatives and not positives – nobody on the left wants to pay for positive externalities from businesses. Moreover, you can hardly say that some people should pay for negative externalities (to the government for some reason, instead of direct compensation to whoever has suffered – which typically is nobody, just an academically derived number), when you don’t want people to pay for the full costs of their health care, education, retirement, public transport, childcare, children’s upbringing.
New Zealand’s wealth is based on being one of the world’s most efficient producers of food, so efficient New Zealand can produce it, ship it and significantly undercut the cost of European and North American producers. Ideally this should happen, and the amount of farming in Europe should substantially reduce – leaving land to be returned to nature or put to better use. However, you see precious few environmentalists willing to abandon the massive welfare for agriculture in Europe.
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“Straightforward right? You accept the idea of externalities, and agree that private costs of transport and agricultural production don’t reflect their social costs?”
The problem is that the government does not allow markets to operate properly by constsntly getting involved in areas they shouldn’t. Externalities occur only when one of two things occur: 1) The government owns land and thus no one takes full responsibility of it. The degradation of it is spread across many, but the benefits gained by an individual. 2) The judiciary does not uphold the right to property, when they deem that things are in the interests of ‘public policy’, such as pollution at the beginning of the industrial revolution.
“Do you understand the concept of “public goods?? Goods which provides value to consumers of them, but for which consumers cannot be charged for, or prevented from consuming.”
No anlysis of what these goods are. Name some. I bet I could think of ways of charging for them. If I agree with you at all, though, the ‘public goods’ are police, courts, and the army.
“The problem with this, I think, is that “information? (in the form of full labelling) should not be considered as just another characteristic, for the reason that information, in and of itself, is not what gives people utility.” – And this is the exact reason why labelling to a degree occurs. I go to the supermarket and I know what everything is and how much it costs. But I don’t care if it was made in Hamilton or Haiti, so long as it tastes good. And if there’s enough ppl who value knowing if something’s GE free (yoiurself and other greens), then ppl will start doing it.
And no, ingredients labelling is not good when it occurs by means of compulsion.
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Stephen
I NEVER said that the ability to make informed decisions was a “Basic Right” – and that is your mistake. I recognize that it must be fought for tooth and nail, and that the little guy is the one that gets to eat the s*^t. The point I was making is that it is perfectly reasonable for the people of NZ, acting through their government to make the argument more pointed for the pointy haired morons who want our money.
As for importing food “its cheaper” is a mistake of an economic system that is bereft of any feedback about the costs incurred by its choices in terms of the atmospheric damage. The tragedy of the commons writ large, with the planet itself as the commons. Kyoto was about putting a PRICE on that abuse, and the business community choked. Why? Because if Kyoto works, the economics of “import it, its cheaper” will become the economics of “imported costs more” and a hell of a lot of what passes for economic activity in the world will suddenly be less economical.
The only justifiable reason and the true role of government is for the protection of individual rights. Your definition suggests the government should steal – mine suggests it shouldn’t.
That’s the stuff left at the Southbound end of a Northbound horse and you know it. I really wish you’d try to understand the conflicts between reality and libertarian ideology. You’re smart enough, but you are dead unwilling to consider that the idealism underlying libertarianism might be no less at odds with human nature than the idealism underlying pure pacifism. The government has to be able to do things that individuals cannot do. It HAS to be able to protect one individual from another OR from a corporation, it has to be THAT strong.
If it isn’t, then only the corporations have any real power, and their ethics are, as Enron and Worldcom and Bhopal etc have shown us repeatedly, fungible assets.
If we were all really really ethical good people and the corporations were as trustworthy as they would HAVE to be for your worldview to have any chance of actually working, we’d not be facing the imminent destruction of the only habitable planet we can reach.
Even without government intervention.
You aren’t helping things. People and corporations aren’t naturally that good. Take my word for it or learn it the hard way. Me, I’m from New York. I’ve known it all my life.
BJ
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Libertarian mythology, like with many discredited mythologies, has an idealised view of what people are and how they behave. Whether the idealisation is a ‘New Germanic Aryan’ or a ‘New Soviet Man’ or a ‘Rational Consumer’ it does not reflect reality.
Libertarian mythology’s view of the Rational Consumer relies on the people making purchasing decisions that give them the most benefit, and the aggregate of all these decisions will lead to the best possible use of resources.
Rather simplistic in my view, but even if it were true, the mythology relies on both the buyer and seller having perfect knowledge of the products, choices and cost.
So even if one did believe in the Libertarian myths, one would have to support the purchasers right to know what it is they are buying.
If the only source of information is from the seller – say, for example, there was no legal requirement to disclose the amount of the product in a package – the purchaser cannot make the purchasing decision that gives them the most benefit.
Of course, no seller would use packaging to mislead a purchaser, because – well, the aggregate outcome would be less than optimal, would cost the seller more in the long term, and civilsation as we know it would crash around our ears.
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“Name some. I bet I could think of ways of charging for them”
Well, okay. How about roads? No-one could toll every road, the cost of the transaction would be too high. Or the textbook classic, the fireworks display. Given the technology and infrastructure we currently have, these two things qualify as public goods. If you want more examples rather than debating their existence at a conceptual level, go read a book or two. Plenty of intelligent people will have written a lot about public, surely they’re not ALL wrong.
And the problem of externalities is a problem of ill-defined property rights, apparently. So is the solution, in this real world we live in, to assign them to somebody and enforce them through the courts, or to tax / subsidise any activities that impinge on the “property” whose ownership is ambiguous?
Assign the atmosphere to someone? Allow that someone to sue every smoker, car, or cow who pollutes it? Time to live in the real world, I think, and accept that some property will remain under common ownership, and thus some activities will have externalities. Where the social costs are clear enough (eg co2 emissions not reduced by x% by year y, cost = massive instability = massive social and economic cost) tax or cap and trade to prevent the problem.
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BJchip, I never claimed you said knoeing about food was a basic right – that was in reference to what frog’s opening line was. Sorry if that caused some confusion.
I agree that the economic costs of transport are not fully realised. You want to solce that by government regulation, and then more regulation to solve the loopholes. I say no. Just enforce property rights. Sell it, and let individuals bear the costs, or enforce their right to property so others can’t chartge us all for their benefit.
In response the the issue of ideology not matching reality (both you and Tom raised this point, thought he called it ‘mythology’), I disagree. He compared it to the Stalinist view of human nature. Bo, it’s fundamentally different. Communism, and almost every other ideology, force people to work in a particular way. Libertarianism doesn’t. The fact that a central body doesn’t tax doesn’t stop communities agreeing to taxation, and if that’s human nature, then they will.
Tom, firstly roads. Most roads could be tolled. The dead end road that I live on probably couldn’t. So, most likely my street would band together and buy it. Or a philanthropic individual would.
Fireworks displays are an example that I use. Most fireworks displays are paid for by voluntary community organisations. Some aren’t, but most are. Or they’re paid for by individuals, who meet at one place, knowing that they’ll benefit from other’s goodwill and vice versa. What’s the problem?
Yes, the answer is to enforce property rights in court Tom. I think you’re starting to get it. As Murray Rothbard pointed out, when orchadists went to court and sued factory owners since their pollution was effecting their crops, the court found that the benefits of “public policy” outweighed any right to property. That’s wrong. If it were true, the factory owners could pay compensation at an agreed price. If not, then they shouldn’t be allowed to pollute someone else’s property.
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Stephen, don’t you see we are all agreeing now? We started with a disagreement over the role of government: between only “protecting the rights of individuals”, or also “collectively providing welfare-enhancing goods that individuals won’t provide”.
You’ve argued that governments should not provide public goods, but should butt out of individuals lives, to be replaced by, for example:
* communities agreeing to taxation
* voluntary community organisations providing public goods
both of which you’re happy with.
How about I suggest a mechanism that is even more efficient than your community agreements and organisations, in providing stuff that enhances most people’s lives most of the time. We’ll call it the state, give it powers to enforce laws, and thus solve the free-rider problems that would beseige your small communities efforts to provide any public goods larger than miniscule endeavours like fireworks. (even down my own dead-end road I can’t imagine everyone agreeing to pay an equal share of road costs – there would be free-riders, making it more costly for the rest of you).
What is the difference between the current government and your idea of people banding together to provide stuff, if they want to? The only difference is the compulsion, in the form of taxation, which is a necessary evil to provide any public goods of meaningful size. And I think you would already accept such compulson, eg for law and order.
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Yes, the difference is compulsion. Compulsion is an abandonment of thought or reason, it says “I can’t convince you so I’ll take your property anyway”. The problem with the state is it gets captured by those who want something for nothing or want to make people pay for something they never use – because the state has the monopoly on violence it should only ever be used in response to violence, not to initiate it. That is the crux of the difference – statists such as the Greens believe in the state initiating force against people – and the excuse of the greater good is the same excuse anyone could use for initiating force, in fact is the excuse of every dictator who ever lived.
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I agree that the economic costs of transport are not fully realised. You want to solce that by government regulation, and then more regulation to solve the loopholes. I say no. Just enforce property rights.
OK, when a noisy smelly truck drives past my place and infringes my rights by
* waking my children
* polluting my (My! MY! MYYY!!!!!) air
* incrementally warming the planet leading to non-optimal outcomes for me and my children…
… who do I sue, Stephen, to ensure that the transporter stops forcing me to absorb his externalised costs? You know a good lawyer?
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An awful lot of the funding of health advisory association is biased because commercial enterprises get in on funding them – just as sport funding used to depend on nicotine. Poultry Boards want to convince us that two eggs a day is healthy, when doctors say it is more likely to be fatal. The Dairy Industry funds the Arthritis Association, arguing that cheese is an excellent source of calcium, when in fact calcium intake is regulated by hormones, not dietary intake, and high-protein, high phosphorous foods such as cheese leach out calcium from bones. At present, we are bombarded with ‘Iron Man’, told it is essebntial to brains and we’ll all get anaemia without it. This is directly contrary to fact.
One in 200 New Zealanders are advised NOT to eat foods supplemented with iron, yet it is added to many of your foodstuffs. The amount is small, but it getting impossible for us iron-overload sufferers -about 16,000 in NZ- to find ANY iron-free breads, beveridges, yeast extracts, cereals, etc. What are we to do? No doctor would dream of prescribing iron to a patient without first establishing their blood-serum iron levels, so why do manufacturers? Most men over 40 have excess blood iron, a factor which exacerbates Alzheimers’, acute myocardial infarct, SIDS, Parkinsons, Diabetes,etc. It is quite wrong to state that iron is a cure for anaemia; it is a confusion with hypoferraemia (a rare condition meaning shortage of blood-iron; anaemia means shortage of blood, and is usually due to ulcers or lack of absorption).Arsenic was once used for treating anaemia, and was perhaps better than iron – because most anaemias are iron-loading. Why not add Vitamin C, which would cure most iron-deficiencies caused by lack of the absorption factor? Surely that would be safer.No doctor advocates self-prescription with iron tablets, it is NOT a health or ‘energy’ food – essential, yes, but almost no-one has too little in their diet. Taken to the source, the ‘iron man’ myth will be found to have originated with the NZ Beef and Lamb Marketing Board’s anxiety over falling red meat sales; vegetarians are few enough to pose no problem, but the shift to fish and chicken IS. I am presently trying to get the ‘Heart Tick of Approval’ made illegal for foods containing added iron, on the grounds that it is unhealthy for those with heart disease.Please, manufacturers, at least offer versions of your products free from added iron to make them available to our increasing number; haemochromatosis is the commonest genetic disease of all.In our newsletters, we have to black-list an increasing list of products as unsuitable for our members.(I am tghe secretary of the Iron Overload Disorder Association of NZ.)
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