Will Hutton’s excellent article in the Guardian goes some way to showing the link between the market-craven political ideology of our Conservative led government (which, to be fair, the UK’s last Labour government also suffered from) and the likelihood that in the race-to-the-bottom economics of Industrial Food, you’re as likely to end up eating something that neighed as mooed.
So how have we got to this point?
We live in a world of almost unimaginable division of labour. This has brought us great riches and many, many gifts, but not without cost. In Thomas Thwaites’ Toaster Project, the Royal College of Arts graduate tried to make a working toaster from scratch (down to mining the copper and sourcing the mica). His laughably amateurish efforts showed how difficult this is, such is the complexity and diversity of materials and processes needed to put together even something that seems the most basic of kitchen appliances. Moreover, past its ramshackle appearance, I suspect Thwaites’ resulting toaster might not be the safest of devices.
No, in our industrial hyper-divided long-chain economy, we need the strongest national and international regulations to make sure that the toaster you plug into the mains doesn’t kill you.
It’s no great leap to conclude that we need a similarly stringent regime for food standards, because, displaying behaviour that harks back to the tragedy of the commons, (even with bodies like the FSA and EU wide codes of practice in place) industry will fight against regulation whilst not being able to regulate itself.
The surprise to me is that anyone expects an industry to regulate itself and thinks that it can do this honestly and effectively.
Getting up to mischief when you think no one’s looking is not just human nature, it’s mammalian nature. Canine behaviour expert, Juliane Kaminski’s research report released last week studied the link between a dog’s likelihood of stealing from a plateful of food, with their disapproving owner present, and the ambient light level. She found the relationship was a straight line: the lower the light (and likelihood to be caught) the more likely the dog was to steal.
These doggie instincts can be even stronger with short-term-shareholder-interested big business. Last Thursday it was reported that over one hundred million US dollars had been spent by oil-financed lobbyists to prop up climate change denying scientists and thinktanks. Not content with stealing the food from the table, it’s as if Kaminski’s pooches had used the cover of darkness to break into the cupboard under the stairs and tamper with the fuse box.
Whilst in social situations, self-regulation has a valuable place (for a good example, see Gneezy and Rustichini’s brilliant study) but in the marketplace, regulation seems a far more likely way of promoting the common good. This is backed up by a wide range of behavioural research which stresses the importance of accountability, visibility, likelihood of being caught, and appeals to social conscience as factors in behaviour change. I’d go so far as to say that self-regulation (not just in for-profit business sectors like the food industry, press or football, but in the public sector – self-regulating police, anyone?) could be amongst the worst ways to drive behaviour that benefits the wider community.
The current scandal over horse meat in our food chain reminds me the late comedian George Carlin’s question on another unappealing animal-related activity that you wouldn’t want at your dinner table: Why does a dog lick it’s balls?
Like a food industry that thinks it can get away with passing off horse meat for beef, the answer of course is: “Because it can”.
The post Horse meat and thieving dogs who lick where you can’t appeared first on amissingham.com.