The Homiletics of Risk

Today there is considerable disagreement between the US and the EU with respect to food safety standards. Issues include GMOs, beef hormones, unpasteurized cheese, etc. In general, it is usually asserted that Europeans argue for the precautionary principle (with exceptions such as the Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement where ``substantial equivalence,' a form of familiarity, is used) while Americans defend risk analysis or what is sometimes described as the familiarityprinciple. This is not to suggest that EUmember countries agree on how the precautionaryprinciple should be applied; considerabledifferences exist among nations as will benoted below.In this paper I review both positionsarguing that they are best understood asvariants of the homiletics of risk rather thanas differing scientific positions. I concludethat while science must necessarily enter intothe formulation of food and agriculturalstandards, state policy, private economicinterests, and the interface between the two(e.g., when democratic states are successfullylobbied to support particular privateinterests), play important roles in determininghow particular risks will be treated. Moreover,I argue that the role of science mustnecessarily be limited if its credibility is tobe preserved.     

Science and values in risk assessment: The case of deliberate release of genetically engineered organisms

To make more responsible decisions regarding risk and to understand disagreements and controversies in risk assessments, it is important to know how and where values are infused into risk assessment and how they are embedded in the conclusions. In this article an attempt is made to disentangle the relationship of science and values in decision-making concerning the deliberate release of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) into the environment. This exercise in applied philosophy of science is based on Helen Longino's contextual empiricism which attempts to reconcile the objectivity of science with its social and cultural construction. Longino distinguishes different levels of research on which values apparently contextual with respect to a given research program can shape the knowledge emerging from that program. Her scheme is applied for locating and identifying the values that affect environment risk assessments of the field experiments with GMOs. The article concludes with some provisional suggestions for the decision process and the role of scientists in it.     

Local food networks as catalysts for food policy change to improve health and build the economy

Local food networks (LFNs) are growing in popularity, in part as a response to broader criticisms of conventional food production. Municipal policy-makers have the opportunity to work with stakeholders to build LFNs to increase access to healthy foods in cities and ultimately improve population health and well-being. Building opportunities for healthy eating is particularly important in our study area. Flint, Michigan, is a post-industrial shrinking city suffering from the economic and health effects of deindustrialisation. Various stakeholders in Flint have responded to a significant issue with access to food by strengthening collaborations through a food policy council (FPC). Growth in the local food system has been supported by administrators and community advocates alike, through supporting community gardens, farmers' markets, and urban agriculture in a manner similar to nearby Detroit. Participant observation was conducted with stakeholders involved in the development of the LFN and the FPC in Flint. Stakeholders were exposed to existing research on the food system to help inform their policy direction. The group expressed several core concerns and prospects for future work, including a strong emphasis on consensus-based decision-making. Based on the synthesis of stakeholder opinions, policy recommendations are made to aid in continued planning of the LFN. Planning for food is an important first step in improving public health and strengthening local economic development in post-industrial cities. This research highlights the issue by making explicit the challenges and opportunities for policy advocacy in LFNs.     

The discursive framework of sustainability in UK food policy: the marginalised environmental dimension

ABSTRACT

In the context of food policy, sustainability functions as a normative principle but also constitutes a highly contested arena. The study presented in this paper establishes how discursive dynamics amongst professionals involved in matters of food distribution, retail, consumption and waste lead to food policy themes being framed as issues of sustainability. Analysing varied UK-based data (trade magazine articles, policy documents and interviews with retail, non-profit and consultancy representatives), three interpretative frames of sustainability are identified: consumer sovereignty, economic rationality and stewardship. Focusing on three themes of food sustainability – organic consumption, protein diversity and waste reduction – it is shown how these interpretative frames constitute the discursive framework relevant to food policy. Based on these findings, it is shown how in the analysed debates environmental concerns are sidelined.     

Are Life Patents Ethical? Conflict between Catholic Social Teaching and Agricultural Biotechnology's Patent Regime

Patents for genetic material in theindustrialized North have expandedsignificantly over the past twenty years,playing a crucial role in the currentconfiguration of the agricultural biotechnologyindustries, and raising significant ethicalissues. Patents have been claimed for genes,gene sequences, engineered crop species, andthe technical processes to engineer them. Mostcritics have addressed the human and ecosystemhealth implications of genetically engineeredcrops, but these broad patents raise economicissues as well. The Catholic social teachingtradition offers guidelines for critiquing theeconomic implications of this new patentregime. The Catholic principle of the universaldestination of goods implies that genes, genesequences, and engineered crop varieties areineligible for patent protection, although theprocesses to engineer these should be eligible.Religious leaders are likely to make a moresubstantive contribution to debates aboutagricultural biotechnology by addressing theselife patents than by speculating that geneticengineering is ``playing God.'     

Ethics in agricultural research

Utilitarian ethics provides a model for evaluating moral responsibility in agricultural research decisions according to the balance of costs and benefits accruing to the public at large. Given the traditions and special requirements of agricultural research planning, utilitarian theory is well adapted to serve as a starting point for evaluating these decisions, but utilitarianism has defects that are well documented in the philosophical literature. Criticisms of research decisions in agricultural mechanization and biotechnology correspond to documented defects in utilitarian theory. Research administrators can expect that application of a utilitarian standard ignoring these deficiencies will become the occasion for predictable attacks by critics. Administrators who are sensitive to the strengths and weaknesses of utilitarian ethics are equipped to make a better allocation of research effort.     

An analysis of the effect of public policy on community garden organisations in Edinburgh

Several community gardens have been developed in Edinburgh over the past five years, which reflects renewed interest in “grow your own” projects, and the recognition of the associated environmental and social health benefits they provide. Community gardens have been included in a range of policy documents at national and local levels, acknowledging their contribution to sustainable food systems, health and well-being and environment and biodiversity. This research explores how public policy influences community garden practice and, reflexively, how organisations running community gardens in the third sector are represented in public policy frameworks. A mixed methodology of desk-based research of policy documents, associated reports and academic literature; and informal interviews with community gardens staff and organisers was utilised. It was found that while community gardens are represented in policy, at a national level the framing of community gardens and related food growing projects as “alternative” hinders their full potential. Community gardens fulfil a wide range of policy goals, particularly in the health, social capital and well-being sectors which can minimise their capacity to contribute to local food production in a substantial way. It is proposed that community gardens could be normalised by promoting gardens in visible locations in neighbourhoods and within local plans; and through reflexive strategic and community action utilising a reasoning backwards approach to planning and funding.     

The use of indicators in environmental policy appraisal: lessons from the design and evolution of water security policy measures

Drawing up environmental policy options is a complex activity which involves defining and weighing the merits and risks of various alternative courses of action governments could pursue. In its modern version, this task typically involves formal policy analysis or ‘policy appraisal’, that is, policy work specifically undertaken to generate and evaluate policy options in order to address problems or issues on a policy agenda. Indicators play a powerful but under-investigated role in this process. To shed light on this issue, the paper conducts a case study of the design and evolution of policy indicators in water security policy formulation, examining both their utilization and impact. The paper documents the origins of water security policy indicators; assesses their relevance and influence in policy formulation and identifies the reasons for the emergence of certain preferred indices, despite their having several well-known limitations. In particular, the discussion flags the significance of the political advantages surrounding their ease of use and interpretation, rather than their technical merits, as a key factor affecting the continued utilization and influence of specific indicators in environmental policy and planning.     

Food Supply Chain Governance And Public Health Externalities: Upstream Policy Interventions And The UK State

Contemporary food supply chains are generating externalities with high economic and social costs, notably in public health terms through the rise in diet-related non-communicable disease. The UK State is developing policy strategies to tackle these public health problems alongside intergovernmental responses. However, the governance of food supply chains is conducted by, and across, both private and public spheres and within a multilevel framework. The realities of contemporary food governance are that private interests are key drivers of food supply chains and have institutionalized a great deal of standards-setting and quality, notably from their locations in the downstream and midstream sectors. The UK State is designing some downstream and some midstream interventions to ameliorate the public health impacts of current food consumption patterns in England. The UK State has not addressed upstream interventions towards public health diet at the primary food production and processing stages, although traditionally it has shaped agricultural policy. Within the realities of contemporary multilevel governance, the UK State must act within the contexts set by the international regimes of the Common Agricultural Policy and the World Trade Organization agreements, notably on agriculture. The potential for further upstream agricultural policy reform is considered as part of a wider policy approach to address the public health externalities issuing from contemporary food supply chains within this multilevel governance context.     

The Political Import of Intrinsic Objections to Genetically Engineered Food

Many people object to genetically engineerehd (GE) food because they believe that it is unnatural or that its creation amounts to playing God. These objections are often referred to as intrinsic objections, and they have been widely criticized in the agricultural bioethics literature as being unsound, incompatible with modern science, religious, inchoate, and based on emotion instead of reason. Many of their critics also argue that even if these objections did have some merit as ethicalobjections, their quasi-religious nature means that they are entirely irrelevant when interpreted aspolitical objections regarding what public policy ought to be. In this paper, we argue that this widespread view is false. Intrinsic objections have much more political import than has previously been recognized, and indeed the requirements of political liberalism and its associated idea of liberal neutrality, once properly understood, protect intrinsic objections from many of the most common objections. That is, policy-makers may not legitimately base public policy on grounds that are inconsistent with intrinsic objections, even when they believe those objections to be flawed in the ways mentioned above. This means that in the context of a political debate about GE food, the discussion should not center on the substantive merits of the intrinsic objections themselves but rather on the appropriate political norms for achieving democratically legitimate policy on issues that touch people’s deepest religious and moral beliefs.     

The case for regulating intragenic GMOs

This paper discusses the ethical and regulatory issues raised by “intragenics” – organisms that have been genetically modified using gene technologies, but that do not contain DNA from another species. Considering the rapid development of knowledge about gene regulation and genomics, we anticipate rapid advances in intragenic methods. Of regulatory systems developed to govern genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, the Australian system stands out in explicitly excluding intragenics from regulation. European systems are also under pressure to exclude intragenics from regulation. We evaluate recent arguments that intragenics are safer and more morally acceptable than transgenic organisms, and more acceptable to the public, which might be thought to justify a lower standard of regulation. We argue that the exemption of intragenics from regulation is not justified, and that there may be significant environmental risks associated with them. We conclude that intragenics should be subject to the same standard of regulation as other GMOs.     

Hunger amidst plenty: farmworker food insecurity and coping strategies in California

Farmworkers are often overlooked as producers and consumers of food; although farmworkers in California labour in some of the most productive agricultural regions in the world, they are largely food insecure. This paper investigates approaches to relieving farmworker food insecurity in one of the most productive agricultural regions in North America, California's Northern Central Coast. I explore the structural causes for farmworker food insecurity, looking at how farmworker food insecurity is linked to international trade and immigration policies, as well as the systematic exploitation of workers in California agriculture. Investigating the various ways that farmworkers cope with food insecurity, I compare two different approaches, food assistance programmes and farmworker gardens. I discuss the linkages between farmworkers' place in the food system as both producers and consumers, as they simultaneously are exploited for their labour and create their own coping mechanisms utilising their embodied agricultural knowledge.     

Environmental policy expansion in the EU: the intriguing case of bioinvasion regulation

ABSTRACT

While bioinvasion was an issue of low political salience in Europe, a new regulation addressing it was adopted in 2014 with strong support. This article analyzes the making of the regulation as an intriguing case of policy expansion amid economic crisis. Based on theoretical literature on drivers of EU policy integration and policy dismantling, alternative plausible explanations are explored. Our main finding is that development of economic policy consensus among member states on trade-environment nexus was crucial for progress towards regulatory action. Policy consensus has been driven by a confluence of three domestic factors: trade liberalization, market disintegration, and changing ideas about the desirability of EU-level law, with the European Commission as policy entrepreneur. Low political salience has also had an important effect. It has increased the influence of transnational conservation alliances, which have played a significant catalytic role in building consensus by shifting consciousness to economic reward of policy action vs inaction, and bringing international models for legislative reform to the EU jurisdiction.     

Tracing the unintended consequences of food safety regulations for community food security and sustainability: small-scale meat processing in British Columbia

In 2004, as a response to the discovery of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy in Canadian cattle and other food scares, the Province of British Columbia (BC) developed a comprehensive set of meat inspection regulations, increasing the requirements for food safety infrastructure. Through a series of interviews with farmers and stakeholders, we highlight some of the unintended consequences for community food security and sustainability that resulted from these stringent safety regulations in rural and remote communities in BC. These include the loss of meat production and processing capacities as well as the erosion of local food practices and traditions through the criminalisation of farm-gate sales. We suggest that food safety regulations intended to protect consumer health may result in negative effects for community food security and rural sustainability and that these consequences should be accounted for when developing food policy.     

Understanding the Scope of Farmer Perceptions of Risk: Considering Farmer Opinions on the Use of Genetically Modified (GM) Crops as a Stakeholder Voice in Policy

In the beginning, policy debates between critics and advocates of genetically modified (GM) crops focused on scientifically determined risks. Ten years later, the argument between environmentalists or consumers and regulators or industry has changed into a discussion about the implementation of more democratic policymaking about GM farming. A notable omission from the political debate about food biotechnology in the United States, however, is the opinion of farmers who cultivate the GM crops. Policymakers should value practical knowledge based on experiences from farmers, not only scientific industry reports or consumer product opinions. This project uses in-depth interviews to create an original mail survey that uses the practical discourse of farmers in order to explore the relationship of farmer attitudes and GM agriculture. Although national research indicates that larger yields are the most common reason for GM adoption, qualitative information suggest that the potential of GM crops to increase revenue per acre does not truly reflect all the concerns of modern farmers. For example, farmers who use GM seeds indicate that they constantly question the social impacts of their agricultural practices. As such, GM policies should be restructured as a political rationalization of both economic modeling and political theory because this research suggests that farmers’ business decisions are utility calucations that consider economics without ignoring environmental and political contexts. Farmers’ concerns about non-economic risks suggest that they need more information about GM crops and that governmental policies should respond to their interests, as they are more democratic or pluralistic than industry or consumer arguments.     

“Conflict over Risks in Food Production: A Challenge for Democracy”

When it comes to conflict over risk management priorities in food production, a number of observers, including myself, have called for some sort of public deliberation as a means of resolving the moral disagreements underlying such conflicts. This paper asks how, precisely, such deliberation might be facilitated. It is shown that representative democracy and the liberal regulation that most Western democracies adhere to place important constraints on public deliberation. The challenge is to find forums for public deliberation that can operate within these constraints while still making a constructive contribution.     

The livestock revolution, food safety, and small-scale farmers: why they matter to us all

Global consumption, production, and trade of livestock products have increased rapidly in the last two decades and are expected to continue. At the same time, safety concerns regarding human and animal disease associated with livestock products are increasing. Efforts to increase public health safety standards aimed at legitimately reducing the risks of human and animal disease have focused internationally on standards to regulate the movement of livestock products. There is concern, though, that measures to regulate these standards internationally, such as the WTO SPS measures that in part aim to open international markets, may marginalize small-scale poor producers. The cycle of poverty they are trying to escape through livestock production may, in fact, widen, leading to increased global poverty, malnutrition, and disease. Developing and developed nations alike should be concerned with public and private efforts to address appropriate food safety policies to reduce the likelihood of this effect. Analysis of the impact on small-scale livestock farmers is needed, as well as solutions that consider joint public and private sector initiatives. Costly farm to table tracking systems are not an option, but locally orchestrated vertically integrated systems may have merit in reducing food safety risks and in providing small-scale farmers with increased access to markets, locally and internationally. Increased scientific and technical capacity, and training of WTO officials from developing nations is also needed.     

Genetically Modified (GM) Crops: Precautionary Science and Conflicts of Interests

Risk governance of GM plants and GMfood products is presently subject to heatedscientific and public controversies. Scientistsand representatives of the biotechnologyindustry have dominated debates concerningsafety issues. The public is suspicious withregard to the motives of scientists, companies,and political institutions involved. Thedilemmas posed are nested, embracing valuequestions, scientific uncertainty, andcontextual issues. The obvious lack of data andinsufficient information concerning ecologicaleffects call for application of thePrecautionary Principle (PP). There are,however, divergent opinions among scientistsabout the relevance of putative hazards,definition of potential ``adverse effects,' andwhether actions should be taken to preventharm. The reliance on the concept ofsubstantial equivalence in safety evaluation ofGM food is equally controversial. Consequently,value assumptions embedded in a scientificframework may be a barrier for employment ofthe PP. One of our major conclusions is thatprecautionary GMP usage requires riskassessment criteria yet undeveloped, as well asbroader and more long-term conceptions of risk,uncertainty, and ignorance. Conflicts ofinterest and public participation are otherissues that need to be taken intoconsideration. GMP governance regimes that arejustifiable from a precautionary and ethicalpoint of view must transcend traditionalscientific boundaries to include alternativescientific perspectives as well as publicinvolvement.     

Risk of public disclosure in environmental farm plan programs: Characteristics and mitigating legal and policy strategies

Although various studies have shown that farmers believe there is the need for a producer-led initiative to address the environmental problems from agriculture, farmers in several Canadian provinces have been reluctant to widely participate in Environmental Farm Plan (EFP) programs. Few studies have examined the key issues associated with adopting EFP programs based on farmers’, as opposed to policy makers’, perspectives on why producers are reluctant to participate in the program. A study adapting Van Raaij’s (1981) conceptual model of the decision-making environment of the firm, and prospect theory on value functions associated with the gains and losses from risky choices can be used to characterize how farmers perceive potential risks in environmental farm planning. This framework can be used to assert that farmers are concerned about risks of public disclosure of potentially incriminating environmental information from farms because the EFP program requirements for identification and extensive documentation of farm information is perceived by farmers as facilitating the accessibility of environmental information to the public, and public investigative efforts. Although the EFP program does not explicitly generate information about the environmental conditions of a farm nor the disclosure of such information to the public, it creates the possibility of generating and divulging potentially incriminating information that the farmer may want to treat as confidential. Yet, alone, these risks of public disclosure concerns should not prevent farmers from participating in the EFP. Awareness of and participation in environmental farm planning can be increased if farmers and policy makers understand what the risks are, and how they arise. Aspects of the EFP process that have the potential to generate risk of public disclosure concerns relate to farm reviews, documentation and record keeping, and corrective action plans. There are legal and policy instruments that can offer various forms of protection and help minimize such risks, and these need to be assessed.