Blog

Some recent writings

A few pieces I've put out in the last week or two:

1) In Defense of Frankenfoods.  Milken Institute Review.  An excerpt:

“While it is possible to be pro-biotechnology without being pro-Monsanto, such a nuanced position is difficult to maintain in the current atmosphere. It seems that many suffer from what might be called Monsanto Derangement Syndrome, buying into all sorts of conspiracy theories. Yet genetically engineered foods are no more synonymous with Monsanto than hamburgers are with McDonald’s. When anti-Monsanto became de facto anti-biotechnology, many left-leaning commentators chose to swim with the tide. Thus emerged a (justifiable) belief that many on the left were anti-science on the issue of biotechnology. In the words of journalist Keith Kloor (writing for Slate), opponents of genetically engineered food “are the climate skeptics of the left.” Although there is some truth to this observation, the political reality is more complex.”

2) Consumer Acceptance of Controversial New Food Technologies: Causes and Roots of Controversies with Jutta Roosen and Andrea Bieberstein in Annual Review of Resource Economics. An excerpt: 

“The dread/control framework may partly explain aversion to new food technologies, particularly in our modern society. In most developed countries, only a very small fraction of the population makes a living by farming. That many consumers today have little connection to and knowledge of modern production agriculture means that new practices adopted by farmers are likely to seem foreign, unknown, and—from the consumer’s perspective—uncontrollable (Campbell & Fitzgerald 2001, Gupta et al. 2011). It has been argued that many consumers have a “romantic” notion of farming (Thompson 1993) and that agricultural literacy is “too low” in the population (Pope 1990). Empirical research suggests that agricultural literacy is loweramong urban children than among rural children (Frick et al. 1995). Thus, when consumers become aware of a new technology—e.g., lean, fine-textured beef or Roundup Ready soybeans—it may be interpreted as a signal of dread and of unknown risk, which Slovic (1987) argues is most aversive and prone to
elicit public panic.”

3) New Tool (FooDS) Identifies Consumers' Views on Food Safety with Susan Murray in Choices.  An excerpt:

“Figure 4 plots the FooDS price expectations index for beef, pork, and chicken against the same-month price data from the BLS on ground chuck, all pork chops, and boneless chicken breasts. For the first two meats, the correlations—a statistical measure of association, with 1.00 being a perfect correlation—between price expectations and actual prices are 0.72 and 0.83, showing a high correspondence between consumer expectations and actual prices. The correlation for chicken, however, was only -0.26. This latter result likely arises because actual prices for beef and chicken have trended up over this time period while chicken prices have not. However, consumers do not differentiate much between meat categories in their price expectations; the correlations among price expectations for beef, pork, and chicken are all above 0.89.”



Food Demand Survey (FooDS) - October 2014

The October edition of the Food Demand Survey is now out (prior releases and other details can be found here).

Relative to last month, there were small declines in willingness-to-pay (WTP) for most meat products except pork chops, which increase 8%.

While consumers continue to expect higher meat prices, inflationary expectations are less than last month, though higher than a year ago. Planned buying for all meat products rose in October relative to September, with the largest uptick in planned purchases for chicken.

There was more change in the measured "consumer values" this month compared to prior months.  There was a slight decrease in perceived importance of price, nutrition, animal 
welfare and origin, and a slight increase in perceived importance of safety, appearance, and naturalness. 

Two new ad hoc questions were added this month.  

The first question asked: “Which of the following is true of the last package of bacon you purchased? (check all that apply)” .  Over 44% of participants stated the label on the package of bacon purchased contained “none of the above”.  About 9% said they bought organic bacon; 13% said they bought “hormone free” bacon.  

These statistics likely paint an overly optimistic picture in terms of the market share of organic and no added hormones/antibiotics.  First, added growth hormones are not allowed in pork production.  Second, our analysis of recent scanner data spanning a representative sample of grocery stores in the US puts the dollar market shares of organic, “antibiotic free”, and “natural” bacon at only 2.6%, 1.9%, and 0.9%, respectively.  In general, the results speak to the propensity for people to give socially desirable answers on certain types of survey questions such as this.

Second, we asked about "Meatless Monday."  “Meatless Monday” is an international campaign that encourages consumers to refrain from eating meat one day a week for the purported purpose of improving health and the environment.  Various media outlets have made claims about the growing popularity of the movement, but firm statistics on the matter are sparse.  Thus, we asked the question: “Which of the following best describes your knowledge and involvement with ’Meatless Monday’?”   Respondents could pick one (and only one) of four answers.  The majority (51.6%) of consumers have never heard of “Meatless Monday”.  Over 80% (51.6%+31%=82.6%) have never participated in “Meatless Monday.”  Only 8.4% of participants stated they regularly participate in “Meatless Monday”.  In a separate question, about 4.7% of consumers indicated that they were vegetarian or vegan, so that leaves only (8.4%-4.7%)=3.7% of the population who regularly participants in Meatless Monday who aren’t already vegetarian or vegan.  

Addendum:  I had a reader question whether it makes sense to subtract the % vegetarian/vegan from the regular participants of meatless Monday.  In particular, someone can be a vegetarian, eat meatless on Monday, and still not identify as not participating (they might not have heard about the campaign or don't care about the campaign per se).

Food Demand Survey (FooDS) - August 2014

The August 2014 edition of the Food Demand Survey (FooDS) is now out.

A few noteworthy highlights:

  • Willingness-to-pay (WTP) for meat products remains steady.  Beef and poultry WTPs are virtually unchanged from last month but are up relative to a year ago.
  • WTP for the two pork products (chops and ham) significantly rose in August relative to July.
  • For the first time since we've been doing Foods (over a year and a half), more people told us they plan to buy more beef in the coming weeks than said they plan to buy less beef.
  • Consumers continue to expect to see increasingly higher prices for beef in the coming weeks; inflationary expectations for chicken and pork remain similar to last month but are higher than a year ago.
  • More people are planning to eat out than was the case a year ago.
  • Concern for "pink slime" and for lean fine textured beef rose this month relative to July, although consumers did not report hearing more about these topics in the news.
  • The largest drops in concern this month were for mad cow, bird flu, and GMOs.

How should food policy issues be decided?

Not only is it the case that people are likely to differ in their opinions about the desirability of mandatory GMO labeling or soda taxes, but they are also likely to differ in how they think such issues should be decided.  

A while back, I ran across this paper by Gaskell and colleagues published in Science.  They sought to categorized citizens in terms of their attitudes about how technology should be governed by asking two questions relating to whether decisions about technology should be made by 1) experts vs. average Americans and 2) moral and ethical issues vs. scientific evidence on benefits/costs.  

In the latest edition of the Food Demand Survey (FooDS), I applied these questions to five food policy issues.  Unlike Gaskell's work I also allowed respondents to have different answers for different issues.  

The first question asked: “Decisions about food policy should be based mainly on the views and advice of experts OR decisions about food policy should be based mainly on the views of the average American.”  The second question asked: “Decisions about food policy should be based mainly on the moral and ethical issues involved OR decisions about food policy should be based mainly on the scientific evidence of risk and benefit.”  Then five food policy issues were listed in random order: labeling of genetically modified food, use of growth hormones, legality of selling raw, unpasteurized milk, use of the term "natural" on packaging, and the tax charged on sugar sodas.

Here's what we found.

More than 70% of respondents wanted policy decisions related to GMO labeling and use of growth hormones to be based on expert advice rather than the views of the average American. I find that result rather striking in light of the fact that opinion polls show large numbers of people saying they want GMO labeling.  Here, we see that a large majority thinks this sort of issue should NOT be decided by the views of the average American.  That would seem to imply that folks do not think GMO labeling should be settled by ballot initiative.  

In stark contrast to the other food policy issues, almost 70% wanted decisions about soda taxes to be based on the views of the average American rather than the "elites".  

Recall that we also asked about whether decisions should be based on morals and ethics or based on scientific evidence on risk and benefit.

For three issues, milk pasteurization, hormones, and GMO labeling, the majority thought decisions should be based on science.  There was a split on natural labeling.  For soda taxes, the majority thought moral issues should be the deciding factor.

As with the prior research, we used the answers to categorized people into one of four categories for each of the five food policy issues.  “Scientific elitists” wanted policy decisions made by experts on the basis of scientific evidence, “moral elitists” wanted policy decisions based made by experts on the basis of moral issues, “scientific populists” wanted the average American to make decisions on the basis of scientific evidence, and “moral populists” wanted the average American to make decisions on the basis of moral issues.

A plurality of respondents were "scientific elitists" for GMO labeling, use of growth hormones, and legality of selling raw milk.  The same was true for use of the term "natural" on labeling, but there was a larger share of "moral elitists" in regard to this issue than for others.  Finally, for soda taxes, "moral populists" described the largest share of respondents.

A natural question is whether these categories explain people's attitudes about the food policies.  Gaskell et al. showed that "scientific elitists" in regard to general technology were the majority citizen type in their surveys and this type had more favorable attitudes toward biotechnology and nanotechnology than other consumer types - particularly moral populists.

I find something similar here as well.  Take for example, the 4-category breakdown on GMO labeling.  I find that "scientific elitists" on GMO labeling express the lowest level of concern about eating GMOs (an average score of 3.06 on a 1 to 5 scale of concern), whereas "moral elitists" and "scientific populists" had scores of 3.41 and 3.43.  Moral populists averaged 3.34.  There also seems to be a political dimension to people's views about how these food policy issues should be decided.  For example, scientific elitists and scientific populists were slightly more conservative (about 3.05 on a 1 to 5 scale of liberal to conservative) than were those who focus more on moral/ethical issues (score of about 2.9 on the scale).  Those identifying with the Democratic party were more heavily represented in the "moral elitist" category than they were in other categories.