Consumers have control

OPINION: Adam Smith, the 18th century Scottish writer and author of The Wealth of Nations, which is often cited as providing the basis for modern economics, is credited with developing the concept of "the invisible hand" of the market where society as a whole benefited from people acting in their own interests.

In its most extreme version, this mysterious mechanism has been used to justify the "greed is good culture" and the extreme policies of neoliberal economics. And Mr Smith has often been blamed for the consequences, such as the recent global economic crisis.

What's often overlooked is that Adam Smith was actually a moral philosopher by trade. (Indeed, the invisible hand first appeared in a book called The Theory of Moral Sentiments).

Unchecked, unregulated and politically connected capitalism hasn't been rampant only in the economic markets though.

It has also become pervasive in the production of food across the globe.

The flaw in the model, as has been pointed out, is that the whole economics of modern agriculture is based on the idea that all the consumer wants is cheap goods and that science has the ability to endlessly deliver those goods while being able to control all the aspects of production, including some of the nasty side effects of intensive animal production. Hence the use of antibiotics and other drugs and chemicals in the production of our food.

And so we get battery hens, sow crates and "mad cow".

The recent controversy over the use of sow crates in New Zealand has come as a surprise to many people who thought that the issues Jamie Oliver highlighted about the industrial farming of animals didn't really occur in New Zealand.

But here is where it all comes back to economics and the alleged desire of the consumer to have the cheapest possible food.

The higher echelons of the pork industry seem willing to acknowledge that the use of sow crates is not acceptable, but at the same time seem unwilling to move at anything other than a glacial pace in phasing them out.

Only because of the consumer, of course, not the farmers' profitability.

And actually, if the farms are operating within current law as most seem to be doing that's not a problem either. After all the consumer has a choice, surely.

If products are clearly labelled then those who are prepared to pay a little more for more humanely produced meat can easily do that while those who find such production methods intolerable can lobby to have the system changed. That's the way it is supposed to work in a democratic society.

The flaw in the system is that recent governments have avoided making the hard decisions about food labelling, refusing to make it mandatory to put country of origin on labels, for example. So there is no requirement that producers have to make clear how a food was produced.

It can be difficult for the one thing that might force producers to address unacceptable production methods loss of sales due to consumer resistance to occur.

It will be interesting to see whether there is anything other than a short term impact on the sales of pork from the recent sow crate controversy or whether there are moves to speed up the phasing out of production methods involving intense use of the sow crates.

Only a strict set of transparent rules can really address the issue in the longer term.

- The Marlborough Express