Food of the future will be (potentially more natural, healthier, fresher, and socially concerned!

[Guest guest]

Hi All, Food of the future will be (potentially more natural, healthier,

fresher, and socially concerned! sounds promising to me.

Cheers, Al.

Alan Pater, Ph.D.; Faculty of Medicine; Memorial University; St. 's, NL

A1B 3V6 Canada; Tel. No.: (709) 777-6488; Fax No.: (709) 777-7010; email:

apater@...

Nutr Today 2003 Mar-Apr;38(2):54-56

The Politicalization of Food Quality.

Tillotson JE.

In the past, quality was defined by a food's chemical, physical, and eating

qualities; the future definition of quality will expand to encompass a host of

social and political dimensions.

PMID: 12698054 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

Before returning to the academic world, Dr Tillotson worked in industry, holding

various research and development positions

in the food and chemical sectors.

Outline

Abstract

The Past Is No Longer Prologue

What Are the Driving Forces?

Food Quality in the Twenty-first Century

Bottom Line

REFERENCES

How will we define our food quality, say, in 5 to 10 years? What will we

want, or even

demand, in the future from food quality standards? 1 I don’t mean just the

quality of our

mealtime—the taste, flavor, or succulence of our food—but rather quality as

defined in

broader terms of our many new interests in and aspirations for the food we

buy and eat (eg,

health, environment).

As a result of strong new social trends—driven by public-interest groups

mobilizing concerned citizens—we are in a new era in

which food quality is becoming increasingly politicized. This ever-stronger

political trend is expanding the historically narrow scope of

government-sponsored standards, resulting in many new meanings for quality

standards. Standards are becoming the idiom defining

the characteristics of what our food of the future will be (potentially more

natural, healthier, fresher, and socially concerned!).

Make no mistake, if current political and social trends continue—in an era

that has been labeled the interest group society2

era—future food standards, both official and unofficial (consumer imposed),

will differ significantly from what we have known in the

past. Food quality standards will increasingly attempt to encompass new

social agendas.

Standards will encompass such issues as the long-term influence of food on

our health, the influence of food production on our

environment, the welfare of those producing the food, and several other

social issues. In the future these new standards, both official

and unofficial (eg, Fair Trade coffee), will profoundly influence our daily

diet, how we think of food, and the manner in which the food

industry does business.

Not only will food quality encompass the present necessary economic and

organoleptic parameters, but it will also become the

vehicle by which we attempt to solve many of our new and difficult social,

technical, economic and political concerns about our food

supply—health, the environment, acceptable technologies, and even social

justice. Margaret Visser certainly was right on target for

our new era when she wrote, “food is never just something to eat.”3

The Past Is No Longer Prologue

In the past, and even today, official government food-quality standards

have been narrow in scope, defined usually by the

physical, economic, or taste attributes of food. Attributes are selected

primarily to determine the immediate economic worth of food in

commerce—for example a US Department of Agriculture grade of beef, the size

and variety of a fruit or vegetable, the grade of bulk

grains, or the sweetness, acidity, or amount of pulp in fruit juices. Always

important. Yet, standards are becoming increasingly too

narrow for today’s ever-more aware, better informed, and food-concerned

American public.

Our traditional government standards have been based on the intrinsic

characteristics of a food or commodity, mainly satisfying the

desires of our senses and wallets, with characteristics that are often

readily apparent to the buyer on inspection or taste. Decades-old

quality standards, defined by close attention to what is routinely possible

within our established food supply chains, are frequently

codified into our government’s Code of Federal Regulations.

These standards have favored what agriculture and the food-processing

industries could readily, economically, and efficiently

achieve. Standards paid close attention to what could be delivered under

existing norms of agriculture and processing. Rigid

backward-looking standards, rather than flexible ones, which could reach and

motivate through the mechanism of our food supply

what can be achieved to improve society (healthier diets, improved

environment, acceptable labor conditions, fair trade).

Historically, standards have been conceived and developed more for the

convenience of the production sector than for the public.

These standards gave no attention to the ultimate influence of food on the

buyer’s health and well-being or on the environmental and

social conditions under which food is produced; such standards by today’s

consumer-oriented food world are hopelessly and

negatively one-sided, benefitting commercial interests.

Traditionally, food-quality standards have been assessed with exact

measurements or evaluation in the quality control laboratory

and not by social standards. Quality standards were arrived at mainly by a

consensus produced by “reasonable people” working

together with agreed-upon goals held in common on production-oriented

agriculture. In the past, food-quality standards development

was mainly a job for those in government and with business interests. The

public was involved only peripherally, if at all, in the

standards’ formulation. Some would say that this was a simpler, more

rational, more exclusive, and chummier time than today!

This food-quality standard setting approach no longer resonates with the

reality of today’s increasingly politically oriented world,

with its many more new players having new social agendas, people with

strongly held nontraditional beliefs and agendas concerning

our future food supply, and new players demanding to have their say and be a

party to any future food-standard setting process

(Greenpeace, Ethical Treatment of Animals, Action Aid, Environmental Defense,

Fair Trade USA, Center for Science in the Public

Interest, Center for Food Safety, Consumer Federation of America, Public

Citizen, Safe Tables Our Priority, Campaign to Label

Genetically Modified Foods).

As a result of these new political pressures and our “new consumers,” it is

likely that today and into the foreseeable future,

government and industry cannot and will not define food-quality standards as

in the past. Future standard setting will differ greatly,

be stormier, be more protracted, and encompass issues hitherto outside of the

classical definition of food quality (US Department of

Agriculture establishment of organic labeling, biotech food labeling,

trans-fatty acid labeling, allergen labeling).

In the 20th century, food quality entailed considering factors dealing with

the consumer and his or her direct use of the food in the

diet. Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, this relationship between

the consumer and his or her food has expanded, using the

mechanism of food-quality standards, both official and unofficial. It is

driven by the consumer opportunity to address individually the

broadest of new concerns and social issues by exercising the right of

purchase choice.

What Are the Driving Forces?

All these issues, plus many more, have the potential to be involved in the

public’s evolving definition of food quality—through

government standards, societal quasi-standards, labeling,

government-sanctioned technologies, good manufacturing practices, public

food and health policies, labor standards, and government funding of food and

agriculture initiatives and by consumer purchase

decisions. How do we explain this new politicalization of food quality?

Consumers’ traditional food worries—availability, costs, immediate safety,

and even preparation— have largely disappeared for

most of us in the industrial countries of the world. As a result, the public

has the option, and the luxury, to consider how their food

supply can be used to attain new goals: social, economic, and political. We

can expect that in our information-rich world of television

and the Web, consumers will increasingly exercise this option. Although the

public will be—as always—motivated by highly

organized resourceful well-funded public-interest groups and nongovernment

organizations (NGOs), who are often single-issue

minded, our 21st-century socially concerned consumers with their rapidly

changing definitions of what is acceptable in food will be

pivotal in defining this new era. Today, many consumers want changes in our

food system!

The irony in our present food security is that the great past successes of

the agriculture and food sectors in achieving our present

food abundance have further increased the challenges and the economic risks

for these sectors, due to the constantly expanding

definition of what the public will accept as food quality. Today, the

production, marketing, and development goals of traditional

agriculture and food sectors are on a collision course with many of these

newly arising issues (environmental quality, human health,

and social equity).

Driving these value conflicts over standards—between the traditional

agricultural production and the public-interest groups and an

increasingly socially demanding public—is a plethora of contentious highly

emotional public interests.

Consider the following issues, many of which will likely frame the public’s

definition of food quality in the future: Must agricultural

crops in the future be grown with sustainable agriculture? What is

sustainable agriculture? Should we question traditional trade

barriers and agricultural subsidies of the industrial nations (European

common market, Japan and rice, United States and sugar)? Are

such trade barriers and agricultural subsidies legitimate and humanely

correct? Do they increase poverty in the developing nations by

barring their agricultural exports to the developed nations? Are excluding

imports of GMOs by trade barriers justified? What is the

social acceptability of new technologies such as genetically modified crops,

animals, and fish?

Are certain foods in our diet a major cause of pandemic obesity? Is it

possible to define nutritional quality in the future as “to eat

well is to eat less”? Is the food-processing industry responsible for a

living wage for those who are migrant farm laborers? What are

the responsibilities of industry and farming for the health and welfare of

workers who supply our food? What responsibility does the

domestic food industry have for the labor conditions used to grow imported

agricultural crops? Should the food industry bear a

portion of the rising medical costs due to diet?

Should we have fat taxes, sugar taxes, and calories taxes? Should there be

limits to the freedom to market where health is involved?

What is the proper balance between First Amendment rights and barring false

advertising? What should be the balance between

allowable commercial speech and the government’s traditional role in public

protection? Are the public’s demands for new levels of

safety assurance and traceability of food from the soil to the mouth

necessary, attainable, and justified? Is the use of antibiotics,

growth hormones, and animal factories in agriculture safe and acceptable? The

list of controversial issues grows longer daily with

issues by which consumers may judge food quality in the future!

Food Quality in the Twenty-first Century

During most of 20th century, the agriculture and food-sector paradigm was

driven predominantly by the agricultural production

and food-marketing model. As we enter the 21st century, the interest-group

society proponents will increasingly challenge the old

standards and system, attempting to redefine the “rules of the game.”

Broadening of the criteria for food standards is not without virtue; it

reflects the desires of idealists to improve society and the

human condition. However, their larger more ambitious goals make the task of

agreeing on appropriate standards ever more

contentious and difficult. Today, potential or actual food-quality standards,

whether they concern food labeling,

government-sanctioned technologies, agricultural practices, safety, or any of

the other attributes that might possibly define quality,

constitute a vast battleground of differing ideologic beliefs and ideas

centering on food.

Increasingly, quality standards will be much broader and no longer based

solely on physical and economic dimensions. Standards

will be used by consumers, urged on and led to these views by powerful

opinion formers (consumer interest groups, nongovernment

organizations [NGOs], the press) to achieve answers to society’s new social,

technologic, economic and political concerns.

Bottom Line

One can hope that, as the public, public-interest groups, industry, and

the government sort through these new objectives in food

quality in the future, both those with great merit and otherwise, we do not

lose sight of, or unduly compromise, our current food

system, which supplies us with the world’s most reliable, lowest cost, and

relatively safe diet.

Food-quality standards are being used as idioms that may reflect a more

“natural,” “healthy,” “fresher,” and more socially

concerned food production.

REFERENCES

1. Presented at Canadian government meeting of Agricultural and Agri-Food

Canada representatives; September 18, 2002;

Guelph, Ontario. [Context Link]

2. Berry JM. The Interest Group Society. (3rd ed). Boston: -Wesley;

1997. [Context Link]

3. Visser M. Much Depends on Dinner: The Extraordinary History, Allure and

Obsessions, Perils and Taboos of an Ordinary

Meal. Grove Press; 1986. [Context Link]