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Transcript15 lines
- [00:00]
A
Welcome to the car seat. Today we are talking with Christine Parker from Monash University. In particular, we're going to talk about food labeling and consumer choice. Christine, of course, has done much wider work also on compliance and enforcement literature. So, Christine, you're working on food labeling in a particular area, so can you just briefly say about what your research is about?
- [00:23]
B
Yes. So we're looking at animal welfare labeling in food, but it's really a case study of food labeling because the basic idea of the research is that the food label itself has become a kind of a democratic space or a potential space for democratic engagement with the food system. So what myself and my collaborators are trying to do is to evaluate the how consumers, civil society and industry and regulators can use the food label to democratically govern the food system or not, as the case may be.
- [01:12]
A
And you're in particular looking at eggs?
- [01:15]
B
Eggs, yes.
- [01:16]
A
I mean, what brought you to looking at the egg area, the battery hens and the free ranging eggs and so on?
- [01:26]
B
Well, I was looking for something that people felt very strongly about and where they want to change the system. So what's happened in Australia is there's been a big campaign, as in lots of other countries, to ban battery cages because it's considered one of the coolest and most industrialised practices of factory farming of animals. So people feel very strongly about it. But the Australian government decided not to ban battery cages in 2000. And when they decided not to do that, that's when the animal welfare advocacy organization started to say to consumers, well, you should choose to buy free range eggs instead so that you can sort of change the system by voting with your shopping dollar. So since then there's been this huge expansion in the free range egg market. It's about 40% of the retail market now. And as the market has expanded, so has the conflict over what free range actually means. So now what we're seeing is that animal welfare advocates, consumer advocates, consumers, alternative farmers, they're all fighting over what should free range mean and what should be the standards behind that. Yeah, and so that ends up coming out on the label. They're sort of saying, well, we need to label this properly and we need to define what the standards are.
- [03:13]
A
I mean, your research shows that every supermarket has about basically its own label and every range has its own label and nobody knows. Well, they sometimes say what the label is and so on. Does that Partly. I mean, would you say the label itself, does it constrain the discourse on how many chicken per square meter or hectare it is? I mean, could One say, is that a reduction of the debate in how one should decently or humanely treat chickens?
- [03:42]
B
Yes. So what I've been trying to do is to show what's happened with these labels over time as this debate has gone on. So what we've seen is that as people have argued about what free range should mean, the labels have actually changed. So the supermarkets have stepped in and said we should show what the stock stocking density outside is. So that's what you were just talking about. So they're putting a stocking density on the label. But what my research has suggested is that that has sort of simplified the debate so it's narrowed down to this one issue of stocking density, which is something that consumers can understand and they can put a little thing on the label that sort of has a little chicken in a square that kind of says, okay, if it's 10,000 hens per hectare, that's one chicken per metre. And they sort of make it look like you can see what that means. Now that's actually completely inadequate. Even the sort of basic standard, government standard, but it's voluntary, is 1500 hens per hectare. So 10,000 is many more than that. But also that's only one issue. It's just a kind of an indicator. There are many other issues, such as debeaking of the hens, what they're fed, how they're managed, how often they get to go outside, what the range is like outside and so on. So we sort of have a huge debate which has become a big public issue, but it's also a narrow debate in a way because it's boiled down to one, one issue.
- [05:42]
A
What can regulators do in such a self certification sort of system, in either steering the discourse or are regulators happy that they've dealt with this issue in some form and now it's sort of, well, possibly in the long grass somewhere where the debate can simmer away, but they're out of it.
- [06:03]
B
Well, what's happening in Australia is this is an ongoing issue, so somebody has to do something. And the animal welfare regulators have said time and again that they're not going to do anything about this issue or they're very slowly revising the standards, but they're voluntary standards anyway. So it was when consumer advocacy organisations got involved as well and some Green MPs and they said, okay, well the animal welfare welfare discourse isn't solving this problem, so we'll shift it to the consumer protection discourse. And so they've managed to persuade the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which is our big consumer protection regulator to take enforcement action against some of these producers for misleading and deceptive conduct. Because the eggs that they label free range come from these large shed based systems. So it's shifted to a consumer protection issue rather than an animal welfare issue and narrowed down to this question of stocking density, which is something that sort of consumers can understand and get their minds around. So that's good because the consumer protection regulator has been quite effective and also has quite a good understanding of the issues. So they've managed to get, they've been successful in running these cases where they say, well, intense industrial free range, where the hens are all stuffed in a barn and don't have much opportunity to go outside, that shouldn't be called free range. So they've got those precedents established. But the problem is now that they don't really have an alternative standard that can actually provide guidance to the producers about what they should do to produce free range. And that's the situation we're stuck with now that everybody's got to figure out what to do about it. So they're talking about a consumer code that sets out a definition of free range. But the question from my research is, well, can that, can a consumer protection oriented code that's orchestrated by the consumer protection regulator, can it actually adequately define free range in a way that addresses the full range of animal welfare issues and also environmental issues with factory farming?
- [08:59]
A
One could say there might be two ideas about it. One is one wants to deal with, come up with a standard and then please as many as possible. And then some people will never be happy and some hens will also not be happy, I suspect. But at the same time, you might say even the debate about a standard problematizes and makes maybe certain behaviors unacceptable and drags up certain kind of conduct. So I mean, is that both effects, would you say, or just one outweighs the other?
- [09:30]
B
I mean, it seems to me that the debate that we've had, and I've been watching what's happening in the market and going and looking at the labeling every year for the last few years. So it has had an effect on slightly improving the standards, very slightly. So the stocking density has improved. So yes, it can stock slowly drag up the basic business standard. But on the other hand that doesn't, I don't think that's enough on its own from the evidence that I see. So it's really only going to, this is only going to be a productive process if what it does is shine a light on the fact that really we need to improve the basic regulations so the public interest oriented minimum standards for animal welfare. And I think that actually this debate has been so obvious and clear that and confused consumers and everybody so much that it is in a way becoming obvious that something more has to be done than just a label. So I think there's an opportunity at the moment. So it's interesting that something that starts as a debate about what is meant by a label becomes so tricky and so many voices end up joining the debate that it starts to become obvious that some other things need to change in the system of regulation. But we're yet to see whether the change actually happens or whether interest just moves on to some other issue and we forget about it.
- [11:22]
A
One final question. I mean you've done many sectors in your life and you know, so to some extent a. How does food, how special is food? When one talks about labels and debates about labels and what is sort of a value one wants to achieve? And what in general would you therefore say when one thinks about labels and fair treatment either of animals or procedures of food production or completely labor standards, what sort of would you say is a great grand advice you would offer to these labels or labeling schemes in order to drag up standards and such like?
- [12:00]
B
Well, I think just to say I think food is a little bit special because everybody eats food and our sort of personal identities are really tied up with the food we eat. So I think there's a lot of opportunity in food because people, consumers really do want to put their values and their identity onto food. So I think with food there's more opportunity to put more on the label than perhaps with some of the other products. But what's my advice? Well, I think that with all of these issues, the most important thing is that the civil society advocates need to be making things an issue, so making claims on labels an issue, so. So that consumers see that, but then using that pressure to actually change the regulatory standards. The debate about the label should just be a step on the way to changing the regulatory system that highlights an issue. It shouldn't be about a logo ending up on the label being the be all and end all.
- [13:30]
A
Christine, thank you very, very much.