In this Q&A, Ralph Early, food scientist and food ethicist, Trustee and Council Member of the UK’s Food Ethics Council and former Professor of Food Industry and Head of the Food Department at Harper Adams University, answers key questions on the role of trust in the food system.
Trust and honesty are fundamental in any relationship, but how do they specifically apply to the relationship between governments, citizens, and food producers?
Trust and honesty are indispensable for maintaining democratic governance and healthy societal functions. In the context of food regulation, honesty ensures that citizens can trust that their food is safe. There can be no moral justification for producing food which causes harm to those who eat it and certainly, there is a societal expectation that food will be safe.
When honesty falters, trust erodes. This trust is not just essential for food producers and retailers, who must demonstrate their reliability to consumers, but also for governments. Take for instance the adoption of new food-related technologies. When new technologies e.g. cell-based meat or genetically modified crops are brought to commercialisation, they typically require regulatory approval. It is in this regulatory process that the moral principles and ethical norms of governments are – or should be – rigorously tested. Trust in regulatory processes and their outcomes is predicated on certain variables: not least of these being the scientific integrity of regulatory processes, their transparency, often regarding e.g. food safety and environmental harms, but also the political and societal conceptions of the meaning of democratically informed consent.
How should societal norms and moral values shape the way we approach environmental and food system issues?
The norms of honesty, integrity, responsibility, accountability, compassion, empathy, loyalty, fairness, justice and respect for others, ought to be underpinning of all democratic societies. They should inform how we interact with the environment and regulate food systems. These norms remind us that we have a responsibility not just to ourselves but to future generations and the broader ecosystem. For example, current industrial practices that lead to deforestation for commodities like palm oil illustrate a disregard for these values. Such practices result in environmental degradation and a loss of biodiversity. Integrating moral values into food regulation helps guide and moderate human conduct itself and exercise our duty of care for nature.
Can you explain how the concept of human moral superiority influences food and agricultural practices, and what challenges it presents?
Human beings have long assigned to themselves moral superiority and a right to exist which trumps all other species. In doing so, they assume the moral right to dominate nature. This belief is most evident in those with significant political and economic power, who see their rights to exploit natural resources as virtually limitless.
When viewed through an ethical lens and understood as a matter of enlightened self-interest, human beings as part of nature ought to act fully from the concept of a duty of care towards nature. However, the focus on political and economic imperatives can make what is morally right secondary to what is legally and commercially expedient. Legal rights all too easily override moral rights when it comes to the exploitation of nature’s bounty. This can mean for instance that corporate CEOs and executives are granted as an expression of political and economic power, authority to make decisions which outweigh even the moral right of a species evolved over millions of years to continue to exist.
If legal rights can conveniently override what is morally right, this raises questions about where we stand when it comes to our moral obligations to preserve the planet for future generations, as well as to nature more broadly.
You mentioned that industrial agriculture has caused significant damage over the years. Are there ways to shift towards more ethical and sustainable practices?
Absolutely. We need to produce food in a way that respects societal norms and moral values for the benefit of both people and the natural world. Different approaches are being explored which encompass such objectives as the restoration of biodiversity, environmental sustainability and intergenerational moral obligations, such as organic farming and regenerative agriculture.
There is also a push for high-tech solutions, such as gene-edited crops, which proponents claim can help feed the world sustainably. But such technological solutions highlight concerns with integrity and trust between citizens and government, as many perceive such solutions to be little more than lucrative corporate technofixes for problems caused by industrial agriculture in the first place, when more traditional methods such as regenerative agriculture offer greater ecological sensitivity and sustainability.
When it comes to new food technologies like gene-editing, what ethical concerns and challenges do regulators face?
The regulation of new technologies, such as gene-editing, presents significant ethical challenges. While these technologies offer potential benefits – like increasing yields or enhancing nutritional qualities – they come with risks. Opponents warn against harms to human health through the consumption of gene-edited foodstuffs and harms to natural biodiversity and ecosystems through the release of designer-genomes into the wild.
Stealing Donald Rumsfeld’s well-worn phrase, it seems that we are faced with a truth that gene-editing as a developing technology presents known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns. It is however to the points of known unknowns and unknown unknowns that ethical concerns about honesty and trust in the regulation of food and agriculture are most powerfully expressed.
Take for instance a question of known unknowns which concerned the development of genetically modified (GM) crops around three decades ago. In 1996 glyphosate-resistant soybeans were approved for use in the USA. Objective knowledge of evolutionary genetics raised the possibility – a known unknown – that glyphosate-resistant weeds might mutate and negate the original justification for GM crops, i.e. avoidance of multiple herbicide applications in crop production as a form of environmental protection. But glyphosate-resistant weeds happened and some crops e.g. soybean have now been further genetically engineered to resist the multiple herbicides needed to control weeds.
The precautionary principle is often cited as a guideline for regulating new technologies. What role does it play, and why is it important?
There is a need for caution in the regulation of emerging technologies that pose potential risks. From a moral perspective, caution should explicitly be understood as an expression of our duty of care for the natural world and a binding moral obligation towards nature. This caution is embodied in the Precautionary Principle, which establishes a common-sense ground for the governance and regulation of new technologies.
The principle advocates for caution and comprehensive risk assessment before widespread adoption when scientific understanding is incomplete. Some argue that an excess of caution could stifle innovation. Indeed, it would be morally wrong to offer barriers to research and the accumulation of new knowledge simply because a given science or technology feels uncomfortable. However, given the nature of human nature, it is credible that caution in the form of the Precautionary Principle can best and most broadly serve both society’s and nature’s needs. Ultimately, caution in protection of the common good – of which nature is a critical part – is necessary to the development of trust between citizens and government in matters of regulation and new technologies.