The Politics of Food Labeling and Certification - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 634

financial safety net. In light of the fact that the U.S. government has not banned the use
of growth hormones and chemical fertilizers in conventional agriculture, Organic stan-
dards provide consumers with produce from certified farms free of these inputs, and
decrease cropland, farm worker, and animal exposure to toxins. By this account, private
certification of food coexists as a helpful supplement to state regulation.
Freeman's argument serves as a rejoinder: “ . . . to the extent that consumers care about
the existence of substandard conditions per se, regardless of whether they buy the goods
so produced, legal enactment has an advantage” (Freeman 1994, p. 87). This points to
a crucial difference between state-mandated regulation and regulation provided by
market-based actors: Legal regulation at least purports to be universal to an entire set
of citizens. The voluntary nature of private certification schemes means that consum-
ers' demand for ethically produced food—and, therefore, the regulatory standards that
go along with it—will reach only some producers. This should raise concerns about the
equity and distribution of labor and environmental standards. Some but not all farmers
will have access to financial safety nets. Only ecosystems in select areas will be protected.
Consumers can buy organic food and avoid ingesting trace amounts of pesticides and
hormones, but only those who can afford to pay for it.
Of course, it would be naïve to argue that the universalistic nature of government
regulation translates into equitable distribution in any scenario. But in the case of legal
regulation, laws and policies are supposed to apply to all citizens at least de jure , provid-
ing citizens with a formal entitlement to use as a basis for making demands on the state.
In a market-based, voluntary version of a regulatory system, those outside the system
have no recourse.
This lack of universalism in private regulatory systems does not necessarily present
a fundamental difficulty as long as these systems truly work as a complement to legal
regulation; in this case, they do not make things worse. But if private regulatory sys-
tems compete with or crowd out the role of universal state-mandated standards, there is
cause for concern. If citizens, frustrated by the absence of functioning state regulation,
become habituated to the idea of the private sector as the customary source of regula-
tion, they may begin to shift their expectations toward private providers, introducing a
risk that norms of state provision will begin to erode in the absence of citizen pressure.
This could have long-term consequences for the distribution of regulation across the
population.
Conclusion
Does ethically labeled food represent the answer to poor labor conditions for farmers,
degradation of farmland ecosystems, and health risks posed by chemical agents in food?
The evidence reviewed in this chapter suggests that it is part, but not all, of the answer.
Critics of these labeling schemes give us several important reasons to believe that
private labeling of food does not represent a stand-alone answer. Demand for these