My own conflicted reactions to discussions of “pink slime” – the processed beef product that is at the center of considerable controversy – illustrate the complicated economics of modern food and its processing.
I can’t help it; the “yuk factor” is familiar for me. I am a farm kid, but I always have hated to watch the evisceration or bleeding of any animal, even fish or fowl, much less do it myself.
And two of the most difficult experiences I ever had while working in international development projects involved having to eat repugnant foods. Once, when I already was nauseous from altitude sickness at 14,400 feet in the Peruvian Andes, I had to choke down cau cau – a mixture of potatoes and sheep tripe – to avoid offending the Indian woman who was our hostess. Another time, in a fancy restaurant in Sofia, Bulgaria, I had to express pleasure in the breaded calf brains that a local counterpart loved.
At the same, it pains me to waste food to an extent that probably rises to the obsessive-compulsive disorder scale. So I instinctively support making use of a food product that is nutritious and safe.
Moreover, a cousin who works in the meat industry recently visited the Sioux City, Iowa, plant of BPI, one of the makers of the product in question, and reported that it was one of the cleanest, most state-of-the art and well-managed meat processing plants he had ever been in.
Finally, the rational part of me knows that nearly all of us eat foods that we might find repugnant if we only knew all the processing details. People who are outraged that “pink slime” is on the market probably have eaten a piece of bologna or a hot dog made with processes or ingredients they would find even more distasteful.
Some furor has focused on the use of ammonia to kill bacteria in this particular processed meat. But the use of caustic chemicals in food processing is very broad. If you feel threatened by it, you better not eat a black olive or maraschino cherry.
So where is the economics in all of this?
Start with the consumer side. Resources are scarce and people historically were willing to eat nearly anything that was nutritious and inexpensive. So, only a few generations back, nearly all of our ancestors willingly ate many things that we might find distasteful today. For example, for hundreds of years, sausages have contained sundry parts of animals we would not eat in their original state.
The inclusion did not inherently result from dishonesty on the butcher’s part. He was only doing what peasants long had done with their own livestock. From there, it simply was a process eloquently described by Adam Smith of a business person advancing his own well-being by producing goods that consumers found to be good value for money.
Yes, tastes change, and some squeamish people like me may prefer to wolf down our McRibs without knowing exactly what is in them. Call us hypocrites. But hundreds of millions of meat-eaters prefer to have someone else do their butchering.
Recognize also that these tastes are culturally determined. In the U.S. most people prefer to be insulated from gruesome details. But, in Rome, I have seen well-do-do, educated people queuing up to buy fresh calves’ heads, with the brains, eyes and tongues still included.
From the producer side, recognize that this food product is only a recent one among thousands developed over millennia. The producers perfected a way to transform resources into a more socially valuable product than before, as human food rather than feed for animals or an industrial byproduct. To the extent that this food product really is nutritious and safe, this is a laudable thing.
But tastes are inexplicable. In a market economy, consumer preferences ultimately dominate. Moreover, economists are always in favor of consumers having as much information as possible about all aspects of the products they buy. This promotes economic efficiency. So if the yuk factor is large when consumers are well-informed, this product won’t succeed as human food even if food scientists declare it safe. To the extent that maximizing human happiness includes emotional factors like repugnance, this outcome may also be an economic optimum.
In the meantime, I sure wish McDonalds was selling McRibs right now. And a sundae topped with a beautiful red maraschino cherry would be a great dessert!
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