What Government Has to Do With Food

My friend and pastor's recent post on a book about where our food
comes from made me think about my view of government's role in
society. It was government, after all, that created food-related
safety laws in the early 20th century in response to the grotesque
descriptions of meat-packing plants in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle,
and government that required McDonald's and other fast-food
restaurants to make nutritional data on their offerings available to
customers.

I'm sure there were far-sighted private companies that worked hard to
create safe meat-packing workplaces and publish dietary information
before these government interventions, but there was an insufficient
incentive for everyone to do. In other words, absent outside
intervention, there was a market failure: free enterprise would do
things that would benefit themselves a little (not have to put in the
extra expense of cleaning up their packing plants or disclosing
health-related numbers) but at a great cost to overall society (unsafe
food, rampant obesity). Government intervention, then, either by its
scale and/or power, can and does enact regulations that enforce those
small costs so that society can reap great gains.

What does this have to do with The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael
Pollan, the book my friend just read? Much of the food production
industry is now dominated by a few cutthroat multinationals that are
obligated by their ownership by shareholders to process and provide
food at maximum profit. Each could take small measures that would
slightly reduce those profits but safeguard other, potentially large
social gains, like humane treatment of animals, processing of food
that has minimal negative impact on the environment, and support of
small farms in developing countries that need an economic boost. But,
like the Prisoner's Dilemma, each player isn't interested in the
greater good, just their own, even if it means less for them in the
long run.

Now, I'll be the first to tell you there's nothing inherently wrong
about being big, about making a profit, or about squeezing the supply
chain to make an extra buck. I'd also be the last to tell you
government is good at manipulating the markets for societal gain. So
what I'm about to say is much, much easier said than done. But
somewhere in between government getting out of the way of business and
government taking over business is a place for government to exercise
the role it best plays: using its size and/or authority to compensate
for market failures like the ones described above. Let's support our
people in government and hold them accountable to performing that role
with economic precision, political savvy, and common decency.