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The private governance of food: equitable exchange or bizarre bazaar?

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Abstract

In recent years, we have witnessed three parallel and intertwined trends: First, food retail and processing firms have embraced private standards, usually with some form of third party certification employed to verify adherence to those standards. Second, firms have increasingly aligned themselves with, as opposed to fighting off, environmental, fair trade, and other NGOs. Third, firms have embraced supply chain management as a strategy for increasing profits and market share. Together, these trends are part and parcel of the neoliberal blurring of the older liberal distinction between state and civil society. In this paper I ask what the implications of these changes are from the vantage point of the three major approaches to ethics: consequentialism, virtue theory, and rights theory. What are the consequences of these changes for food safety, for suppliers, for consumers? What virtues (e.g., trust, fairness) are these changes likely to embrace and what vices may accompany them? Whose rights will be furthered or curtailed by these changes?

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Notes

  1. CIES started as the Comité International d’Entreprises à Succursales in 1953. In recent years, the full name was dropped; it is now known only by its acronym.

  2. Hayek played a particularly important role as the founder of the key neoliberal organization, the Mont Pelerin Society (2006). Curiously, it appears that the major proponents of neoliberalism did not foresee the rise of private governance institutions, including standards, certifications, and accreditations.

  3. Thompson (1963, 1971) noted some years ago that pre-modern markets developed in the context of a moral economy, i.e., a means for grappling with issues of distributive justice. The creation of capitalist markets involved a long struggle to eliminate these distributive mechanisms.

  4. Chile has built its entire fruit industry on this counterseasonal production.

  5. Beekman (2004) argues that humans may also be trusted in this way, where trust is viewed as consistent—but not necessarily desirable—behavior.

  6. For insight into the rise of neoliberalism, see Foucault 2008. For a clear and succinct early statement of neoliberal premises, see Simons 1948 [1934].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Food and Agricultural Standards, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, 48824, USA

    Lawrence Busch

  2. Centre for Economic and Social Aspects of Genomics, Lancaster University, Lancaster, LA1 4YD, UK

    Lawrence Busch

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Busch, L. The private governance of food: equitable exchange or bizarre bazaar?. Agric Hum Values 28, 345–352 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-009-9210-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-009-9210-0

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