Keywords

Introduction

The global and industrialized food system has enabled the production and distribution of cheaper, longer-lasting and more diverse food items. We can enjoy tropical fruits in winter, purchase whole chickens for the same price as a cup of coffee and eat fresh bread long after it has been baked. Once celebrated as the benevolent results of food science, the ingenuity of farmers and sophisticated global logistics, these cheap foods are increasingly dismissed as the tainted fruits of Big Food—the culinary version of Big Pharma, Big Tobacco and Big Oil.

Activists and scholars have pointed to unethical practices in global food production since at least the sugar boycotts of the eighteenth century. Over the past 30 years, food activists and scholars have renewed efforts to draw attention to the negative effects of the global food system on the environment, farm workers, animal welfare and human health. Documentary films and books on the exploits of Big Food have become a profitable sub-genre of the entertainment industry and propelled the issues and their authors to the spotlight. Books by Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser and Marion Nestle, as well as associated feature films such as Fast Food Nation (2006), Food, Inc. (2008), Farmageddon (2011), Fed Up (2014) and Seaspiracy (2021), have popularized concerns about the negative effects of the global food system. In addition, awareness campaigns and labelling schemes attempt to bring the ethical and political realities of food to consumer attention at the purchase point. Ethical labelling such as “Fair Trade” characterizes food choice as a matter not simply of taste or convenience but of ethical and political importance.

Underlying these campaigns, labels and films is the shared belief that consumers have been kept ignorant of the truth by multinational food corporations and neoliberal governments; if consumers are enlightened, they will use their collective purchasing power to transform, or at least alter, industry activities. The basic idea is that by knowing what is in our food and how it was cultivated, harvested, produced and distributed, we will reject unethical food corporations and buy from ethical producers, thereby disrupting unjust practices. Belief in the power of truth to awaken the slumbering consumer giant was evoked in mid-1990s anti-global capital movements. In the introduction to her landmark book, No Logo (2002), Naomi Klein outlines her hypothesis: “as more people discover the brand-name secrets of the global logo web, their outrage will fuel the next big political movement, a vast wave of opposition squarely targeting transnational corporations, particularly those with very high name-brand recognition” (Klein, 2002). According to Klein, when the veil is removed and people discover the “secrets” behind their consumer products, an outrage—or at least changed consumer behaviours—will be unleashed, transforming the global web of capital. This logic is echoed in calls for food labels to reveal the unethical production practices of Big Food (Wells, 2016).

There is a diverse literature revealing the limits of ethico-political consumption (Carrington et al., 2021). In this chapter, we briefly explore three: the transformation of citizens into consumers; the co-optation of consumer ethics by the market; and the dominance of consumer interests in determining what is ethically salient. We conclude by examining whether calls for alternative food systems can offer a disruption to the global food system or whether it is at risk of consumer co-optation.

Consumers Not Citizens

An initial criticism of ethical consumption is that citizens are transformed into consumers, reducing political action to consumption (Soper & Trentmann, 2008). Holding governments and companies accountable for unethical practices therefore becomes a matter of consumer choice rather than systemic change. Basing ethical and political action in consumer practices is a problem for at least two reasons. First, this approach is regressive in that it places a greater burden on the financially less well off to act ethically. Second, it is a thin and privatized approach to ethico-political action, ultimately serving to absolve one’s individual guilt while allowing injustices to continue.

The claim that this approach is regressive is quite straightforward. As Thomas Wells (2016) outlines in his argument for labels exposing animal cruelty, they would allow better but more expensive standards of animal welfare. This phenomenon is repeatedly seen in the market, where products purporting to be more ethical, just or environmentally sustainable are considerably more expensive than the standard product as they include the “real” costs of production. As such, to enact one’s ethical and political preferences requires a sufficient income, thereby making ethico-political consumption more achievable for the wealthy and less so for those on lower incomes. This scenario leaves some individuals feeling incapable of enacting their moral and political beliefs due to financial constraints, while others feel that they have fully discharged theirs. This criticism has been made by several scholars across a variety of disciplines (Carrington et al., 2021, p. 227).

The second claim, that consumption is a thin and privatized approach to ethical action, is less straightforward. The political thought of Hannah Arendt is useful for articulating the distinction between consumer and citizen (Arendt, 1998). For Arendt, citizens actively participate in collective deliberation about the values of the political community or polis. Citizens have duties, obligations and rights and are situated within a public political community recognized by political institutions. While citizenship is a problematic category in its exclusivity, and we do not wish to imply that meaningful political action is only performed within the parameters of citizenship, the consumer, by contrast, has a substantially narrowed set of duties, obligations and rights, often defined by private individual preferences (Arendt, 1977). For Arendt, the satisfaction of individual preferences is secondary to politics, and if it becomes primary, it has a corrosive effect on the public sphere and political action. Rather than participating in and helping shape a polis, the consumer is in the market seeking to fulfil their private interests. Therefore, focusing on the consumer restricts ethical and political action to the supermarket aisles and home pantry. While ethics as a consumer preference may be acceptable in some disputable cases—for instance, whether one chooses to eat animal products—in other cases, such as those involving slavery or contributing to ecological collapse, the ethical dilemma reaches beyond private consumer preference. Choices permitting slavery or practices that jeopardize the ecological integrity required for sustaining life rest on prior political questions about the nature and character of the political community and the possibility of its continuance. Consequently, these choices cannot be left to private consumer choice but require public political deliberation and action (Arendt, 1998, p. 7).

Consumer Co-optation

A second problem with ethico-political consumption is that the consumer response is susceptible to co-optation by the very corporations that are being protested against. Due to the vast array of products sold by transnational corporations, it is possible for corporations to maintain highly profitable but “unethical” products along with less profitable but “ethical” ones. For example, Pace Farm is one of the largest producers of cage eggs in Australia, yet it sells free-range eggs, too. It also owns other brands, such as Family Value, that are not obviously associated with Pace Farm.

The poverty of this situation can be more fully understood through Ivan Illich’s concept of “radical monopoly”. A monopoly is generally understood as one corporation having control over a market. Illich (1973) uses the example of Coca-Cola’s monopoly over the soft-drink market in Nicaragua: if a Nicaraguan wants a cold drink, their only options are Coke or water. These sorts of monopolies “restrict the choices open to the consumer” (Illich, 1973, p. 57). A radical monopoly, however, according to Illich, means “the dominance of the one type of product rather than the dominance of one brand” (Illich, 1973, p. 57). To use Illich’s example, in large cities such as Los Angeles, cars monopolize traffic and shape urban infrastructure such that other forms of transport are eliminated. It is that the dominance of the car “curtails the right to walk, not that more people drive Chevies than Fords, [that] constitutes radical monopoly” (Illich, 1973, p. 57).

In a similar way, large supermarkets exert a radical monopoly over distribution of and access to food. For example, it is almost impossible for the majority of Australians to avoid the supermarket. As such, consumer choice, ethical or otherwise, occurs within the context of a for-profit distribution system that effectively eliminates other possibilities of engaging with the harvesting, production and distribution of food. The potency of ethico-political consumption—the proverbial “voting with your wallet”—is captured by the very forces that actors are trying to resist. Even if ethical labels and awareness campaigns serve to disrupt corporate brands, they also trap individuals into responsibility for systemic and global issues, such as public health, global poverty, animal welfare or fair working conditions. This is not to say that the consumer is absolved but that the idea that more consumption will solve the problems of consumption is self-defeating.

Consumer Self-Interest

A third criticism is the way consumer interests dominate and set the terms of what is ethically salient. In 1905 Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle to highlight the hazardous working conditions of Chicago’s meatpacking industry. His US audience, however, was more horrified by the sanitary conditions, which resulted in the Pure Food and Drug Act 1906. This improved food sanitation for consumers but neglected the conditions for the workers (Kantor, 1976), which led Sinclair to quip, “I aimed for the public’s heart, and by accident hit it in the stomach”. Likewise today, much of the discussion surrounding the ethics of food focuses on consumer practices (Mayes, 2016).

It is at this point of tension between consumer and producer that Michel Foucault’s work on biopolitics can be useful. Foucault summarized the dual objective of biopolitics as to “foster life or disallow it to the point of death” (Foucault, 1998, p. 138). Those whose lives have been disallowed are placed outside of the population that is cared for. Under neoliberal approaches to governance, biopolitical strategies increasingly operate through the market and consumer choice. Ethical labels and political consumption are an obvious avenue through which the conduct and behaviours of individuals are made biopolitically salient. Strategies of labelling not only limit ethical and political action to consumption but allow the interests of consumers to set the terms and conditions of whose interests and what practices are considered ethically or politically problematic.

In a series of articles based on their research on the Californian strawberry industry, Julie Guthman and Sandy Brown have noted the biopolitical question of whose lives and interests matter in debates over the use of methyl iodide (Guthman & Brown, 2016a, 2016b, 2016c). They found that much of the debate around the use of this pesticide was framed in terms of consumers’ concern for their own health and the health of their families. This is despite the fact that the harmful effects of this pesticide would not affect consumers but would have serious consequences for farm workers. This is a perverse example of “biopolitical sorting” (Guthman & Brown, 2016a, p. 579). Not only was this a valuing of consumer interests over those of farm workers (many of whom were undocumented and thus had little political voice) but, in reality, consumers had no real interest in this issue unless they were showing solidarity with farm workers.

Alternative Consumption?

Consumer activism is partly limited by its reliance on linear and contained conceptualizations of food supply chains that obscure the broader complexes of actors and forces in play. In response, food activists and scholars have promoted an ethic of embracing local and alternative food systems that tries to adopt complex understandings of a food system shaped by a multiplicity of actors and power relations. Alternative food practices are an increasingly prominent solution to problems associated with the global food system, and it is hoped that they can produce an alternative consumer ethic outside market logics.

Alternative food systems are diverse; however, we conceptualize them as seeking to resist the hegemonic forces of globalized and commercialized food regimes. Different manifestations of alternative food can therefore focus on advancing more ecological, more socially just and healthier food systems. A specific example of this is community-supported agriculture (CSA), where there is an attempt to disrupt the conventional consumer–producer relationship.

CSAs operate as an alternative to globalized food systems by promoting direct producer–consumer interactions. Although there is no single CSA model, common to them all is the direct supply of produce from farmers to consumers through subscription arrangements. Generally, under these arrangements, consumers purchase a financial share in a CSA farm in return for a share of the projected harvest over the farm’s season. In line with this subscription scheme, CSAs avoid the term “consumer”, preferring to speak of “members” or “shareholders” and thus evoke a sense of producer–consumer solidarity. Therefore, while CSAs are diverse, they share the principle of risk-sharing. By opting into a CSA, members commit not only to receiving a share of produce but also to shouldering the risks of production. It is through these direct relationships that alternative food systems are strengthened and ethico-political consumption is enabled.

Despite the strong sense of solidarity achieved through risk-sharing, CSAs are ultimately shaped and limited by consumer interests. The benefits of CSAs for producers are often substantially different to those of consumers. While farmers see the financial benefits of CSAs as consisting in the opportunity to escape the volatile industrial food system, in addition to their “intangible” benefits of education and community-building, consumers are often driven to CSAs through individual desires in relation to taste and quality (Ostrom, 2007, p. 109). This creates an ethical bridge that threatens to destabilize the supposedly “mutual benefit” model of CSAs (Wilkes, 2019). The asymmetry in benefits and motivations leads to a troubled solidarity wherein consumer benefits override producer benefits and often results in exacerbating the challenges faced by farmers in maintaining CSA operations. The consumer self-interest is therefore replicated in alternative systems.

Research shows that the social compact forged between consumer and producer under a CSA model is often broken by the consumer. CSA research in North American and Australian contexts demonstrates significant issues with member attrition. CSA success is often dependent on the ability of a farmer to attract and maintain members. However, for many, a common challenge—and reason for CSA closures—is the inability to maintain long-term member commitment (Brown & Miller, 2008). Ostrom (2007, p. 110) characterizes this as “supermarket withdrawal”, suggesting that individuals withdraw from CSAs due to a dislike of the type and quantity of produce delivered. This further underscores the radical monopoly of the supermarket and demonstrates the very fickle reality of consumer solidarity, whereby individual desires override the broader collective goals of CSA practice.

This leads us to question the extent to which alternative consumption such as CSAs are in effect models of “mutual benefit”. Through CSAs, we see the repetition of risks to alternative food systems by overplaying the role of consumer ethics. Member attrition of CSAs proves that consumers can remain passive actors rather than active citizens engaged in ethico-political duties. With consumers prioritizing CSAs for individual benefits of taste, the consumer politics of CSAs place producers in the same position as conventional farmers, whose labour is “chronically undervalued” (Ostrom, 2007, p. 107). Thus, even in contexts where the power of the consumer is purportedly deflated, as is the goal of CSA schemes of mutuality, consumer-driven food politics perverts political action by wittingly or unwittingly overstating consumer interests at the centre of food politics.

While alternative practices have much to commend them, we contend they are open to similar criticisms outlined above. This is not to suggest that alternative food systems and practices are equivalent to the global capitalist system. Alternative food systems are important for reasons beyond the consumer. However, we need an approach to food ethics and politics that resists the persistent focus on consumer ethics as means of substantially disrupting food systems, whether global, local or alternative.

Conclusion

The COVID pandemic, floods and droughts associated with a changing climate and famines remind us that the frequency of food-related crises is likely to increase. The capacity to act and reshape our food systems is integral in our response. Our capacity to rethink food systems is unknown; however, we suggest that it will certainly take more than consumer purchasing power. The limits of ethico-political consumption outlined in this chapter demonstrate the need to decentre the consumer as an agent of change. There is little to suggest that framing ethico-political acts as a matter of consumer choice is the solution to holding food corporations and governments to account for their unethical practices. Instead, it becomes clear that such strategies are at risk of considerable co-optation, individualizing ethical action and overstating consumer interests.

Calls for alternative systems are similarly at risk of entanglements with ethico-political consumption. Perhaps alternative food systems provide a vision to disrupt global, industrial food systems. Alternative models of mutuality and community-building, as exemplified in CSAs, can actively disrupt the volatility and passivity of globalized food systems. However, if the consumer continues to be the central agent of change, all alternative models risk falling prey to the same troubles of conventional food ethics. Through producer–consumer relations in CSAs, the illusion of ethico-political consumption is unveiled; that individual choice is enough to lead to systemic disruption and solidarities beyond consumer concern.

There is a desperate need to move beyond a consumer ethics that relegates political action to the supermarket aisles. More research is needed to begin conceptualizing alternative food ethics for future food systems. For now, the current solution of ethico-political consumption falls far short of embracing a necessary and transformative ethic.