Recognizing the ethical complexity of food policies and the role of the food industry.

Abstract

Restrictive food policies are often contentious and controversial. Supporters of these policies view them as imperative for achieving public health aims while some opponents view them as overly paternalistic, infringing on consumer choice and potentially inequitable. As a consequence, their ethical status and permissibility are both contested and of importance in decision-making for policy. Traditional ethical analysis of these interventions has examined the ethical implications of the policies according to a direct, linear view of the relationships between government and consumer and the impact of government policy on the consumer. However, this approach to ethical analysis fails to take into account the role of the food industry as the subjects of the policies and intermediaries between government and consumers in the implementation and effectiveness of the policies. The actions of the food industry in response to a policy substantially determine how the policy translates to changes in the food supply and thus, the effect of the policy on consumers. This has significant implications for the ethical status of the policy. As a result, this article calls for complicating the common ethical approach to restrictive food policies by adopting a framing that recognizes the role of the food industry in the implementation of these policies. We then discuss three implications this framing has for ethical analysis: first that ethical analysis must be more nuanced and recognize the potentially complex outcomes of a policy, second that it must be dynamic and ongoing and third that underlying assumptions about policies' effects on choice, effectiveness and equity need to be reconsidered.