The Role of Policy Academics in Guarding Failing Food Safety Regulation: The Anti-Aphid Hypothesis

0:00My name is Hamide Yasudan and the title of my focus is the role of policy academics in guarding pay-in-to-safety regulation. First, the content of my text. Why do I study ideology? Why is it important? Second, I apply evolutionary science to ideology of change. Why is it justified? The application of evolutionary science produces two hypotheses. I will explain them, and then I will test them later, and finally the conclusions. This is a question about the recent peanut butter scheme. This reads, business can regulate itself. Well, why do people always blame business? The top graph shows a federal food safety budget in the last decade.

0:50The bottom part shows, I reported the two positive cases during the same period. I've already presented it and the positive cases didn't really change. It means regulation is not working. Why don't people blame government? Why do they always blame business or the free market? This is my question. Why, how this pro-government regulation came into being? I said I applied evolutionary thinking to ideological change. Why is it justified? 150 years ago Charles Darwin published the original speeches.

1:36In one paragraph, in introduction to that book, he summarized his theory of evolution by natural selection. What he said is, well, there's variation among biological traits, and some of the biological traits are passed on to the next generation, they are predatory. And there's selection among them. Some biological traits have better chances for survival. As a logical conclusion, evolution must occur. Organisms with biological traits with better chances of survival will increase in number. But then how about ideology? Ideologies are composed of ideas, behaviors and institutions.

2:25There is a variation among them. These components are copied and learned and spread. And there is a lecture among them. Some ideas and behaviors are copied more than others. Therefore, as a logical conclusion, ideologies must evolve. Then what is expected of evolution? What will happen? Well, these pre-floating ideas and institutional behaviors will aggregate into co-adapted ideological complexes. Look at the colors, and then there's some color consistency. Well, similar things have happened in the biological world. All organisms are co-adapted gene complexes. All genes in my body help one another to increase their survival rates.

3:15Likewise, a policy proposal for wealth redistribution can be easily picked up by people who already believe in social equality. These ideas help each other. Also, that policy proposal can spread itself better if it is institutionalized into a regulation and a government agency. So they have a similar color, so ideology is a hotly contested concept. There are many definitions, but based on its genesis and evolution, we can redefine ideology simply.

4:00Ideology is a naturally evolved complex consisting of mutually assisting ideas, collective behaviors and social-political institutions. When we study evolution, we look at selective factors or selective environment, because selective factors decide the direction of evolution. There are two kinds of selective environment, psychological and socio-economic. I will focus on the socio-economic environment, let me explain the psychological environment first. Please imagine, numerous brains are forming a network. That's the psychological environment. And it is these human brains which pick up and store and spread ideological components.

4:51Ideological components such as ideas and behaviors with strong psychological appeal will be picked up and copied more than others. For example, an economic policy which exploits human insecurity about the future will be copied and spread. But the psychological environment doesn't function in a social vacuum. Social factors influence human brain initial exposure to ideas. Then the main part of my topic. I focus on government information supply as a dominant selective factor in the socioeconomic environment because there are three reasons. Well, first, pro-regulatory ideologies are so dominant now, so therefore we cannot ignore government agencies as the target of my study.

5:43Second, for government engaged in PR activities, they issue consumer warnings, Therefore, government interferes with the information we are exposed to. Third, the tax-funded nature of government activities makes them different from private sector players in society. Let me explain that further. Evolutionist thinking produces two hypotheses, and let me explain these hypotheses first and I will test them later. As I said, government agencies are funded with tax. It means they have secure resources. That makes them as a kind of nucleus, nucleus component in the ideological complex around which other ideas or institutional behaviors gather and grow.

6:42and pro-regulatory ideas are one of them. And then, because government doesn't have to adjust its information commodities according to ever-changing consumer preferences, so therefore, government can supply the same pro-government ideas consistently and persistently. In addition to that, we human beings, unfortunately, tend to believe what people around us are always saying. It's called human conformity bias. As a result, we will have a little bit of increased support for government agencies.

7:29That goes back to times. This is a cycle, and this is how government information supply grows over time. The second hypothesis and the title of my talk, a mutualism between bureaucrats and academics emerges, a mutualism is a mutually beneficial relationship. There are many examples in the biological world. People who are interested in insects or gardening might know the relationship between aphids and ants. Aphids are tiny insects which give honeydew a kind of sweet substance to ants, but they are defenseless and they are attacked by predators and eaten.

8:17Ants in return for honeydew protect aphids against their predators. These are things that will happen between bureaucrats and academics because bureaucrats give funding to academics and academics in return for the funding provide theoretical justification for agencies, mandates and budgets. This is the kind of cycle. In the process, new institutional ideological components such as academic societies, academic journals and research institutions, graduate schools are created and then they strengthen the ideological complex. These are two hypotheses. Let me test these two hypotheses.

9:05First hypothesis and the question is, how dominant government is over the information supply? Well, I chose Google News as our representative information tool, and I did a survey using food safety and policy, and total I get about 567 accessible articles, 180 articles actually relevant to the keywords were 59.9, and I read all of them and I assessed every institution's Contribution as news sources to the information pool. News sources are interviews and citations. This is the result. Big surprise.

9:50Government agencies dominate as information sources. They are provided more than 30% of the information. They're followed by food industry, journalists and authors, and consumer advocacy groups, and University Academics. If we add university academics who are funded by government agencies, then government agencies as a whole account for more than 36% of the information. This is the same data about different organizations. The USDA, the US Department of Agriculture, provided more than 12% of the information, followed by the FDA and Food and Drug Administration provided 9.5% of the information.

10:41The USDA, by the way, is the top spender of federal food safety money and the FDA is the second spender of federal food safety budget. They were followed by Monsanto, a biotech company, and the Center for Food Safety, A Consumer Advocacy Group, and the Grocery Manufacturers Association, a trade association. The results clearly showed government dominance of the information supply. What does this mean? This means that since 1862, when President Lincoln set up a federal office that would and how to develop into safety and the USDA. These two federal agencies have grown to become the two most dominant information suppliers in the field.

11:37I don't know the exact shape of this curve, but the growth is undeniable. The testing of the hypothesis too. The question is how dominant government is in research funding. I looked at the university economists because I couldn't find a category like food safety policy analysts. And I chose university economists because food safety policymaking involves a lot of cost-benefit analysis. So in 2007, 190 million dollars were provided by federal agencies and that amount accounted for 35% of their total funding and again within the federal funding, the USDA, the top spender of federal food safety money, contributed 20% of the federal.

12:36The results show government dominance in research funding. Well, the next question was, how is dominance governed in academic publishing? Well, I chose a journal, academic journal, Food Safety Policy because of its emphasis on food policy issues. I did a survey using food safety as a keyword and the total hit 46 articles, I read them, And the result is government-affiliated authors, basically bureaucrats, authored 26% of these articles and then government agencies funded 29% of these articles. Some of these lines didn't overlap so we can add them and as a result we can say that, well, government agencies as authors or fund providers contribute 55% of these articles.

13:32Again, the results showed government dominance of academic publishing. There is no question about that. Conclusion Government information supply has grown. It means government keeps spreading pro-regulatory ideas. Second, a mutualism between bureaucrats and academics exists. and economic theories which support more government interventions are produced and spread. I hope my presentation has shown that evolutionary thinking is useful to understand how ideologies are changing currently. Thank you very much.