Societal Dimensions of Food and Agricultural Standards: A Training Program

Michigan State University, East Lansing MI

Investigators

Abstract

This grant provides support for the development of a graduate training program focused on the ethical and value issues raised by food and agricultural standards (FAS) including quality, food safety, labor and environmental standards. FAS determine who benefits and who participates in the global exchange of agrifood commodities. They embody many important social and ethical issues, including: What should be the relationship between states and markets? What can science tell us about risk and safety? How can democracy be (re)constructed? What is the proper role of global trade in socioeconomic development? What should be the scope of WTO jurisdiction? Can environmental values be reconciled with economic values? No existing US-based graduate program offers students the opportunities to explore the issues and develop the skills needed to deal with these complex normative and empirical issues. This grant will help to build an internationally recognized graduate program that enhances state-of-the-art discipline-based training with specialized learning opportunities, allowing students the opportunity to incorporate interdisciplinary perspectives and skills and preparing them to grapple with normative issues in an increasingly global and differentiated food and agricultural system. Additionally, it will help students to integrate normative issues into the theoretical frameworks and practices of their respective disciplines. FAS issues cut across sociology, law, economics, ethics and policy analysis, and play themselves out in five dimensions: (1) standards formation, modification, implementation and enforcement, (2) access to markets for input factors and output products, (3) public and private roles with respect to standards, (4) risk, (5) consequences of standards for different groups in an industry and for society as a whole.These five dimensions form the basis of this research theme and ongoing research program. Participants in this grant will engage in research and training on one or more of these topics. In order to address these questions, faculty and students will draw upon approaches and disciplinary skills in rural sociology, institutional economics, international and food law, ethics and philosophy, and institutional and policy analysis in political science. The training program will permit three graduate fellows and a postdoctoral fellow to engage in research and formal course work focused around the topics above, in each of three years. Over the course of the training program, fellows will interact and develop collaborative relationships with the variety of stakeholders in systems of FAS. They will also participate in a rigorous program of coursework and research on themes currently under investigation by the principal investigators. The postdoctoral associate will bring new skills to the research team as well as help in team teaching the proseminar in FAS and in managing the overall research program. As a result of their training, fellows will be well situated to integrate these normative issues in their training and research careers. They will also have the knowledge and skills to develop collaborations with stakeholder groups at the local, national and international level. They will be able to work with a full range of stakeholders so as to help create socially desirable and equitable FAS from which all parties can benefit.