Balancing Stakeholder Interests

At present, the existence of tradeoffs between interests of consumers, taxpayers and producers seems clear enough. Material from infected animals is being removed from the food chain, a process funded, not by some industry levy the consequences of which would be felt by producers and consumers, but from general taxation. The gains accrue to producers and consumers while the losses are bourne by the population at large - and the sums are not trivial: exchequer costs have now edged over the stlg3.5 billion mark.

For the greater part of BSE's history (a brief introduction can be found in Harris and O'Shaughnessy), the government's primary motive seems to have been the support of a national industry. At one point in the late 1980s, compensation to farmers was described in Parliament as not being required on public health grounds but rather as a matter of 'fairness to farmers'. Even had this been the case, it seems a questionable political judgement: would not spending money for primarily public health reasons have attracted more sympathy in the media and with voters? But perhaps there is a genuine difficulty: making explicit tradeoffs between risks and costs is difficult as a counter-expert can invariably be found to rehearse the view that 'no price is worth when it comes to risking human life'.

In his analysis of the legal course of BSE, Julian Fulbrook makes a number of points that shed light on the interaction of stakeholder groups in years to come. If deaths from CJD do rise in future, then those seeking compensation are unlikely, for a number of reasons, to prosecute successful court cases, unless American claimants become involved. More probable, Fulbrook argues, is the prospect that pressure groups will pursue central government directly for compensation. It is quite possible that there may then be some political advantage in acquiesing to these demands for it is almost certain that those responsible for current and earlier decision-making will be long out of office.

ReDefining Due Process

Decision-making in the BSE case is rather typical of the English system. Natural science experts are drafted in to make recommendations from which departments and politicians select. Reports are published (as they have been) though much of the discretion goes into the selection and briefing of experts as well as the exercise of their own discretion during the investigational stage. The process is designed to provide a blend of science and democracy that is at once authoritative and acceptable and yet, as Smith et al indicate, consumers are rather sceptical of 'white coats'. The extent to which this system does not allay fears as it might once have, may depend as much on the adroitness of media reporters as on a growing scepticism on the part of the public.

During the mid 1990s, UK central government has witnessed politically inspired initiatives towards open government though it is interesting to note there is no 'feel' that the decision-making process es used to handle BSE now are, as a result, any more open than in the past. It is as if Whitehall's attitude to open government is 'nice ideal but it'll never work' - and indeed the civil servants might even have a point. Judge Stephen Breyer recently held the relatively closed systems of UK and France up as ideals against which the open, confrontational approaches of the litigious US might be a ppraised. Indeed, an OECD public administration expert recently quipped that the Americans are so busy being accountable, it was amazing they had any time to do any work. Every system needs a balance but it is not clear that the mix that prevails in the UK at present is a stable one.

Understanding the media/public debate

This observation naturally leads into issues surrounding the media and the nature of media debate. Many of those involved with the regulation of risk express concern about the lack of proportion when hazards are discussed and yet they rarely ask the next question - why? As Harris and O'Shaughnessy emphasise, much of the public debate is both riven with, and about, symbolism and rhetoric that exists a different level to the discourse of natural scientists. (They speculated about the symbolism even of minister's clothing and only a few days later a BBC radio interviewer raised with the minister that he had caused MAFF to be known as the 'ministry of silly hats'. To complain about disproportionate coverage of certain stories, like BSE, is a bit like saying papers are wrong to report so extensively the wars that they do on the grounds that this fails to take account of the fact that, statistically, most readers won't die in any of the wars covered.

But even more important, media coverage of the so-called 3Cs ('cock-up, conflict and catastrophy') means that what is being reported is often not just some hazard, but the handling, and where possible the perceived mishandling, of a hazard. Whether one likes it or not, the media as often presents an assessment of organisational and individual competence, albeit a somewhat unauthorised one, as it does an assessment or reflection of (objective - sic) risk. In principle, the behaviour of journalists is rather straightforward to understand but indigation at the inaccuracies, distortions etc can, sometimes, block the development of this understanding.

Bureacratic ownership

This last issue, not discussed in this symposium directly, nevertheless has a bearing on the way in which in government responds to any particular crisis. Agricultural departments in the UK have, over the past 50 years, seen their roles change steadily though the organisational cultures still reflect the needs of times when the maximisation of production was paramount. Today the policy needs are for social and even environmental issues in the planning of production and food health issues in consumption. Naturally small ministries like MAFF are protective of the policy areas that do fall within their purview and equally naturally, the departmental assignation of responsibility for policy colours the way in which that policy develops and is perceived.

Have the government's policies on BSE provided value-for-money as Douglas Hogg recently claimed? As applied econometricians Michael Burton and Trevor Young point out, the permanent decline in beef's share of the meat market is less than 5%, rather modest compared with the troughs to which the parts of the market fall during periods of intense media interest. Judging by their behaviour then, UK consumers do not think the risks associated with eating UK beef have risen substantially though hether this was due to the actions and announcements of government, or despite them, remains open.

Notwithstanding the perception that BSE represents a public affairs debacle, it is surprisingly difficult to say but I suggest four points that should be central to any attempt at a fair evaluation of the government's handling of the case. First, the policy changes in the UK following the Southwood Committee's Report were probably substantially correct given the knowledge available at the time. It would be wrong not to acknowledge that MAFF (and the UK pool of natural scientists from which it draws constitutes an international centre of excellence as far as animal health is concerned - this is the kind of thing MAFF focuses on, and the kind of activity it does well). Second, and in contrast, the government's handling of the media, public interest and the messy elision of the two that defines what is interesting to the public, leaves quite a lot to be desired. Indeed it is a little surprising that, given the commercial considerations involved, the beef industry have not sought to minimise the often slightly jim-crack interventions of no doubt well intentioned politicians.

The final two points indicate the existence of unfinished business - questions the BSE story raises about how society deals with health risks without leaving any answers. Third then, is issue of how best to decide under conditions of uncertainty - that is when subjective probabilities cannot be agreed or when key causal knowledge is absent. This question bedevils policy-making and by default the hypothesis testing framework is the one that seems to be used despite its inappropriateness for problems where there is sparse data (as any statistician will testify). By contrast the mathematical framework of decision-making under uncertainty says that when probabilities are absent, consequences are all decision-makers have to distinguish between acts. The institutional consequences of this view await exploration though it is true to say there is very little formal cost-benefit and sensitivity analysis in the system at this point time, compared, say, with the research funds that become available to those working on natural science topics which are sometimes, of rather questionable decision relevance

Forthly and finally, we don't yet know what 'safe' means, though courts or government may well have to be more explicit about this in future. To say that British Beef "is perfectly safe", for instance, cannot be right because nothing is perfectly safe so the phrase must mean something else. Perhaps it just means as safe as any other similar kind of product or service and maybe this is true of BSE when one takes all risks together (which is what statistical theory encourages). Even so, there is still a question as to whether the phrase is a helpful one to employ. There may be parts of the population who do take such statements at face value and there may be yet others, possibly more sophisticated, who believe that the utterance of the phrase is tantamount to the issuing of an insurance policy. Government departments (and agencies) may well be considering whether they want to allow ministers to say that any object or action, however safe, is perfectly safe.

References

Anand P and Forschner 1995 From Rational Choice to Organisational Behaviour in Crisis Management, British Journal of Management, 6, 221-233
Breyer S G 1993 Breaking the Vicious Circle, Hood C and Jones D K C 1996 Accident and Design, London, UCL Press
Kasparsen NAO 1986 The Measurement of Farming Incomes, London, HMSO
Pidgeon N and Beattie J in press
Viscusi W K 1992 Fatal Tradeoffs, Oxford, Oxford University PressThe process of amplification is discussed most notably by Kasperson, Kasperson and Renn (1992). More recently Pidgeon and Beattie (in press) have discussed related metaphors such as noise and bias which help emphasise the existence of distortion in what one might think of as a social form of Chinese Whispers.
See also a number of excellent contributions (eg Horlick-Jones and Weir) in the collection by Hood and Jones (1996).In this one regard, the UK system is not unlike the US system as discussed by many North American economists eg Viscusi (1992).