David Schleifer
Dissertation Summary: "Getting Better for You: Trans Fats, Cleanup and Innovation"
Many popular and academic
analysts have shown that corporations produce intractably dangerous substances,
suppress scientific studies indicating their products are dangerous, and resist
making their products safer. According
to many of these analyses, activist organizations try to publicly expose
dangerous products, but corporations inevitably try to avoid regulation, often
by exploiting relationships with governments. But those “risk society” models of corporate malfeasance cannot explain
the conditions under which corporations expose and clean up dangerous
substances, because those models assume that corporate interests are fixed and
that technologies are inflexible. This
dissertation challenges those assumptions through a case study of how industry
actors in the United States
food system participated in defining trans
fats as unhealthy and how firms are replacing trans fats in manufactured foods.
Using interviews, archival material, and other qualitative sources on the case of trans fats, the dissertation considers relationships between
industry and activists, relationships between industry and semi-autonomous
scientific experts, the activities of entrepreneurs within industry, and the
activities of trade associations as factors shaping what I call the social
organization of cleanup. Oils containing trans
fats gained status in the United
States after activist organizations,
operating based on their perception of a scientific consensus, assailed
corporations in the 1980s for using saturated fats. Activists promoted trans fats as healthier alternatives. In order to assuage public outcry, many firms
responded by replacing saturated fats with trans
fats. Food manufacturers also benefited from the functional properties of
inexpensive trans fats.
But when those same activist organizations concluded based on new research that
trans fats were actually worse than
saturated fats, they avoided stigma by deploying the familiar trope of corporate
malfeasance. Industry actors sponsored
research intended to prove that trans fats
were safe. But when industry-sponsored
research confirmed that trans fats
were unhealthy, trade associations coordinated the development of trans fats alternatives. In communication with other firms and with
media, industry actors participated in framing trans fats as unhealthy and in portraying new trans fat free foods as healthy products made by responsible
corporations.
Previous research has shown that organizations create
risks by blindly relying on complex technologies or technical information. This dissertation contributes to the study of
social movements by including activist organizations among those that
contribute to the social production of risk through their advocacy of
technological fixes. Despite fears about
corporate influence on scientific research, my findings suggest that
corporations may be likely to believe the research that they buy, and that
industries may realign their interests accordingly. By illustrating how industries coordinate
technological change and promote new products as improved, this analysis
elaborates a more nuanced understanding of how industries change substances
perceived as risky to consumers. This
dissertation does not reduce cleanup to cynical self-interest, simple political
pressure, or the routine application of technology. Instead, it examines the circumstances under
which industries, while still pursuing profit, attempt to satisfy activists,
regulators, consumers, and shareholders.
By developing a broader theoretical framework for understanding when and
how firms can benefit from exposing and cleaning up technological risks, this
analysis of trans fats can become a
model for understanding interactions among industry, activists, regulators and
scientists in analogous efforts to promote health, safety, and sustainability.
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