Students in WR 100 “Topics in Public Health” study an 1854 cholera outbreak, a 20th-century meatpacking scandal, and the emergence of industrial farming, events that provide an opportunity to examine the values embedded in public health discourse and practice. For example, under what circumstances should policy makers limit personal freedom in the interest of promoting public health? To what degree are tradeoffs between individual and collective interests justified? And are individual freedom and “the common good” by definition at odds? These questions are as critical to contemporary policy debates on food safety as they were to Victorian Londoners contemplating the need for a sanitation infrastructure to stem the spread of disease.
Popular food writer Michael Pollan asserts his belief that enlightened self-interest is not at odds with the common good when he advises the average consumer to “stop participating in a system that abuses animals or poisons the water or squanders jet fuel flying asparagus around the world. You can vote with your fork… and you can do it three times a day.”(1) Put differently, when consumers understand the hidden costs of factory farmed food, they will exercise personal choice in a socially responsible way. Critics say Pollan’s views are elitist, while so-called “foodies”—and public health advocates—hail him as “way ahead of the curve.” In the final essay of WR 100, students were asked to respond to his statement, drawing on course readings that represent 150 years of public health history.
— MELANIE SMITH