Dara O'Rourke defends the idea that we can change corporations by buying "ethically produced" products like free-range meat:
A small percentage of consumers have already moved a portion of the market toward more ethical and sustainable practices. But the larger promise of ethical consumption remains unmet: to empower consumers to express their values—whatever they are—in the marketplace. If people could walk into a retailer or click on a shopping site and get instant information about which products best match their personal values, they could truly vote with their dollars. The big question is whether NGOs, governments, and progressive companies will work collectively to drive the market toward this more sustainable future.
Scott Nova is more skeptical:
[I]t’s reasonable to expect a fully developed ethical-products sector in which most companies attain the benefits of ethical marketing despite misleading, exaggerated, or downright false claims about labor (and other) practices. Even GoodGuide, a large improvement over past rating efforts and a useful tool for consumers, gives generous scores to major apparel brands whose primary achievement has been developing more sophisticated forms of empty rhetoric.
Many more responses to O'Rourke here.
(Photo: Free-range chickens get feed in a pen at the Schoenecke organic-accredited poultry farm on January 7, 2011 in Elstorf, Germany. By Joern Pollex/Getty Images.)
The Dish 
