> Can one put a price on good
>health? Can one place a price upon cancer prevention?
Actually, this is exactly what a recent article in the American Journal of
Alternative Agriculture attempts to do.
It surprises me that USDA ag economists pulled this together, along with a
"chemical exposure assessor with Novigen Sciences." The citation is
Kuchler, F., K. Ralston, and J. R. Tomerlin. 2000. Do health benefits
explain the price premiums for organic foods? Am. J. Alt. Ag. 15:9-18.
From the abstract: "This paper examines whether the dollar value of health
benefits that consumers derive from organic food could account for the
price premiums they pay. ... Our exploratory alternative method estimates
the value of health benefits to a hypothetical consumer who assesses risks
as risk assessors do and values a unit reduction in all fatal risks
equally, regardless of the source of any risk. Under these assumptions, our
estimates of the value of health benefits derived from substituting an
organic diet for a conventionally produced diet approach zero."
A section of the paper actually attempts to calculate the dollar value of
avoiding cancer. Here is a quote: "We can treat the last 36.5 years of life
as a capital asset with a current value of $5.67 million." I am not
experienced in economics so it is difficult to evaluate this report myself.
(Perhaps I am having a kneejerk reaction to the idea of quantifying the
value of human life.) It appears as if they have a low value and a high
value for "cancer death averted," which is $0.79 million and $1.92 million,
respectively. When they divide the premium paid for organic apple juice by
this cost over time, the organic premium ends up being much greater than
the value of cancer death averted.
The utility of this "research" eludes me--I wonder what others think.
Jane Sooby
technical program coordinator
Organic Farming Research Foundation
P.O. Box 440
Santa Cruz, CA 95061
831-426-6606
831-426-6670 fax
831-460-9713 home
www.ofrf.org
jane@ofrf.org
Variety may be the spice of life, but research demands rigid standardization.
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