The well-known dispute between NotCo, over its product “Not Milk,” and the Los Ríos Milk Producers Trade Association (Aproval) has had multiple effects on different institutions and people, although probably the most remarkable has been the development of my ability to predict the future.
The first time we talked about this case, with a group of friends, the first-instance ruling had just come out, upholding Aproval’s unfair competition claim against NotCo. Most of the people I was talking to, lawyers from different specialties, were very cautious when laying out their arguments for and against the ruling, but scathing about my reckless claim that, in the medium and long term, Aproval would not only lose, but the dairy industry as a whole would change radically.
From a legal standpoint, the case is interesting and complex in every one of its current and potential angles, from intellectual property issues to antitrust, as well as food safety, consumer rights, misleading advertising and, of course, unfair competition. The ruling by the Valdivia court, which upheld Aproval’s argument and declared that NotCo was confusing consumers by taking advantage of milk’s good reputation (only to then disparage it without grounds), made my next prediction even less credible. Naturally, predicting that the next battlefield would be labeling rules, an administrative, technical and unglamorous field, made my poor grasp of the importance of what was being debated all too evident.
In January of this year, Aproval suffered a setback at the Court of Appeals, restoring some of my credibility; but it was the parallel offensive, in the legislative arena, that seemed to lend a bit more support to my oracular gifts. There, in June, a group of lawmakers submitted a bill to Congress seeking to regulate foodtech. The aim of the legislation: to prohibit the promotion of any synthetic plant-based product using images of products derived from animal farming. All this, of course, for the sake of consumer welfare, since consumers must be able to distinguish between the “original product” and “the copy or substitute.”
The appeals ruling was taken to the Supreme Court, and the bill is still in its early stages. How can we know what the final outcome will be? Well, although guessing the future is impossible, we can consult the past and review the long list of technological innovations that have been fought by the respective incumbents, using unfair competition, labeling rules, or both as arguments. “Unfair competition” was the cry of the gas industry when scientific and technological developments in electricity allowed it to be used for street lighting. Horse breeders used a similar argument when the tractor was introduced to the fields, as did the telegraph industry when the telephone arrived. Science also played a dirty trick on the dairy industry by creating “artificial butter” or, as it later became known, margarine, as a more affordable source of calories for the growing urban masses of the early 20th century. In this case, not only were unfair competition rules invoked, but laws and labeling rules were introduced that, in some places, even required margarine to be dyed a different color so as “not to confuse the consumer.”
Perhaps the most relevant example for my prediction of the future is the refrigeration industry, a concept that brings to mind the appliance we have at home, the refrigerated aisles in supermarkets, or perhaps large industrial refrigerators. However, in the mid-1800s, the “refrigeration industry” referred to a long chain of people and organizations that began with extracting and cutting ice from glaciers or frozen lakes, mixing it with salt or straw so it would last longer during transport by mule and carriage to the train or, in some cases, a port, where it was shipped to other continents until it reached the end customer. When we talk about the refrigeration industry today, picturing a glacier cut into chunks is as absurd as the image of a cow will be when, two decades from now, we refer to the milk industry.
The real conflict, of course, has nothing to do with unfair competition, let alone labeling rules, which instead seem like subterfuges to preserve the interests of the respective incumbents and avoid the underlying conversation: how science can radically transform an industry, with all the economic, social and political costs and benefits that entails. Our lawmakers, who apparently ignore the old saying that “those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it,” are wasting the opportunity this case offers to foster an in-depth dialogue that incorporates the views of everyone affected by the coming transformation and allows us to channel and, ideally, drive science-based innovation.
Javier Ramírez
Executive Director, Know Hub Chile
Read the original column at: https://opinion.cooperativa.cl/opinion/ciencia-y-tecnologia/la-ciencia-como-fuerza-de-destruccion-creativa/2024-09-03/205839.html
