Can we really vote with our forks? Opportunism and the threshold chicken

Consider Oppy, an average, middle-aged guy who skims a few of Mark Bittman’s pieces in the New York Times and starts to worry that what he buys and eats somehow contributes to the global supremacy of the industrial “meat-guzzler.” 1 One day he comes across Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma in an airport bookstore and spends his whole f light devouring it. As he learns more about the industrial food system from Pollan, he becomes increasingly alarmed by its treatment of animals and workers, its reliance on government-subsidized corn and soy, its use of lobbyists to gain preferential treatment from lawmakers, and its effects on family farmers, local economies, and the environment. 2 Oppy gets off the f light feeling genuinely engaged by the issue for the first time: He now regards much of the treatment of animals and workers in the industrial agriculture system as wrong, and as a result he intends to donate to an animal sanctuary and spend his free time advocating on behalf of local undocumented workers.