This article explores efforts to apply economic logic to human life. To do so, it looks at federal regulatory agencies, where government planners and policy makers have spent over a century trying to devise a scientifically sound way to measure the economic value of lives lost or saved by public programs. The methods they have drawn on, however, have changed drastically in the past 40 years, shifting from a 'human capital' approach based on models of economic productivity and producing relatively low dollar values to a 'willingness-to-pay' approach reflecting consumer choice and producing much higher values. Why, in an era of intense deregulatory pressures, did the valuation model that produced significantly higher estimates - making it easier to justify costly regulation - ultimately win out? This unlikely transition follows a shift in the nature of professional expertise dominating the federal bureaucracy during the 1970s and 1980s, as changing conceptions of health and safety regulation during this period gave academic economists the opportunity to make new claims about the exclusive authority of microeconomic theory for understanding the economic value of life in federal planning. Supporting this argument is a comparative case, the largely unsuccessful attempt to extend the willingness-to-pay model to the valuation of life in the courtroom. Pricing human life thus results not only from the renegotiation of moral boundaries around the economic logic of the market, but also from the reorganization of expert authority and the consolidation of scientific expertise around both the meaning and the measurement of value.
The popularity of backyard chickens has been growing steadily over the past 10 years, with Covid-19 stay at home orders in 2020 yielding an added boost in popularity. Concurrently, cases of salmonellosis from live poultry exposure have also risen. Previous research on backyard chicken owners has focused primarily on urban chicken owners, which may have differing knowledge and biosecurity habits from rural backyard chicken owners. The goal of this study was to investigate the prevalence of S. enterica in rural and urban flocks of chickens in the state of Vermont and to determine what attitudes toward and knowledge about S. enterica owners had, as well as what biosecurity practices they used. We conducted two surveys in Vermont between 2019–2022; a pilot study tied to sampling for Salmonella enterica in backyard chicken flocks from 2019–2021 and a statewide study in 2022 to determine the prevalence of backyard chickens in Vermont and obtain representative survey data from backyard chicken owners. We found (i) overall, 19% (8/42) backyard chicken flocks from 2019–2021 had S. enterica, but S. enterica rates varied substantially by year; (ii) backyard chicken owners were wealthier and more educated than the average Vermonter and generally lived in rural areas; (iii) participants in the statewide survey had much lower uptake of good biosecurity habits compared to the pilot survey; (iv) despite increased messaging about backyard chicken-associated salmonellosis and good biosecurity measures over the past several years, uptake of biosecurity measures is inconsistent, and rates of unsafe practices such as kissing or cuddling chickens have increased in Vermont. Overall, the data indicate the need for improved messaging on biosecurity and risks associated with backyard chickens
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