When I was growing up one of Mary-Anne Fahey’s characters in The Comedy Company was a mischievous three-year-old named Jophesine.
Whenever she was accused of doing something wrong, Jophesine had her defence ready.
“I didn’t do it. Dolly did it.”
It was funny because she was three. Less amusing is the realisation that absolving ourselves of responsibility now appears to be a key driver of everyday life.
We have developed more sophisticated language than Jophesine, of course. We blame the system, the market, the government, the previous government, consumer demand, inadequate funding, misleading advertising, our parents or the person who failed to stop us.
Dolly has acquired an impressive number of job titles.
A recent opinion article in The New York Times tells the story of Bryce Martinez, who was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes and fatty liver disease at 16.
Martinez had developed obesity early in childhood. He grew up eating much of what the American food system made affordable and convenient. Sugary cereals, school lunches of pizza and burgers, ready-made meals, juice pouches, chips and ice cream were part of his everyday diet.
At 18, he sued 11 major food manufacturers. He argued that their ultra-processed products had been engineered to encourage overconsumption, marketed to children and had caused his illnesses.
The case was dismissed because the judge found insufficient evidence connecting particular products with Martinez’s illnesses. His lawyers intend to appeal, and similar cases are being brought against food companies across the United States.
The article argues that litigation may succeed where governments have failed. It compares these cases with the decades of legal action against tobacco companies that eventually exposed what the industry knew about addiction, cancer and marketing to children.
It is a powerful comparison. Food manufacturers have enormous resources and an extraordinary understanding of flavour, brain chemistry, advertising and consumer behaviour. If companies have deliberately designed products to override appetite signals and then marketed those products to children, they should be held accountable.
Martinez had very limited agency. He did not buy the groceries, formulate the products, design the school menu, write the advertising or regulate food additives. His parents worked full-time and relied on food that was affordable, available and quick to prepare.
Food companies, schools and governments therefore hold a greater share of responsibility, especially where products were deliberately engineered and marketed to encourage overconsumption.
Greater responsibility, however, is not exclusive responsibility.
The article presents responsibility as though it must belong either to the individual or to the food companies. Once it is transferred entirely to the company, everyone else in the chain can quietly leave the room.
The child can blame the parents. The parents can blame the manufacturer. The manufacturer can blame consumer demand. Retailers can blame price pressures. Schools can blame their budgets. Governments can blame insufficient evidence.
Then we can all go home satisfied that Dolly did it.
Type 2 diabetes also resists a single explanation. Diet and physical activity can contribute significantly, but so can genetics, age, ethnicity, family history and social and economic circumstances. Finding one contributor does not remove every other person or institution from the picture.
Agriculture has its own version of the Jophesine defence.
Farmers regularly tell governments and the community, “You can trust us to do the right thing.”
Then governments introduce laws covering firearms, land clearing, animal welfare, chemical use or environmental protection, and agriculture argues that the entire sector is being punished for the behaviour of a minority.
Sometimes that criticism is justified. Poorly designed regulation can burden responsible farmers without addressing the behaviour that prompted it.
But agriculture also has to confront the question beneath the regulation. What happens when enough people fail to exercise the responsibility they say should be left with them? At what point does legislation become the consequence of our collective failure to govern ourselves?
We cannot ask to be trusted and then insist that every failure belongs to somebody else.
The same question reaches well beyond food and farming. We can hold corporations accountable without pretending consumers have no agency. We can recognise the constraints facing parents without treating every decision as inevitable. We can regulate harmful behaviour without assuming legislation removes our responsibility to make better choices.
Responsibility is not a parcel passed along the chain until it reaches the person with the deepest pockets. Several people and institutions can hold it at the same time, in different proportions according to their power, knowledge and choices.
Perhaps the real test is not, “Who can I blame?”
It is, “Given the power and choices I had, what part of this belonged to me?”
F