In The Ethics of Food, Gregory E. Pence brings together a collection of voices who share the view that the ethics of genetically modified food is among the most pressing societal questions of our time. This comprehensive collection addresses a broad range of subjects, including the meaning of food, moral analyses of vegetarianism and starvation, the safety and environmental risks of genetically modified food, issues of global food politics and the food industry, (...) and the relationships among food, evolution, and human history. (shrink)

In The Ethics of Food, Gregory E. Pence brings together a collection of voices who share the view that the ethics of genetically modified food is among the most pressing societal questions of our time. This comprehensive collection addresses a broad range of subjects, including the meaning of food, moral analyses of vegetarianism and starvation, the safety and environmental risks of genetically modified food, issues of global food politics and the food industry, (...) and the relationships among food, evolution, and human history. (shrink)

The children’s market has become significantly more important to marketers in recent years. They have been spending increasing amounts on advertising, particularly of food and beverages, to reach this segment. At the same time, there is a critical debate among parents, government agencies, and industry experts as to the ethics of food advertising practices aimed toward children. The␣present study examines parents’ ethical views of food advertising targeting children. Findings indicate that parents’ beliefs concerning at least some (...) dimensions of moral intensity are significantly related to their ethical judgments and behavioral intentions of food advertising targeting children as well as the perceived moral intensity of the situation. (shrink)

As the collective impact of human activity approaches Earth’s biophysical limits, the ethics of food become increasingly important. Hundreds of millions of people remain undernourished, yet only 60 percent of the global harvest is consumed by humans, while 35 percent is fed to livestock and 5 percent is used for biofuels and other industrial products. This essay considers the ethics of such use of edible nutrition for feedstock and biofuel. How humanity uses Earth’s land is a reflection (...) of its values. The current land-use arrangements, which divert 40 percent of all food to feed animals or create fuels, suggest that dietary and transportation preferences of wealthier individuals are considered more important than feeding undernourished people, or the stability of the wider biotic community. (shrink)

Abstract I consider Paul Thompson’s Agrarian Vision from the perspective of the philosophy of technology, especially as it relates to certain questions about public engagement and deliberative democracy around food issues. Is it able to promote an attitudinal shift or reorientation in values to overcome the view of “food as device” so that conscientious engagement in the food system by consumers can become more the norm? Next, I consider briefly, some questions to which it must face up (...) in order to move closer in dismantling the barriers that inhibit the capacity for virtuous caretaking of the food system at various levels. Lastly, and more deeply, how successful might agrarianism be in inculcating citizenship values (ones that go beyond food ethics as a private affair), for the democratization of agricultural technologies? Might the Jeffersonian foundation to which the agrarianism (a la) Thompson appeals need something like a contemporary theory of justice in order to facilitate the reconstitution of our politico-moral selves? How can it help guide appropriate ruminations on the intra and intergenerational question, “What do we want the shape of our current and future social and political institutions to look like in relation to food?” Content Type Journal Article Category Articles Pages 1-10 DOI 10.1007/s10806-011-9339-x Authors Raymond Anthony, Department of Philosophy, University of Alaska Anchorage, Anchorage, AK 99508, USA Journal Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics Online ISSN 1573-322X Print ISSN 1187-7863. (shrink)

The many ways in which we interact with food, e.g., eating, cooking, purchasing, farming, legislating, etc., are intersected by ethics and politics. The terms of our interactions with food are dictated in a significant way by how we understand its metaphysical underpinnings; that is to say, by how we define “food.” When food is understood as nothing more than it becomes easier to dismiss our political and ethical obligations since, after all, food is only (...) a thing. This obscures the others who make our interactions with food possible, and who are affected by our choices and those of our communities. In order to revitalize our engagement with the ethical and political responsibilities that we both inherit and produce in our interactions with food, it is helpful to refocus our understanding of what food actually is. I propose that food is better understood as a transformative . Building on metaphysical theories by Aristotle and Emmanuel Levinas, I explain this new understanding of food, and use examples to show how this view of food enhances our political and ethical responsibilities. (shrink)

The handbook is a partial survey of multiple areas of food ethics: conventional agriculture and alternatives to it; animals; consumption ethics; food justice; food workers; food politics and policy; gender, body image, and healthy eating; and, food, culture and identity. -/- Food ethics, as an academic pursuit, is vast, incorporating work from philosophy as well as anthropology, economics, environmental sciences and other natural sciences, geography, law, and sociology. This Handbook provides a (...) sample of recent philosophical work in food ethics. This philosophical work addresses ethical issues with agricultural production, the structure of the global food system, the ethics of personal food consumption, the ethics of food policy, and cultural understandings of food and eating, among other issues. The work in this Handbook draws on multiple literatures within philosophy, including practical ethics, normative ethics, and political philosophy, as well as drawing on non-philosophical work. Part I considers ethical issues concerning the industrial model of farming that dominates in developed countries, looking most closely at industrial crop farming and its environmental effects. Part II concerns the ethics of animal agriculture. Part III concerns the ethics of consumption: is it morally permissible to consume various products? Part IV concerns justice—including racial, social, and economic justice—in the food system. Part V discusses some ethical and legal issues with specific kinds of food policies, including healthy eating policies, food labeling, and agricultural guest worker programs. Part VI includes four essays taking a critical eye to our public discourse about, and personal experiences of, dieting, healthy eating, and obesity prevention. Lastly, the essays in Part VII concern the personal, social, and moral significance of food. (shrink)

The current debate about labeling genetically engineered (GE) food focuses on food derived from GE crops, neglecting food derived from GE animals. This is not surprising, as GE animal products have not yet reached the market. Participants in the debate may also be assuming that conclusions about GE crops automatically extend to GE animals. But there are two GE animals - the Enviropig and the AquAdvantage Bred salmon - that are approaching the market, animals raise more ethical (...) issues than plants, and U.S. regulations treat animal products differently from crops. This paper therefore examines the specific question of whether there should be mandatory labeling on all food products derived from GE animals. We examine the likely regulatory pathways, salient differences between GE animals and GE crops, and relevant social science research on consumers’ attitudes. We argue that on any of the likely pathways, the relevant agency has a democratic obligation to require labeling for all GE animal food products. (shrink)

The second edition of this extensive work is the definitive source on issues pertaining to the full range of topics in the important area of food and agricultural ethics. Altogether about 100 new entries appear in this new edition. The start of the 21st century has seen intensified debate, discussion, and criticism of food and agriculture. Scholars, activists, and citizens increasingly question the goals and ethical rationale behind production, distribution and consumption of food, and the use (...) of crops for fuel and fiber. These wide-ranging debates encompass questions in human nutrition, animal rights, and the environmental impacts of agricultural production. The encyclopedia provides a detailed analysis of these issues and hundreds of other topics including the use of antibiotics in animal feedlots, the Green Revolution, organic farming, Islam and Food, and cannibalism.The Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics, 2nd edition is an indispensable reference point for future research and writing on topics in agriculture, food, animal, and eating ethics. (shrink)

While the history of philosophy has traditionally given scant attention to food and the ethics of eating, in the last few decades the subject of food ethics has emerged as a major topic, encompassing a wide array of issues, including labor justice, public health, social inequity, animal rights and environmental ethics. This handbook provides a much needed philosophical analysis of the ethical implications of the need to eat and the role that food plays in (...) social, cultural and political life. Unlike other books on the topic, this text integrates traditional approaches to the subject with cutting edge research in order to set a new agenda for philosophical discussions of food ethics. The Routledge Handbook of Food Ethics is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, problems and debates in this exciting subject and is the first collection of its kind. Comprising over 35 chapters by a team of international contributors, the Handbook is divided into 7 parts: the phenomenology of food gender and food food and cultural diversity liberty, choice and food policy food and the environment farming and eating other animals food justice Essential reading for students and researchers in food ethics, it is also an invaluable resource for those in related disciplines such as environmental ethics and bioethics. (shrink)

Moral concern with food intake is as old asmorality itself. In the course of history, however,several ways of critically examining practices of foodproduction and food intake have been developed.Whereas ancient Greek food ethics concentrated on theproblem of temperance, and ancient Jewish ethics onthe distinction between legitimate and illicit foodproducts, early Christian morality simply refused toattach any moral significance to food intake. Yet,during the middle ages food became one of theprinciple objects of monastic programs (...) for moralexercise (askesis). During the seventeenth andeighteenth century, food ethics was transformed interms of the increasing scientific interest in foodintake, while in the nineteenth century the socialdimension of food ethics was discovered, with theresult that more and more attention was given to theproduction and distribution of food products. Becauseof the increasing distance between the production andconsumption of food products ever since, theoutstanding feature of contemporary food ethics is itreliance and dependence on labeling practices. (shrink)

End-of-life issues have become an urgent problem in Japan, where people are among the longest lived in the world and most of them die while connected to high-technology medical equipment. This study examines a sensitive end-of-life ethical issue that concerns patients, families and nurses: the withdrawal of artificial food and fluid from terminally ill patients. A sample of 160 Japanese nurses, who completed a questionnaire that included forced-choice and open-ended questions, supported this act under only two specific conditions: if (...) the patient requested it, and if it relieved the patient’s suffering. They considered that the doctor’s orders, the family’s request, or the patient’s advanced age did not ethically justify this act. A small number of people who had recently lost a relative took part in semistructured interviews focusing on their experiences of their terminally ill relatives being given artificial food and fluid. Ethical, social and cultural factors surrounding this issue are discussed. (shrink)

This chapter explores the interaction between the moral value and aesthetic value of food, in part by connecting it to existing discussions of the interaction between moral and aesthetic values of art. Along the way, this chapter considers food as art, the aesthetic value of food, and the role of expertise in uncovering aesthetic value. Ultimately this chapter argues against both food autonomism (the view that food's moral value is unconnected to its aesthetic value) and (...) Carolyn Korsmeyer's food moralism (the view that moral flaws can only make food aesthetically worse). Instead, it argues for the position of food immoralism: sometimes a moral flaw can make an item of food aesthetically better. This chapter concludes by drawing out broader implications of this position for discussions on the ethics of food and discussions on the interaction between the moral and aesthetic values of art. (shrink)

Philosophical food ethics or deliberative inquiry into the moral norms for production, distribution and consumption of food is contrasted with food ethics as an international social movement aimed at reforming the global food system. The latter yields an activist orientation that can become embroiled in self-defeating impotency when the complexity and internal contradictions of the food system are more fully appreciated. However, recent work in intersectionality offers resources that are useful to both philosophical (...) and activist food ethics. For activists, intersectionality provides a way to preserve and strengthen the meaningfulness of protest and resistance, even in the face of complexity and uncertain outcomes. For philosophers, intersectionality chastens the tendency to regard moral problems as inherently solvable, and provides a way use tensions inherent in food system reform as a source of ethical insight. (shrink)

Food producers have answered increasing consumer demand for transparency through disclosure of information on food labels. Food safety labels act as a signal to consumers that certain products may pose a risk to human health. These labels are based on developments in microbiology and/or represent a required response to foodborne illness outbreaks. However, the scope of the risk posed by product consumption, as well as who is most vulnerable to harm, varies based on the ethical reasoning underlying (...) the presence of the label on the package. This paper applies Thompson (International Journal of Food Science and Technology 36: 833–843, 2001)‘s theory on two contrasting ethical approaches to risk communication – choice optimization and informed consent – to evaluate the four most common food safety labels in the US: i) unpasteurized juice warnings; ii) egg carton safe handling instructions; iii) consumer advisories on restaurant menus; and iv) date labeling. While the choice optimization approach dictates that food safety labels are a necessary tool to equip consumers with specific information that will promote public health (i.e., egg carton safe handling instructions), informed consent obliges producers to disclose all relevant risk information so consumers can choose one product or another based on its adherence to individual values (e.g., unpasteurized juice; undercooked animal products). This paper finds that the US food safety regime represents a blending of these two ethical foundations, leading to substantial variation in risk consumer tolerance and/or aversion. One effect of the intermingling of these two ethical approaches is choice overload among consumers for newer food safety labels (e.g., date labels). This paper concludes with a discussion of policy prioritization in the context of an increasingly crowded food label marketplace. (shrink)

This book presents and discusses some of the problems that are increasingly emerging today in our relationship with food as well as in our style of eating and drinking. The first three chapters focuses on issues concerning eating, and on our relationship with what we can eat. The fourth chapter deals with the act of drinking, with our relationship with water, and discusses justice aspects in the use of water. The main idea is that the acts of eating and (...) drinking are to be understood as relationships, i.e. as a way human beings relate to other beings. As such, they can be performed ethically well or badly. Therefore, an ethics of eating and of drinking should be developed. Not only the book highlights some key ethical problems associated with the act of eating and drinking, yet it also describes some ethically sustainable solutions to them. It ends with a list of reflections, which are intended to guide our choices in the relations with food and drinks with a normative approach. Mainly written for university students and researchers in the field of applied ethics, this book will also offer an inspiring reading to a wider audience of academics and professionals. (shrink)

The traditional military-territorial model of the nation state defines international duties in terms of protecting citizens' property from foreign threats. In this 1992 book about the principles of the US agricultural policy and foreign aid, Professor Thompson replaces this model with the notion of the trading state that sees its role in terms of the establishment of international institutions that stabilize and facilitate cultural and intellectual, as well as commercial, exchanges between nations. The argument focuses on protectionist challenges to foreign (...) aid and development assistance programs, and engages with the views of a variety of economists, commodity organizations, and philosophers on world hunger and development. What emerges is a new interpretation of social contract theory that can determine goals for international trade and development policy. (shrink)

This contribution deals with the ethical challenges arising from the IoT landscape with reference to a specific context, i.e. the realm of agri-food. In this sector, innumerable web-connected tools, platforms and sensors are constantly interacting with consumers/users/citizens, by reshaping and redefining the core elements and functions of machine–human being relationships. By sketching out the main pillars which ethics of the Internet of Food is founded on, my argument posits that the civic hybridization of knowledge production mediated by (...) IoT technologies may create breeding ground for the move towards an ‘ethical in-design’ approach to the IoF-driven smart systems. (shrink)

This empirically rigorous textbook serves as an introduction to food ethics and an overview of the major issues currently discussed in this emerging subfield of environmental ethics. While the book may be too dense in places for introductory-level undergraduates, it is nonetheless a welcome addition to the scholarship in this area, since textbooks focusing specifically on food ethics remain relatively rare.

Recent food emergencies throughout the world have raised some serious ethical and legal concerns for nations and health organizations. While the legal regulations addressing food risks and foodborne illnesses are considerably varied and variously effective, less is known about the ethical treatment of the subject. The purpose of this article is to discuss the roles, justifications, and limits of ethics of food safety as part of public health ethics and to argue for the development of (...) this timely and emergent field of ethics. The article is divided into three parts. After a short introduction on public health ethics, all levels of food safety processes are described and the role that ethics play in each of these levels is then analyzed. In the second part, different models describing the function of food law are examined. The relationship between these models and the role of ethics of food safety is assessed and discussed in the final part, leading to some relevant comments on the limits of the role and effect of ethics of food safety. (shrink)

Conventional ethics of how humans should eat often ignore that human life is itself a form of organic activity. Using Henri Bergson’s notions of intellect and intuition, this chapter brings a wider perspective of the human organism to the ethical question of how humans appropriate life for nutriment. The intellect’s tendency to instrumentalize living things as though they were inert seems to subtend the moral failures evident in practices such as industrial animal agriculture. Using the case study of Temple (...) Grandin’s sympathetic cattle technologies, this chapter moves beyond animal welfare concerns to ground food ethics on the phenomenal character of food that is obscured by human activities of fabrication. (shrink)

“What’s the big deal?”The meaning of this interrogative depends on the inflection. From the mouths of proponents of public–private partnerships (PPPs) related to food and health, it asks—perhaps with some skepticism or bewilderment—what objections there could possibly be to public–private partnerships intended to address some of our most pressing public health challenges. This is due, in no small part, to the way such partnerships are often characterized by participants and proponents alike: they are a “win–win–win,” for the public sector (...) actor, for the private sector actor, and for the general public or relevant publics (often characterized as consumers).1 Posed by critics of PPPs, the question cynically .. (shrink)

There is a large gap between attitude and action when it comes to consumer purchases of ethical food. Amongst the various aspects of this gap, this paper focuses on the difficulty in knowing enough about the various dimensions of food production, distribution and consumption to make an ethical food purchasing decision. There is neither one universal definition of ethical food. We suggest that it is possible to support consumers in operationalizing their own ethics of (...) class='Hi'>food with the use of appropriate information and communication technology. We consider eggs as an example because locally produced options are available to many people on every continent. We consider the dimensions upon which food ethics may be constructed, then discuss the information required to assess it and the tools that can support it. We then present an overview of opportunities for design of a new software tool. Finally, we offer some points for discussion and future work. (shrink)

This piece surveys recent work on the ethics of food production and distribution, paying closest attention to animal agriculture, plant agriculture, food justice, and food sovereignty.

Biotechnology applied to traditional foodanimals raises ethical issues in three distinctcategories. First are a series of issues that arise inthe transformation of pigs, sheep, cattle and otherdomesticated farm animals for purposes that deviatesubstantially from food production, including forxenotransplantation or production of pharmaceuticals.Ethical analysis of these issues must draw upon theresources of medical ethics; categorizing them asagricultural biotechnologies is misleading. The secondseries of issues relate to animal welfare. Althoughone can stipulate a number of different philosophicalfoundations for the ethical assessment (...) of welfare,most either converge on Bernard Rollins principle ofwelfare conservation (Rollin, 1995), or devolve intodebates over the ethical significance of animaltelos or species integrity. The principle of welfareconservation prohibits disfunctional geneticengineering of food animals, but would permit alteringanimals biological functions, especially when (as inmaking animals less susceptable to pain or suffering)do so improves an individual animals well being.Objections to precisely this last form of geneticengineering stress telos or species integrity asconstraints on modification of animals, and thisrepresents the third class of ethical issues. Most whohave formulated such arguments have failed to developcoherent positions, but the notion of species being,derived from the 19th century German tradition,presents a promising way to analyze the basis forresisting the transformation of animal natures. (shrink)

This article explores the negative framing of environmental concern in the context of food procurement and consumption, through the lens of the myth of Eden considering the ontological and genealogical aspects of the experienced exile from nature. The article first considers the theoretical context of the negative framing of food ethics. Demonstrating the consequences of the experience of food as abject, the article then goes on to discuss the exile from Eden as an explanatory myth for (...) the perceptual inbetweenness of humankind. The aim of the article is to outline the genealogical markers of the negative framing of food ethics via the discussion of the exile from Eden. In the context of a new materialist understanding of the nature–culture continuum, the article depicts the exile as a perceptual rather than ontological divide that does not reflect a factual human inbetweenness but mirrors the objectification of nature by stripping the flesh of its spirit. Such reenvisioning is thought to be a pivotal aspect for mitigating the affectual abjectivity of food and recapturing the factual entanglement of body–environment to enable affirmative environmental ethics. (shrink)

Some hold that the revision to directive 58 of the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services—which sought to incorporate the language of Pope John Paul II’s 2004 statement regarding the obligation to provide patients in a persistent vegetative state—represents a threat to patient’s end-of-life decisions. I argue this position is unfounded. The revision to the directive, and the statements that inspired this linguistic modification, do not represent a substantive change in the Church’s teaching. I support this position (...) based on two claims. First, in his statement, the Holy Father speaks of food and water and care personnel’s obligation to provide them as relative to the patient’s status as a person. That is, relative to the patient’s human nature, food and water represent a per se useful means for preserving life and, as such, should be considered ordinary and obligatory. Second, since his teaching is directed toward care personnel, John Paul II does not discuss the patient’s judgment of the means with the assumption that the Tradition has already clearly established the legitimacy of patients refusing means they judge to be extraordinary. Finally, I argue that one of the effects of the Pope’s statement is that it manages to reaffirm the Church’s teaching on euthanasia and ordinary and extraordinary means without institutionalizing a particular theologian’s vision of anthropology. (shrink)

Currently, many consumers have expressed strong opinions about food production process, its distribution, and guaranteeing models. Consumers’ concerns about ecological and social sustainability issues can have significant impacts on both food demand and food policies. The choice of approach to an asset or service could determine the orientation of the markets; therefore, it is particularly important to pay attention to novel, collective, social movements which are practicing alternatives to the mainstream models of production, distribution, and consumption. Farmers (...) markets, solidarity-based purchasing groups, box scheme, shopping groups, ‘pick your own’, social shopping, are all examples of sustainable consumption patterns involving thousands of people seeking quality and ethical products and services at the best price. While a variety of definitions of the concept of ethical consumption have been suggested, throughout this paper it will refer to the participation of consumers in, and their orientation toward, political discourses on sustainable and fair agro-food production. Ethical consumption attitude has been analysed in the framework of political consumerism theory by administering six focus groups among Italian participants of a specific form of collective action, namely the solidarity-based purchasing group. Findings provide insights that represent a fruitful starting point for deepening the analysis of ethical consumers’ behaviour at a broader level in order to sustain and spread eco-socially production practices and ethical consumption behaviour. (shrink)

Citizen petitions and legislative bills in seven states in the US have established space and movement limitations for selected species of farm animals. These actions show Americans becoming concerned about the humane treatment of confined farm animals, and willing to use governmental intervention to preclude existing confinement practices. The individual state provisions vary, including the coverage of species. All seven states deal with sow-gestation crates, five states address veal calf crates, and two states’ provisions also apply to battery cages used (...) for egg-laying hens. The actions show citizen and legislative opposition to current animal production practices, and suggest a movement to provide better treatment for farm animals. Accompanying the actions are challenges for animal production industries in remaining competitive while meeting social expectations on the ethical treatment of food animals. While the actions are only a small step in addressing welfare issues, they may be the beginning of a significant movement to do more to address human and animal welfare issues. (shrink)

The absence of appropriate information about imperceptible and ethical food characteristics limits the opportunities for concerned consumer/citizens to take ethical issues into account during their inescapable food consumption. It also fuels trust crises between producers and consumers, hinders the optimal embedment of innovative technologies, “punishes” in the market ethical producers, and limits the opportunities for politically liberal democratic governance. This paper outlines a framework for the ethical characterization and subsequent optimization of foods (ECHO). The framework applies to “imperceptible,” (...) “pragmatic,” and “reasonable” food characteristics about which consumers/citizens maintain concerns. A political perspective is assumed in that valid information is taken to serve the politically liberal and democratic functions of the market by allowing concerned citizens to make informed choices in their role as food consumers. Information is aggregated by multi-attribute modeling. It takes the form of “maximized” (“utilitarian”) to “most balanced” (MINMAX) non-binary aggregate comparative rankings of perceptibly substitutable food products. The model requires the description of characteristics by means of criteria and weights (structural input), and technical input on the performance of food for these criteria (product input). Structural input is grounded on relevantly concerned citizen/consumers’ perceptions. It is culture and times dependent. Availability of product input is assumed. Uses for the amelioration of the aforementioned limitations are discussed. So long as, and to the extent that, certain ethical concerns are not addressed by public policy, the ECHO framework may facilitate offering members of society a necessary (though not a sufficient) condition for regulating the ethical aspects of food production in self-regulated markets as consumers, when they are constrained to do so through their government as citizens. In doing that, the framework may contribute to the development of the ethical dimension of food production and may bring rewards for food supply actors that take reasonable concerns of citizen/consumers into account. (shrink)

One of the starting assumptions in the debate over the ethical status of animals is that someone who is committed to reducing animal suffering should not eat meat. Steven Davis has recently advanced a novel criticism of this view. He argues that individuals who are committed to reducing animal suffering should not adopt a vegetarian or vegan diet, as Tom Regan an other animal rights advocates claim, but one containing free-range beef. To make his case Davis highlights an overlooked form (...) of animal harm, that done to field animals in crop production. Yet while Davis's argument is ingenious and thought-provoking, it is not a successful challenge to vegetarianism and veganism's status as the diets that most advance animal rights. Scientific studies of crop production that Davis draws on document two different forms of harm done to field animals: those that are directly killed by harvesting equipment and those that are killed by other animals. Once this distinction is made explicit, the degree to which such studies pose a problem for animal protection theory considerably weakens. Davis also overlooks philosophically significant forms of harm to human beings that are present in beef production but not crop harvesting. Finally, he bases his argument on the controversial assumption that there is no difference between deliberate and accidental killing - either of animals or people. Although these problems defeat Davis's attempt to offer an immanent critique of Regan's animal rights position, his analysis does have important dietary ramifications that animal advocates should take into account. (shrink)