The Complex Politics of Food Ethics

Posted on February 11, 2012 by

Here’s a useful short piece by James McWilliams, writing for The Atlantic: Meat: What Big Agriculture and the Ethical Butcher Have in Common

I’ve repeatedly argued that supporting alternatives to the industrial production of animal products serves the ultimate interest of industrial producers. The decision to eat animal products sourced from small, local, and sustainable farms might seem like a fundamental rejection of big business as usual. It is, however, an implicit but powerful confirmation of the single most critical behavior necessary to the perpetuation of factory farming: eating animals….

One of the most interesting points McWilliams makes here has to do with the complexity of interests in this area. The ethical pros and cons of eating meat — or of different levels or styles of meat consumption — is far from a simple matter of “us vs. them.” The key players here include:

  • regular consumers
  • self-professed foodies
  • big ag
  • The Humane Society (and other similar groups)
  • industry front groups like the Center for Consumer Freedom

And of course, there’s plenty of diversity of intentions and values within each of those groups. Each of these groups has interests that overlap with those of other groups, but that overlap is always very incomplete. And as McWilliams points out, it’s entirely possible for one group (e.g., big ag) to point to the sliver of overlap that it has with some other group as a way of promoting its own interests.

(For those who don’t know, McWilliams is author of Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly.)

Posted in agriculture, animal rights, animal welfare, ethics, meat, values

Sources of Calories and Diet-Industry Ethics

Posted on January 29, 2012 by

This is interesting, and confirms my non-scientist’s suspicion. It turns out that (at least according to this one study) calories count, but not where they come from. The basic finding is that if you’re trying to lose weight, what matters is your total caloric intake (and output), rather than whether your calories come mostly from carbs, protein, fats, etc.

And if the exact source doesn’t matter much, then it doesn’t make much sense to force yourself not to eat things you enjoy just because they contain whichever nutrient (carbs, protein, fats, etc.) some supposed diet guru tells you is evil.

Of course, this study doesn’t prove that certain sources of calories don’t have a biological tendency to promote fat storage, etc. That might still be true. What the study does support is that in the lives of real people trying to lose weight, the source of calories doesn’t matter nearly as much as the total calorie count does. And surely that’s what really matters.

This finding raises interesting ethical questions, naturally, for those who promote particular diets, especially ones that have as their foundation an attempt to demonize particular sources of calories. If you’re promoting a low-carb diet, for example, this new evidence should give you pause.

Posted in calories, diets, ethics, health, nutrition | 7 Comments

Backyard Chicken Ethics

Posted on January 25, 2012 by

Photo credit: Trish Tervit

As far as food goes, you can’t get much more “local” than raising chickens in your own backyard. But many cities forbid the practice. Zoning laws generally prescribe where you can and cannot raise animals for food. But such laws are not uniformly enforced, and when they are enforced the reason is not always entirely clear.

See this recent story by David Rider, for the Toronto Star:
Toronto’s backyard chicken farmers wait for the sky to fall

The story explores the plight of those Torontonians who opt to raise chickens in their backyards, a practice forbidden under Section 349 of the city’s Municipal Code. The focus is on the 3 chickens raised by Trish Tervit and her daughters.

What are we to think, ethically, of this lawless behaviour? I’m sympathetic. The ban on backyard agriculture is exceedingly broad, and (as far as I can see) goes beyond whatever public-policy objectives those who drafted it could reasonably have had in mind. Limits on the number of chickens raised, or chicken “density,” perhaps, would make sense. An outright ban does not.

It’s also worth noting that this is an example of the very best kind of law-breaking, namely the rather open form of law-breaking in which the law-breaker violates what she sees as an unjust law, and does so publicly, happily risking the consequences of her behaviour. It is, in other words, a minor form of civil disobedience.

What values lie behind this bit of backyard activism? In Tervit’s words, “…it’s teaching kids a little about where their food comes from, that there are ways to sustain yourself, and that chickens can walk around and eat grass and be chickens, as opposed to other ways egg production takes place.” So the objective, here is educational — generally, a worthy kind of goal. But the bigger point, here, ethically, is that when the relevant behaviour doesn’t hurt anyone else, there shouldn’t be a law against it in the first place.

(For more on these themes, see my earlier posting on “What’s the Point of Urban Farming?”)
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Disclosure: Trish is a friend of mine. The eggs are delicious!

Posted in agriculture, kids, law, local, urban farming, values | 2 Comments

Paula Deen’s Ethics

Posted on January 19, 2012 by

Paula Deen is under fire for failing to announce promptly enough that she has Type 2 diabetes.

My first impression:
The kind of food Deen promoted was unhealthy 5 years ago.
It was unhealthy the day she was diagnosed.
It is still an unhealthy style of cooking today.

Her having diabetes doesn’t change any of that.

Information about her on health is personal information, and she’s under no obligation to reveal it. The real question is whether it was socially-responsible of her to promote such food in the first place.

Posted in diets, ethics, health, media | 2 Comments

Pricing Whales

Posted on January 14, 2012 by

Is it a good idea, or a bad idea, for whale advocates to put their money where their mouths are?

From Wired: A Market Proposal for Saving Whales

Despite the best efforts of activists, more whales are killed now than two decades ago. To people who think killing the majestic creatures is wrong, it’s a tragic state of affairs — but perhaps markets could sort it out.

That’s the premise of a controversial proposal floated Jan. 11 in the high-profile journal Nature. Hunters could buy the right to kill whales. Conservationists could pay to save them….

The idea has something to be said for it. After all, it’s easy to say you care about saving some species, but when someone else’s livelihood depends on harvesting that species, you need to have more than a preference that they stop. And besides, there’s the chance that this scheme just might work where other tactics have failed.

(People who don’t think of whales as food may wonder why this topic fits the mandate of the Food Ethics Blog. But the purpose of most modern whaling is in fact to acquire whale meat.)

But at least 3 problems occur to me:

1. As the Wired article points out, one fundamental problem has to do with the moral status of whales. If whales are as sentient as many people think they are, then creating a market in them is akin to creating a market in humans — and hence seriously morally problematic.

2. Moral status of whales aside, the scheme might set a dangerous precedent. Anyone wanting to squeeze money out of activists could in theory start hunting the activist’s favourite critter, and insist on being paid to stop.

3. There’s a worry about the relative bargaining power of the whale hunters and the activists. If whalers are currently making $20 million / year, activists might say “sure, we can match that.” But what’s then to stop whalers from asking for $25 million next year?

Posted in ethics | 4 Comments

Horse Meat Controversy

Posted on December 22, 2011 by

CTV News reported yesterday that a hidden-camera video has spurred new calls for a ban on horse meat in Canada:

Animal rights groups are calling for a ban on the sale of horse meat after disturbing video at a slaughterhouse in west Quebec was sent to the Canadian Horse Defence Coalition.

The footage was shot with a hidden camera inside Les Viandes de la Petite Nation near Montebello. It shows a parade of horses being stunned with what’s called a captive bolt pistol.

At one point, a worker can be seen stunning a horse and waving goodbye. Under Canadian laws, one shot is supposed to render the horse unconscious but it often doesn’t happen. Captured on video, is one horse being stunned 11 times….

Of course, nothing in the story explains why horses should be thought of any differently from cows or pigs. The fact that they’re pretty, and that we humans easily forge emotional bonds with them, shouldn’t much matter. Or should it? For an alternative point of view, see this NYT review of LOVING ANIMALS: Toward a New Animal Advocacy.

Posted in ethics | 2 Comments

The Ethics of the Cost of Ethical Food

Posted on September 25, 2011 by

It’s bad if high prices get in the way of eating a) well or b) ethically, and there are plenty of myths about both. And today alone I’ve read two interesting pieces on the price of food.

First, the NYT’s Mark Bittman asks, Is Junk Food Really Cheaper? The answer, Bittman says, is “no.” Or at least, it needn’t be cheaper. A nutritious home-cooked meal can pretty easily be cheaper than a trip to McDonald’s, but more people need to stop thinking of cooking as a chore.

The second piece was by Rob O’Flanagan, writing for the Guelph Mercury: Bemoaning the high cost of ethical food

In quite recent times I’ve become a more conscientious consumer of food, avoiding processed food, junk food and sugary food, careful to buy local, raw, organic, fresh, chemical-free, free-range, Ontario-grown . . . all of those terms that presumably differentiate between evil and ethical food.

But the cost of it all is starting to bug me….

“At the farmers’ market it is assumed one is willing to pay a premium for certain things,” says O’Flanagan, “But are we being unfairly made to pay more?” A lot of people buying at the farmer’s market, says O’Flanagan, aren’t paying extra for better nutrition; they’re “paying for status”. That’s roughly the line that Andrew Potter, author of The Authenticity Hoax, takes: buying organic (etc. etc.) is, at least for many people, essentially a form of status-seeking.

But of course, that realization doesn’t make all arguments about better-and-worse ways to produce food simply disappear. There are still reasons to pay attention to food ethics, and in some cases, at least, good reasons to be willing to pay more. O’Flanagan says he’s willing to do his part, but warns that those who sell what he considers “ethical” food mustn’t engage in price-gouging:

I’m willing to do the right thing by buying ethical food. I expect vendors to do the right thing and not price the stuff through the roof.

Part of the problem, though, is that consumers are pretty limited in their ability to detect price-gouging. Most of us don’t understand very well the business models of the businesses (large or small) that we buy our food from. (See my recent blog entry on the not-so-obvious factors that go into the Price of a Cocktail.) In many cases, producers of a given product don’t have much real choice about what they charge — they need to cover their costs, but they can’t charge more than what consumers are willing to pay (which is in part determined by the forces of competition).

One last thought: when you pay extra for what you take to be ethical food — and in many cases that’s a highly dubious label — you absolutely must consider what economists call the “opportunity cost” of that food. That is, every dollar you spend on food that someone tells you is more ethical is a dollar you’re not spending on education, on art, or on donating to worthy causes. That’s not a reason not to buy “ethical” foods. But it is a reason not to reach reflexively for your wallet every time someone tells you this or that product is “more ethical.”

Posted in consumerism, ethics, farmers markets, local, marketing, organic, prices, values | 3 Comments