- Chris MacDonald is a Toronto-based ethicist, professor, speaker and consultant.
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Author Archives: Chris MacDonald
Corporate Ethics, Evidence, and Fructose
Evidence seems to be mounting that not all sugars are created equal. See this story by Leslie Beck, writing for the Globe & Mail: Fructose can trigger cancer cells to grow faster, study finds It’s been blamed for a host … Continue reading
Are Labels the Answer (to Everything)?
An increasing number of issues are generating calls for labelling of food and beverages. In addition to the labelling required by most governments (size, ingredients, nutritional characteristics) there are now calls for labelling nation of origin, carbon footprint, water footprint, … Continue reading
Posted in certifiction, consumerism, labeling
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Food Labelling and Discrimination
Food labelling is generally thought of as kind of an obviously good thing. Labelling provides information. And information, as they say, is power. And (spelling out the unstated premises, here) it is good to give consumers power. But power (as … Continue reading
Posted in farmers, fisheries, labeling, local
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Ethical Birthing for Calves & the Micromanagement of Farming
If you thought the only ethical issue about the treatment of calves was the way veal calves are raised, think again. Here’s the story, from TVNZ: Calf-killing practice sparks mixed debate. A Close Up poll of almost 10,000 people tonight … Continue reading
Posted in agriculture, animal welfare, consumerism, ethics, farmers, values
1 Comment
Natural Chicken
When is a “natural chicken” not a natural chicken, and what does that mean, anyway? Here’s the story, from Food Safety News: The Truth Behind ‘Natural’ Chicken A disagreement among poultry producers about whether chicken injected with salt, water, and … Continue reading
Posted in agriculture, ethics, labeling, nutrition, regulation
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Milk and Meat from the Offspring of Clones
OK, so lots of people are put off by the idea of eating cloned cows or pigs, or drinking the milk of cloned cows. Some of those people have genuine ethical concerns; others are just subject to the “yuck factor.” … Continue reading
Posted in agriculture, animal welfare, biotechnology, cloning, ethics, international, regulation, science
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Safety of Louisiana Fish & Shrimp
In the wake of the BP oil disaster, the fisheries off the Gulf Coast are doubly important. They’re a big source of jobs for folks in the Gulf states, and the health of the shrimp and fish there is an … Continue reading
Posted in ecosystems, environment, ethics, fisheries, regulation, safety
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Ethical Principles for Infant and Young Child Nutrition
Researchers at the McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health in Toronto have recently published a paper advancing ethical principles for the important topic of child nutrition. Here’s the paper, by Jerome Amir Singh, Abdallah S Daar, and Peter A Singer: “Shared … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
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Ethics, Meat Eating, and Animal Pain
From Science Daily: Conflicted Meat-Eaters May Deny That Meat-Animals Have the Capacity to Suffer, Study Finds. A new study from the University of Kent has found that people who wish to escape the ‘meat paradox’ — i.e., simultaneously disliking hurting … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
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Pollan vs Hurst
From Iowa Public Television’s “Market to Market”, Pollan and Hurst Debate the Future of Agriculture (The link goes to a 10-minute video, with transcript.) …nutrition is only one aspect of a larger debate over America’s entire food system. And production … Continue reading
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