Food ethics

Food ethics is the field of ethical analysis and guidance in producing, distributing, preparing, and consuming food. Food ethics issues have been given increased attention in the United States since the early-twentieth-century development of technology that has affected agriculture, processing and manufacturing of food, and human-food interactions. Food ethics takes into consideration a number of elements including political developments, public health, attitudes toward food, and patterns of consumption.

Issues of food ethics often involve concerns about animal welfare, the environment, human health, and fair trade. For example, many people choose to avoid eating meat or animal products because they believe animals have rights equal to humans, they do not agree with killing animals for food, or they are opposed to large-scale production of food that they believe does not treat animals humanely. Some people may oppose eating pork from an industrial pig farm, where animals are kept in relatively small pens, but have no objection to eating meat from a family farm where animals roam in pastures. Many consumers eschew products made by corporations if the individuals disagree with the company’s political or social decisions. Others select goods with a fair-trade label because they wish to support the workers at the beginning of the food production chain. Food ethics relies on many interrelated factors.

Background

Values are the basic beliefs an individual has that guide one’s actions—what is right and what is wrong. Ethics are the standards one sets that determine how one lives—the choice to act based on one’s beliefs of right and wrong. Choices are ethical when they rely on values (for example: is it wrong to harm others?), can be argued about, and are made after considering the short- and long-term consequences.

Food ethics has a long history. The ancient Greeks adhered to the principle of kata physin, which means to live in accordance with nature. Nature and temperance, or moderation, were regarded as interconnected ideas, so living according to nature meant moderation. This distinction allowed the elite—who generally considered themselves moral—to separate themselves from the masses. Ordinary citizens lived with food insecurity. At times they feasted, at times they starved. The masses did not choose when to gorge or deprive themselves; they were at the mercy of nature and fate. The elite believed they should be moderate at all times, neither depriving themselves nor feasting with abandon, because they always had the choice.

Likewise, ancient Hebrew food laws set those who adhere to the law apart from those who do not. Food laws in the Hebrew Bible establish what is acceptable and unacceptable. For example, the Hebrew Bible states that among the larger land animals, any hoofed animals with cloven hoofs that chew their cud may be eaten. Meanwhile, hoofed animals that only have cloven hoofs or only chew their cud may not be eaten. By this definition, beef is kosher (clean or pure), but pork is unclean. The law sets Jewish people apart from gentiles.

The advent of Christianity in the first century completely waived Hebrew restrictions. Food is not unclean in itself, nor is it important in itself. During the Middle Ages, Christians believed humankind was weak. Mastering one’s desires for food was a way to master oneself—to put to death one’s sinful nature—and for a time, monastic self-deprivation was admirable. Many modern Christians deprive themselves of foods when they fast, such as during Lent.

Overview

Before modern times, the field of food ethics was concerned with consumption of food. Modern debates, however, generally focus on food-production issues. This shift occurred with technological advances in agriculture of the nineteenth century. Agricultural production moved from rural communities that produced what they needed to a capitalist system of large-scale farming operations that produced food for communities far away. Many people no longer had a direct connection to the people and places that produced their food.

A number of twentieth-century writers gave consumers insight into food production. Upton Sinclair (1878–1968) described in his 1904 novel The Jungle the process by which live pigs moved through a Chicago meat factory. Machines slaughtered them, and hours later, the animals were in cans and packages headed to consumers. Sinclair detailed the exploitation of the animals and the factory workers, opening the public’s eyes to the industry and practices that put bacon on the breakfast tables. The novel exposed the moral dilemma of supporting the meat industry. Marine biologist and writer Rachel Carson created environmental awareness when she published Silent Spring in 1962. Her book exposed the dangers of DDT and its effects on the environment. The pesticide was approved to kill hundreds of types of insects, but killed both pests and beneficial insects. DDT remained on crops for weeks or months, entered the food chain, and built up in the fatty tissues of animals, including humans. Carson raised public awareness of this and other chemicals, and inspired the public to demand information about how food is produced. It also led to the eventual outlawing of the use of DDT in the United States in 1972.

Science is another factor in modern food-ethics discussions. These often address temperance, now known as dietetics, or the logic of more and less. The issue is heavily influenced by measuring and labeling practices, thanks to a 1885 discovery by physiologist Max Rubner (1854–1932). Rubner discovered that one gram of protein and one gram of carbohydrate each supply about 4.1 calories of energy. He calculated the correlation between intake and body weight, and proved that the form in which a person takes in a calorie is irrelevant.

Many consumers have secular beliefs that cause them to view foods as clean or unclean. Vegetarians often see animal products as intrinsically contaminated. This contamination may be related to beliefs in animal rights or to dietetics; cows and pigs often consume many more calories than they produce as food, therefore it is unethical to consume them. Some consumers regard foods as highly contaminated by pesticides, artificial fertilizers, genetic modification, preservatives, and processing.

Many consumers concerned about the denaturalization of food demand green labels—organic, pesticide-free, and free-range, for example—while others prefer labels authenticating the sourcing of food. Fair-trade labels seek to assure customers that the workers at the start of production of their chocolate, coffee, and other products are paid a fair wage. Following reports in 2015 that more than two million children were working in slave conditions in the cocoa industry in Ghana and the Ivory Coast, many consumers demanded their fair-trade cocoa also be slave-labor free. Many manufacturers responded to these demands.

While food ethics remains an individual decision, public awareness has influenced production and labeling. This provides consumers with more information to make their choices.

Bibliography

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Barnhill, Anne, Tyler Doggett, and Mark Budolfson, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Food Ethics. Oxford UP, 2018.

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Singer, Peter. Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals. HarperCollins 1975.

“The Story of Silent Spring.” Natural Resource Defense Council, 13 Aug. 2015, www.nrdc.org/stories/story-silent-spring. Accessed 1 Feb. 2025.

Varzakas, Theodoros, and Maria Antoniadou. “A Holistic Approach for Ethics and Sustainability in the Food Chain: The Gateway to Oral and Systemic Health.” Foods (Basel, Switzerland) vol. 13,8. 17 Apr. 2024, doi:10.3390/foods13081224. Accessed 1 Feb. 2025.

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