The ethics of what we eat

I was lucky enough to win a ‘pay-it-forward’ book from Eat at Dixiebelles – The ethics of what we eat by Peter Singer and Jim Mason. I had avoided reading this for a while, for a few reasons. The first was that I thought I knew what they were going to say (i.e. ethically the only option is veganism) and secondly because once one knows about an issue, it is pretty difficult to ‘unknow’ it. I wasn’t sure I was ready to give up eating meat. However this book is much more than a treatise about animals and veg*ism (vegetarianism/veganism) it runs the gamut of ethical food choices, and even though I thought I ‘knew it all’ (always a mistake!) it gave me a lot to think about.

I was really pleased I took the plunge and read the book. It follows the shopping and eating habits of three American families – one who follows the Standard American Diet (not dissimilar to the Standard Australian Diet if we replace the frozen corn dogs with meat pies) of large quantities of meat, dairy and processed foods. The second family are environmentally aware, conscientious carnivores – within the constraints of time, convenience, availability – they eat meat, but look for free-range products, humanely produced eggs and so on. The third family are vegan, and thus eat no animal products at all.

The book is easy to read – riveting in fact (though perhaps this says more about my life than the book)– it is not bogged down with statistics and data; it intersperses stories of real people with discussions on ethics, farming and food production practices; and, most importantly, the authors do not preach or proselytise. The readers are allowed to draw their own conclusions based on the (admittedly pretty damning) evidence provided. It was difficult to read some sections, at least one of which was flagged as potentially distressing to readers, which were so horrific that I felt slightly ill. However that is rather the point, I guess – if reading about factory farmed chicken is distressing, seeing it would be unbearable, so eating factory farmed chicken and therefore supporting the industry is indefensible. The other section I found difficult to read was the ethics of obesity but only because of a guilty conscience (BTW – I have lost 10 kilos since I stopped my old blog and started walking instead of typing).

What surprised me about the book was the fact that even though many of the ethical issues surrounding food are those related to animal cruelty, there are many other issues I hadn’t thought of as ‘ethical’, or I hadn’t stopped to think through the ramifications of my choices – namely organic and eating local.

The ethics of local food surprised me – one of the issues raised – is it better to buy local if the local product is using more environmental resources than one trucked from further away – tomatoes grown under heating, compared to tomatoes grown naturally at a greater distance? This struck a chord with me, because I recently bought some rice which I had assumed was Australian grown (I’m sure it used to be) only to discover it was grown in Thailand. Initially I was annoyed, because I try to buy Australian where ever possible, but afterwards (trying to justify my mistakeJ) I thought that rice farming in Australia is fairly marginal – drought, problems with irrigation and so on – and perhaps it is better to buy rice from overseas where it can grow better – not to mention supporting farmers in poor countries who need the export market to survive. So I found the sections on fair trade, buying local, supporting farmers in poorer countries (like the Peruvian asparagus farmer we supported by accidently buying imported asparagus at the farmers’ market recently) very interesting.

Another thing that surprised (and pleased) me was the absence of stridency. I was anticipating a hard-sell and an unequivocal stance. The final chapters draw some conclusions about what is best practise, however the authors point out that one does not have to be fanatical about it (I imagine some ‘hard-core’ vegans may have been slightly disappointed by this). The authors mention that personal purity is not the issue, and ‘trivial infractions’ (e.g. traces of milk powder in a muesli bar) of the ethical guidelines are not such a big deal. They also acknowledge that some/most people are probably not going to become veg*ns, however everyone has the ability to make better, more ethical, food choices. The book is written in such a way that the premise of the book is made clearly, but without belittling any participants’ (families, farmers, food producers, not even fast food McCorporations ;)) current practices, and the reader is left feeling empowered to make choices, rather than feeling browbeaten.

I would strongly recommend this book, even for those who, like me, think they know it all.

Next post I will write about our family food choices. I will be paying forward a book at some point in the very near future – maybe this book (once I have loaned it out around here) or perhaps something else.