Ethics of Food Production and Consumption Page 1 of 16 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). (c) Oxford University Press, 2014. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy ). Subscriber: Oxford University Press - Master Gratis Access; date: 11 July 2014 Subject: Political Science, Political Theory, Public Policy Online Publication Date: Jul 2014 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195397772.013.022 Ethics of Food Production and Consumption Michiel Korthals Oxford Handbooks Online Abstract and Keywords This chapter is from the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Food, Politics, and Society edited by Ronald Herring. Food production and consumption involves ethics, as reflected in prohibitions, refutations, exhortations, recommendations, and even less explicit ethical notions such as whether a certain food product is natural. Food ethics has emerged as an important academic discipline and a branch of philosophy whose underlying goal is to define and elucidate food ethical problems. This article explores the ethics of food production and food consumption. It first presents a historical overview of food and the evolving gap between food production and consumption before discussing a number of quite pressing social concerns associated with the present-day food production system. It then considers concepts and approaches, including agrarianism and pluralism, in the context of two urgent food ethical problems: malnutrition and producing and eating meat. The article also examines food choice, the relationship between food ethics and politics, and the task of food ethics before concluding with a discussion of the future of food and food ethics. Keywords: food, food production, food consumption, food ethics, agrarianism, pluralism, malnutrition, meat, food choice, politics Introduction of Food Ethics: What Ethics Is and Is Not “You should eat this healthy fruit salad!”; “Don’t eat this piece of pork!”; “A farmer should take care of her cows!”; “it is unethical to confront children with junk food advertisements.” With respect to eating and producing food, one is faced several times a day with ethical expressions such as these. Everyday language on food is permeated with prohibitions, refutations, exhortations, recommendations and even less explicit ethical notions such as “this is a natural product.” But people are confronted not only with these personal ethical issues; worldwide hunger, animal disabuse, fair and unfair trade, the role of competition between biofuels and food crops are recurrent topics in newspapers and other media if not daily reality for many. Food and production of food are continuing and disturbing themes in the past, the present and the future; although nowadays they have more urgency then ever due to the increasing gap between producers and consumers which produces a lot of uncertainty on both sides (see the next two sections). Academic food ethics starts with these ethical issues to develop a critical analysis, and in the end, to assist citizens in dealing with them. As a critical discipline, it takes into account various standpoints with respect to agriculture and food, including less dominant ones. However, although academic (food) ethics cannot always avoid moral expressions, it tries to stay away from prescribing a set of answers. Instead, it develops, sometimes provocatively, tools (concepts, strategies, approaches) required to reflect clearly and effectively on the questions themselves. Moreover, in developing these tools, it has to take into account basic empirical issues related to food production, distribution, consumption, and disposal. Food ethics as a critical academic discipline is preceded by movements like vegetarianism, reform movements and farmers’ movements and gets at least partial inspiration from those movements. However, as an academic discipline (which doesn’t exclude that it also has a societal role!), it strives for debate and reflection on the basis of