by Peter Singer and Jim Mason
reviewed by Caroline Pufalt
At least three times a day we make significant choices that effect the environment. Authors Peter Singer and Jim Mason state that: “No other human activity has had as great an impact on our planet as agriculture. When we buy food we are taking part in a vast global industry. Americans spend more than a trillion dollars on food every year. That’s more than double what they spend on motor vehicles, and more than double what the government spends on defense”
Unfortunately the global food industry produces pollution, causes loss of wildlife on land and sea and causes untold suffering of farm animals - many reared in totally artificial factory conditions.
Our mega- agricultural system also harms and exploits many human beings. It has displaced family farmers, it dehumanizes workers in factory farms and slaughter houses, and ironically it has contributed to obesity and other diet related health problems.
However, we need to eat and cannot all grow our own food, so how can we make the best ethical choices given today’s global food industry? Authors Peter Singer and Jim Mason are well placed to help us answer this question. Many readers may recall Peter Singer as the well known and controversial philosopher, ethicist and animal rights advocate. And we as Missourians need to know Jim Mason. He is a Missouri native whose family roots go back for five generations of farming in southwest Missouri. Mason is an attorney who currently lives in Virginia. But he has not forgotten his family farm roots. He and Singer collaborated earlier on a book called Farm Factories, one of the earliest works to expose the horrors of factory farming.
In their discussion of factory farming, especially as related to poultry, Mason draws on his experiences in MO and even mentions the Sierra Club’s work against factory farming - also called confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs). CAFOs have a bad reputation in that their growth has harmed many family farms, they generally make annoying neighbors and keep animals in unspeakable conditions. Recent information also suggests they may harm human health. For many years there has been concern about the large amounts of antibiotics used in CAFOs. Conditions for the animals are so poor and crowded that sickness is a constant risk. Now, even more recently than the publication of Singer and Mason’s book comes a study that suggests a link between CAFOs and a deadly antibiotic resistant strain of staph infection (MRSA). See the Nov 2007 issue of Veterinary Microbiology for more.
For Singer and Mason, it’s a no brainer - meat from a factory farm is a unethical choice.
In their search to explore ethical food choices Singer and Mason follow the food choices of three families and the impacts of their choices. One family’s diet is fairly traditional, another less meat centered and the third is vegan. The authors consider the environmental, social justice and animal welfare impacts of various choices and their analysis can be quite complex.
For example, while they accept the premise that buying local is usually a good choice, they also consider seasonal choices, energy and transportation costs and the global market. The end result is that buying locally and in season is almost always a good choice. But purchasing fairly traded goods from developing countries is also valued - and there are more than coffee and chocolate fair trade choices.
The authors devote attention to sorting out the claims made regarding several aspects of farming.
They seem to enjoy, for example, tracking down the facts behind various statistics regarding how much water it takes to produce a pound of beef, pork, poultry or vegetable protein. The results are useful - of course the vegetable protein is most efficient - and the analysis exposes some of the pitfalls of the casual and sometimes purposely deceptive use of statistics in public discussion.
Singer and Mason evaluate the environmental impacts of food choices in some detail. But their view includes other values as well. Fortunately those values rarely conflict. They summarize their goal as that of providing a guide to eating ethically without being fanatical. And they succeed.
Our daily food choices are truly a way in which we can make a difference. And if we want to go a step further and lobby for more responsible farming practices and more sustainable agriculture, Singer and Mason’s book also provides a guide to organizations which can help.
The Sierra Club Guide to Sustainable Eating
Of course one organization which supports ethical and sustainable food choices is us - the Sierra Club. Did you know that you can even find recipes on the Club’s website? The Club has a national level volunteer entity called the Sustainable Consumption Committee. They have developed a segment on the website dedicated to “the true cost of food”. To check out recipe ideas and solutions visit:
www.sierraclub.org/sustainable_consumption/ and then click on the “true cost of food”.
Singer and Mason’s five principles for making conscientious food choices are:
- Transparency: we have the right to know how our food is produced.
- Fairness: producing food should not impose costs on others or unsustainable costs on the environment.
- Humanity: food should be produced without inflicting unnecessary suffering on animals
- Social responsibility: workers are entitled to fair wages and working conditions
- Preserving life and health justifies more than other desires: this means that the need for good nutrition is important and may sometimes “trump”other values. But we should not choose food that violates principles 1-4 when other nutritious food options that do not are available.