Review: The Ethics of What We Eat

I’ve just finished reading The Ethics of What We Eat, by Peter Singer, an ethicist, and Jim Mason, a journalist and lawyer, who are both animal liberationists. It investigates the food choices of 3 American families to see where it comes from, and what the ethical implications of their choices are. The book includes facts and figures for Australian audiences when it’s different from the USA statistics.

The first of the three families eats a standard American diet, the second are conscientious omnivores, and the third family are vegans. Singer and Mason use this as an opportunity to investigate factory farms, fast food chains, sustainable farming, genetically-modified food, dumpster diving and all sorts of interesting food factors in-between.

Along the way they discuss the different factors that need to be considered in ethical eating: animal rights, obviously, but also social justice and environmental issues. They discuss the decision to be made between buying local and buying fair-trade items from overseas, and give some guidelines that I found useful. They also talk about the various meanings and regulations involved in the organic food trade.

Finally they conclude that a vegan diet is the best ethical choice, as is expected from Singer, a famous animal rights advocate. However they also acknowledge that being a purist is difficult, and a more practical option for many people will be making a series of thoughtful and careful ethical decisions that bring you closer to the vegan end of the food spectrum.

I’d put myself in the conscientious omnivore category, and am always interested in discussions about the ethics of food. However, I wasn’t entirely convinced by Singer and Mason’s arguments for veganism. Other authors, including Michael Pollan (who I’ve reviewed previously), have offered defences of eating meat. Singer and Mason discuss these arguments, but I didn’t feel that they were adequately addressing them.

Their best argument, in my opinion, is that drawing a line of not-eating-meat or not-eating-animal-products is actually a simpler and easier task than always assessing whether the meat, eggs or dairy you’re eating meets your ethical requirements. This certainly appeals to my lazier side! And I’ll admit to having almost completely given up on fish because it’s so difficult to get good information.

Recommended?
The Ethics of What We Eat is very useful and informative, especially on factory farming and fair-trade considerations. It’s well worth a read for this reason alone, and you may find the authors more convincing on the topic of veganism than I did. If you’re interested in the reasons why some people become vegetarian or vegan, you won’t find a clearer or better explanation than in this book.

In addition to this, the stories of each family were interesting, as were the interviews with various food producers. The Australian data is also very useful in helping you make the choice among organic, local, fair-trade and the other options we see when food-shopping.

A review of the book in The Age has more information on the Australian situation. Or you can check out the publisher’s website for details.