Introduction to Ethics and Food Systems
Fall 2017, University of Vermont (PHIL 010: Food Ethics)
Office Hours: Tues and Thurs 1:40-2:40pm and by appointment
Course Description
This course provides an introduction to ethics through the lens of food systems. It also includes modules on the ethics of ending life, and on sustainability. (Students should verify that they are comfortable with course that includes a module on abortion and ending life.)
In more detail, this course explores the different ethical issues that arise in the context of our food choices both at the level of personal decision-making and at the level of public policy. We address questions such as: what sorts of ethical obligations do we have to those who produce our food? Are the food choices we make ethically constrained by our obligations to preserve the environment or to preserve our own health and, if so, how are they constrained? Is it ethically permissible to eat meat? Is the government ethically permitted or even obligated to regulate our personal food choices (e.g. by regulating the volume of single serving soft drinks)? To what extent is a government like ours obligated to ensure that people have adequate access to food?
This course has two, related educational aims (goals, objectives). The first is to prepare you to begin developing and defending your own answers to these and other questions in the domain of food ethics. The second is to equip you with a certain set of skills: both in preparing for class, in your writing, and through class discussion and group work, you will develop your ability to (1) communicate clearly and concisely, (2) reconstruct arguments for a position or view from a piece of text, (3) critically evaluate arguments, (4) construct persuasive arguments of your own in defense of a position or view, and (5) anticipate and address potential objections to arguments that you find persuasive. Although deploying these skills will be crucial in your effort to advance your own thinking about the questions in food ethics that we will discuss in this class, developing these skills has independent value as they can also be usefully applied in a variety of different domains outside of philosophy.
Optional Textbook
Anne Barnhill et al., Food, Ethics, and Society, Oxford UP, 2016 (Readings below are marked 'T' if they are in this textbook.)
Readings (Only Numbered Readings are Required)
August 29: Overview of Course Outcomes; Collective Ethics vs. Production Ethics vs. Consumer Ethics
1. Introduction to Chapter 1: The Ethically Troubling Food System (T)
Optional: Milton Friedman, "The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits" (not in T)
August 31: Intensive Industrial Animal Agriculture and Empirical Premises about Animal Welfare
1. Jonathan Safran Foer, "The Truth About Eating Animals" (T)
2. Humane Society of the United States, "The Welfare of Animals in the Meat, Egg, and Dairy Industries" (T)
Optional: Introduction to Chapter 7: Industrial Animal Agriculture (T)
Optional: selection from Gilovich et. al., Social Psychology, 1st ed. (introduction to social psychology textbook) (not in T)
September 5, 7, 12: The Ethics of Ending Life; the Nature of Basic Rights
1. Judith Jarvis Thomson, "A Defense of Abortion" (not in T)
Optional: Michael Tooley, "Are Non-Human Animals Persons?" (not in T)
September 14: Objections to Thomson's Arguments
1. Michael Tooley, objections to Thomson on abortion (not in T) (note that this provides an excellent model for how to write your own philosophy papers in this course)
Optional: Carol Kaesuk Yoon, "No face, but plants like life too" (T)
September 19: Utilitarianism; Singer on Expanding the Moral Circle and Speciesism
1. Peter Singer, "All Animals are Equal" (T)
September 21: Singer vs. Tannsjo on the Implications of Utilitarianism; Total Utilitarianism vs. Average Utilitariansim
1. Torbjorn Tannsjo, "It's getting better all the time" (T)
FIRST PAPER ASSIGNMENT: due Sunday, October 1 at 11:59pm via email
September 26: No In-Class Meeting; Non-utilitarian Approaches to Animal Ethics
1. Roger Scruton, "Eating Our Friends" (T)
Optional: Matt Halteman, "Compassionate Eating as Care of Creation" (T)
Work on First Paper Assignment
September 28: Consumer Ethics; Non-utilitarian Vegan Arguments
1. Tristram McPherson, "How to Argue for (and against) Ethical Veganism" (T) (note that this provides an excellent model for how to write your own philosophy papers in this course)
Optional: Introduction to Chapter 7: Industrial Animal Agriculture (T)
October 1: First Paper Assignment is due at 11:59pm via email
October 3: Consumer Ethics and the Inefficacy Objection
If your class begins at 11:40am, we are meeting directly at the Intervale to glean (meet in the lot at 114 Intervale Rd at 11:50am (gives you time to get there), first on the left as you enter the area). Otherwise if your class is at 2:50, we are meeting in the normal class location.
(Optional: USDA fact sheet on gleaning; Optional: Info on Intervale gleaning initiative and its goals.)
1. Grace Boey, "Eating Animals and Personal Guilt" (T)
Optional: Introduction to Chapter 4: Consumer Ethics (i.e. pages 165-186) (T)
October 5: Kantian non-utilitarian theories of Animal Ethics and Consumer Ethics
1. Christine Korsgaard, "Getting Animals in View" (T)
2. Eliot Michaelson, "A Kantian Response to Futility Worries?" (T)
3. Read pp. 176-178 (only) on Kantian and other deontological theories of consumer ethics in the Introduction to Chapter 4: Consumer Ethics
October 10: Production Ethics; Ideal vs. Non-Ideal Theory; Industrial Plant Ag and the Ethics of Feeding the World
1. Kenneth Weiss, "As World Population Grows, Hunger Persists on a Massive Scale" (T)
2. pp. 333-335 (only) of the Introduction to Chapter 7: Industrial Animal Agriculture (T)
3. pp. 407-423 (only) of the Introduction to Chapter 9: Industrial Plant Agriculture (T)
October 12: Industrial Plant Ag and Empirical Premises about Feeding the World
1. David Tilman et al., "Global Food Demand and the Sustainable Intensification of Agriculture" (not in T)
2. Norman Borlaug, "Feeding a World of Ten Billion People" (T)
Optional: "Your Questions about Food and Climate Change, Answered" New York Times (not in T)
October 17: Global Hunger
If your class begins at 2:50pm, we are meeting directly at the Intervale to glean (meet in the lot at 114 Intervale Rd at 3pm (gives you time to get there), first on the left as you enter the area). Otherwise if your class is at 11:40am, we are meeting in the normal class location.
1. Pages 36-47 of the Introduction to Chapter 2: Global Hunger (T) (only pp. 36-47)
Optional: USDA fact sheet on gleaning
Optional: Info on Intervale gleaning initiative and its goals.)
October 19: Food Security
1. Pages 47-57 of the Introduction to Chapter 2: Global Hunger (T) (only pp. 47-57)
2. Amartya Sen, "Hunger and Entitlements" (T)
3. USAID factsheet on the importance for food security of water, sanitation, and hygiene, 2013 (not in T)
Note: these public health sources agree that proper nutrition requires more than adequate intake of food; on this basis, USAID claims that food security should be understood as requiring more than reliably adequate dietary intake; nonetheless, global and national definitions of 'food security' that guide policy typically take only dietary intake into account -- for example, see FAO and USDA
MIDTERM EXAM: due Sunday, October 29 at 11:59pm via email
October 24: Why Adequate Food Access is Insufficient for Proper Nutrition, Importance of Early Childhood Nutrition and other factors for Future Life Outcomes
Optional: Lisa Belkin (and Annie Murphy Paul), "A Womb With a View" (not in T)
Optional: Douglas Almond and Janet Currie, "Killing Me Softly: The Fetal Origins Hypothesis" (not in T) (feel free to skip 158-160)
Optional: "Sanitation and Stunting", Research Institute for Compassionate Economics (not in T)
October 26: Singer's Argument for a Demanding Duty of Beneficence to Help the Global Poor
1. Peter Singer, "Famine, Affluence, and Morality" (T)
2. Browse www.givewell.org (not in T)
Recommended: Reread pages 36-47 of the Introduction to Chapter 2: Global Hunger (T)
Optional: "Philanthropy In Silicon Valley" (not in T)
October 29: Midterm Exam is due at 11:59pm via email
October 31 and November 2: Objections to the Empirical Premise of Singer's Argument, and Replies
1. Page 38 and pages 57-59 of the Introduction to Chapter 2: Global Hunger (T) (only pp. 38 and 57-59)
2. Angus Deaton, "Response to Effective Altruism" (T)
3. Bill Gates, "The Great Escape is an Excellent Book With One Big Flaw" (T)
Optional: Angus Deaton, "How to Help Those Left Behind" (not in T)
Optional: Kimiko de Freytas Tamura, "For Dignity and Development, East Africa Curbs Used Clothes Imports", New York Times, 12 October 2017
November 7: Sustainability and the Tragedy of the Commons
1. Pages 47-52 of Introduction to Chapter 2: Global Hunger (T)
2. Garrett Hardin, "The Tragedy of the Commons" (not in T)
Optional: Amartya Sen, "Population, Food, and Freedom" (not in T)
Optional: Paul Ehrlich, "Overpopulation and the collapse of civilization" (T)
November 9: Sustainability and Self-Government of Common Resources
Recommended: Handout on Hardin and Ostrom
1. Elinor Ostrom et al. "Revisiting the Commons" (not in T)
2. Pages 13-23 of Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons (not in T)
Optional: Strong vs. weak sustainability -- and is sustainability worth focusing on? (not in T)
Optional: Some definitions of sustainability (not in T)
Optional: More definitions of sustainability (not in T)
Optional: James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (not in T)
SECOND PAPER ASSIGNMENT: due Sunday, November 21 at 11:59pm via email
November 14: Ethics and Local Food
Recommended: Handout on Hardin and Ostrom
1. Elinor Ostrom et al. "Revisiting the Commons" (not in T)
2. Pages 13-23 of Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons (not in T)
Optional: Strong vs. weak sustainability -- and is sustainability worth focusing on? (not in T)
November 16: No Class: Work on second paper assignment, get feedback from other students
November 21: Second paper assignment due at 11:59pm via email
November 20-24: No Class: Thanksgiving Break
November 28: Ethics and Organics, Food Sovereignty, and Local Food
1. Page 416 (only) of the Introduction to Chapter 9: Industrial Plant Agriculture (T)
2. Introduction to Chapter 10: Alternatives to Industrial Plant Agriculture (i.e. pages 459-473) (T)
3. Helena de Bres, "Local Food: The Moral Case" (T)
Optional: Bill McKibben, "A Grand Experiment" (T)
Optional: Paul Thompson, "Food Security and Food Sovereignty" (T)
Optional: Joan Dye Gussow, "The Real Story of 'O'" (T)
Optional: Fred Kirschenmann, "Can Organic Agriculture Feed the World? And Is That the Right Question?" (T)
Optional: Pierre Desrochers et. al., selections from The Locavore's Dilemma (T)
November 30: Domestic Food Justice -- i.e. Justice Within Our Nation's Food System; Oppression and Injustice
1. Pages 92-101 (only) of the Introduction to Chapter 3: Food Justice (T)
2. Iris Marion Young, "Five Faces of Oppression" (T)
Optional: Mariana Chilton, "Witnesses to Hunger and FRAC, Angel's Story" (T)
Optional: Carol Adams, "The Sexual Politics of Meat" (T)
FINAL EXAM and FINAL PAPER: due via email at the university-assigned final exam times (listed further below)
December 5: Farmers, Farm Workers, and Food Justice
1. Page 179 (only) of the Introduction to Chapter 4: Consumer Ethics (T)
2a. Either read: Barry Estabrook, "The Price of Tomatoes" (T),
2b. Or read: Seth Holmes, "Farm Workers" (T) (or if you prefer, you can watch this video of Seth Holmes speaking on this topic instead)
Recommended: reread Iris Marion Young, "Five Faces of Oppression" (T)
Optional: Introduction to Chapter 11: Workers (T) (i.e. pages 519-529)
Optional: Alan Wertheimer, "The Value of Consent" (T)
Optional: Hallie Liberto, "Exploitation and the Vulnerability Clause" (T)
December 7: What should you do? What should we do? The Role of Entrepreneurship and Civil Society
1. Reread pages 469-473 of Introduction to Chapter 10: Alternatives to Industrial Plant Agriculture (discussion of sustainable intensification) (T)
Andrea Solazzo visit
Optional: Reread pages 333-335 (only) of the Introduction to Chapter 7: Industrial Animal Agriculture (discussion of ideal vs. non-ideal theory) (T)
Optional: Julie Guthman, "If Only They Knew: The Unbearable Whiteness of Alternative Food" (T)
Optional: Austin Kiessig, "What 'Big Ideas' in Food Get Funded in Silicon Valley?" (T)
Optional: Michelle Paratore, "Rising to the Food Waste Challenge" (T)
Optional: Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, selections from Nudge (T)
Optional: Elizabeth Devitt, "Artificial chicken grown from cells gets a taste test -- but who will regulate it?" (not in T)
Optional: EWG Food Scores Methodology (not in T)
Optional: IMMP 25th Anniversary Report on Dolphin Safe Tuna (not in T)
Optional: Stanford panel on meat without animals (not in T)
Optional: Marion Nestle, "Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production: Update" (T)
FINAL EXAM and FINAL PAPER: due via email at the university-assigned final exam time:
92081 PHIL 010 J GP Intro Phil: Ethics of Eating 11-DEC-2017 1330 1615 L/L-A A161
92082 PHIL 010 K GP Intro Phil: Ethics of Eating 14-DEC-2017 1030 1315 LAFAYE L107
Additional Resources
Peter Singer and Jim Mason, The Ethics of What We Eat, Rodale, 2006 (on reserve at library)
Ronald Sandler, Food Ethics: The Basics, Routledge, 2015 (on reserve at library)
Marion Nestle, Food Politics, website
The Dish, www.citymarket.coop/dish
Gordon Conway, One Billion Hungry: Can We Feed the World?, Cornell UP, 2012 (on reserve at library)
Food, Ethics, and Global Society, course at UVM, taught by Mark Budolfson
Effective Altruism, online course with lectures at Princeton, taught by Peter Singer
The Ethics of Eating, online course with lectures at Cornell, taught by Andrew Chignell
National Geographic, The Future of Food, Multi-Article Series