Chew the right thing, ethical diets

Mother Jones Magazine May 3, 2006

http://www.motherjones.com/interview/2006/04/peter_singer.html

Chew the Right Thing

The philosopher talks about ethical eating,

fast-food burritos, and why local food is

overhyped.

By Dave Gilson

For Peter Singer, the unexamined meal is not

worth eating. Over the past three decades, the

Australian philosopher has challenged the idea

that eating is simply a matter of convenience or

enjoyment, making a case that it is a profound

ethical choice-particularly if you're a meat

eater. In 1975 he published Animal Liberation, a

pioneering defense of the rights of animals that

concluded that veganism is the most ethically

justifiable diet. The book established Singer as

the intellectual godfather of the animal rights

movement and, as an Oxford philosophy lecturer

put it, took what had been viewed as "the concern

of eccentrics and little old ladies with too many

cats" and transformed it into a "respectable

moral cause."

Singer may have helped legitimize the idea that

meat is murder, but try telling that to most

Americans. Only six percent say they're

vegetarian or vegan, and while the demand for

organic food is booming, the vast majority

continues to consume the "standard American diet"

of cheap meat and processed food. In his latest

book, The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices

Matter, Singer (with co-author Jim Mason) turns

his sights on the American way of dining,

applying his ethical calculus to the eating

habits of three families-ranging from

meat-and-potatoes Wal-Mart shoppers to Whole

Foodies and hardcore vegans. With a mix of quiet

philosophizing and Fast Food Nation-style

reportage, Singer argues that eating well means

looking beyond the plate and taking a hard look

where our food comes from and how it affects

other people, animals, and the environment. He

isn't advocating that Americans become a nation

of militant vegans, however. He even cuts meat

eaters some slack-so long as they avoid factory

farmed meat-and reassures readers that

interrogating their food choices need not be done

dogmatically: "Food is an ethical issue-but you

don't have to be fanatical about it."

This contrast between the radicalism of Singer's

core philosophy and the nuanced way he puts it

into practice is The Way We Eat's biggest

surprise. Singer is not a knee-jerk foe of the

food industry, nor does he give the organic and

local food movement a free ride. He writes

favorably about companies that have made efforts

to break away from the industrial food chain,

such as Chipotle, a burrito chain owned by

McDonald's, which has made efforts to buy more

organic vegetables and sustainably-raised meat.

Likewise, Singer is critical of the notion that

local farming is a cure-all for the abuses of

industrial farming, and is quick to point out it

may come with its own negative impacts. For

instance, what's more fuel efficient-driving an

hour to buy apples at a nearby farm or driving to

the local supermarket to do a week's worth of

grocery shopping? In short, Singer's not afraid

of market solutions or globalized agriculture-so

long as they work within his carefully delineated

ethical framework.

That's not to say that The Way We Eat doesn't

pose profound dilemmas for anyone who cares about

the environmental, social, and moral consequences

of what they eat-particularly if you're what

Singer calls a "conscientious carnivore." Though

Michael Pollan (who's been engaged in a mini-feud

with Singer over animal rights) has written

cheekily of reading Animal Liberation while

tucking into a steak, only the most

steel-stomached meat eater will get through The

Way We Eat's discussions of intensive animal

farming without a twinge of disgust or guilt. As

Pollan conceded at a recent appearance, "You have

to defeat [Singer's] arguments or stop eating

meat."

Singer is currently professor of bioethics at

Princeton University and laureate professor at

University of Melbourne. MotherJones.com recently

spoke with him about his new book, his

disagreements with Pollan, and why he thinks

obesity is unethical.

MotherJones.com: You're probably the world's best

known utilitarian philosopher. Can you briefly

explain what it means to be a utilitarian and how

that applies to food?

Peter Singer: To be a utilitarian means that you

judge actions as right or wrong in accordance

with whether they have good consequences. So you

try to do what will have the best consequences

for all of those affected. When it comes to food

it means that obviously you look not only at

whether you enjoy what you're eating but also

what you're contributing to and supporting with

your food purchases. That's of particular concern

where you're contributing to or supporting a

system that abuses animals, that damages the

environment, that's harmful to workers, and so

on. I think a lot of the food produced in

America, particularly factory farmed or

intensively farmed animal products, is in that

category.

MJ: You write that local food often is the most

ethical choice, but isn't always necessarily the

most ethical choice. Why is that?

PS: You have to ask yourself what's particularly

good about being local. People say, "Well, I want

to support my local economy." But if you're

living in a prosperous part of the United States,

what's really ethical about supporting the

economy around you rather than, say, buying

fairly traded produce from Bangladesh, where you

might be supporting smaller, poorer farmers who

need a market for their goods? So I think that

just in terms of supporting your local economy,

I'd say no, you should support the economy where

your dollars are needed most. But then people

will say, "Yes, but there's all the fossil fuel

used in shipping it over from Bangladesh or

wherever." But people often don't realize that if

you're shipping something like rice by sea, the

fuel costs are extremely low. Shipping is a very

efficient way of transporting. It may be that if

you're buying rice in California, the rice from

Bangladesh has used less fossil fuel than

California rice, even counting what it takes to

get there. We also found that when we looked at

tomatoes produced in New Jersey early in the

season by being grown on heat, when you calculate

the amount of oil that goes into heating the

greenhouses, it turns out that you could have

trucked them up from Florida with a similar

amount of oil. If people are prepared to eat

locally and seasonally, then they probably do

pretty well in terms of environmental impact. But

there's not many people who live in the northern

states of the U.S. who will say, "I'm not going

to have any tomatoes between November and July."

So I think there's a certain amount of double

talk about local food that's just too rosy.

MJ: But if you're concerned about animal welfare,

one argument for local food is that farmers who

know that their customers will be coming out to

the farm are less likely to treat their animals

badly.

PS: If you're buying animal products and can go

to the farm and actually see how the animals are

looked after, yes, that's an important point.

That's definitely the best way of assuring

yourself that the animals are being well treated.

But again, that example just shows that you need

to be more specific than just saying, "Buy

local." Because you might buy local at your

farmers' market but perhaps [the farmer] is

selling eggs from hens that are kept in cages in

a shed. That's still local food. There's local

and there's local, and if you are buying local

and are concerned about these ethical issues you

really need to be inquiring, or best of all,

inspecting for yourself.

MJ: In his new book, Michael Pollan writes about

an exchange he had with you about the ethics of

eating meat.

PS: Right, and I have part of a chapter that discusses his arguments as well.

MJ: One argument that he has put forward is that

while being eaten is not in an individual

animal's interest, from the standpoint of the

species, domesticated animals owe their existence

to humans having a need for them. If everyone

became vegan, cows would go extinct. What's your

response to this idea?

PS: I think there's a bit of confusion in this

argument about doing things for the good of the

species. The species isn't really a conscious

being. But if he's saying that it's good that

there are more cows around, I think that depends

on how the cows are treated. Perhaps we'd

actually end up with some measure of agreement

that it's only good for there to be cows around

if these cows are leading good lives. But I think

the majority of cows, and even more so chickens

and pigs, are leading pretty miserable lives.

MJ: You argue that we should look at animals as

individual beings, yet some would say that our

concept of individual morality and rights only

should apply to interactions between humans, not

the human desire to eat animals. As Pollan

writes, "We may simply require a different set of

ethics to guide our dealings with the natural

world, one as well suited to the particular needs

of plants and animals and habitatsŠ as rights

seem to suit us and serve our purposes."

PS: I'm a bit puzzled that he would think modern

farming is the natural world. I don't understand

the notion that modern farming is anything do to

with nature. It's a pretty gross interference

with nature. I think it ought to be governed by

the standards of how it affects the individual

animals, just as we'd want to deal with

institutions that deal with humans by how they

affect individual humans.

MJ: Do you think there can be such thing as what

Pollan describes as a "good farm"-a farm where

animals live happy lives and are slaughtered with

a minimum of suffering?

PS: Yes, I think it's possible. But I think it's

rarer than Pollan thinks. He refers to Joel

Salatin's farm as a model of a good farm. I've

had other reports about that farm and I don't

think it's nearly as good as Pollan is

suggesting. The hens that are in the fields are

actually in small wire pens that get moved around

on the grass; they're pretty restrictive. It's a

lot better than the standard intensive farm, but

it doesn't meet my standards of a good farm.

MJ: Have you been to Salatin's farm?

PS: No, I haven't. But one of my researchers has.

There's another guy who's got a book about

raising poultry outdoors [Herman Beck-Chenoweth,

author of Free Range Poultry Production and

Marketing] who talks about the system that

Salatin uses for his hens and describes it as one

of the worst of the methods of raising poultry

outdoors-[he's] not comparing it to the factory

cage, of course. He says it's like a cage with a

grass floor.

MJ: When you take the suffering of animals or

factory farming into consideration, what role, if

any, does the personal enjoyment of food play? Is

enjoying a steak secondary to the ethical

problems with eating a corn-fed cow?

PS: I think it is. I'm not saying that enjoyment

isn't legitimate. But I think that compared to

what the cow or steer has been through and

compared to the impact you're having on the

environment, I think your enjoyment of the steak

is secondary. Don't forget, it's the net

difference between your enjoyment of the steak

and your enjoyment of whatever else you'd be

eating instead. So I hope you'll find something

else-there's lots of great vegetarian or vegan

food that you can eat that will be tasty and,

once you develop a taste for it, probably will

enjoy as much as you enjoy the steak, anyway.

MJ: Some people who want to eat ethically will

probably feel that they'll never be able to live

up to the ideal. What can people realistically

aspire to?

PS: I do want to emphasize that I don't think

eating ethically, particularly from a utilitarian

point of view, is a matter of saying, "Here's

this strict law that I have to do everything

possible comply with." I think we can be

ethically conscientious and recognize that

sometimes there are going to be compromises.

Sometimes it's going to be very difficult, very

inconvenient, to get the best choice, so we'll

settle for something else. As you were saying

before with the steak, there's a little bit of

room for indulgence in all of our lives. I know

some people who are vegan in their homes but if

they're going out to a fancy restaurant, they

allow themselves the luxury of not being vegan

that evening. I don't see anything really wrong

with that. If what they're doing nine days out of

ten is good, I'm not going to criticize them for

being less than perfect on the tenth day. Sure,

you'll make mistakes, but don't flagellate

yourself if you do.

MJ: Do you eat meat? If not, are you vegan?

PS: I don't eat meat. I've been a vegetarian

since 1971. I've gradually become increasingly

vegan. I am largely vegan but I'm a flexible

vegan. I don't go to the supermarket and buy

non-vegan stuff for myself. But when I'm

traveling or going to other people's places I

will be quite happy to eat vegetarian rather than

vegan.

MJ: I thought it was quite interesting that you

write pretty favorably about Chipotle. Seeing as

they're funded by McDonalds, I imagine many

people who consider themselves ethical eaters

would be loath to eat there. It seems that you

ultimately see solutions in what larger companies

can do to change where they get their food from,

instead of just taking the local approach of

getting your local farmer to be humane and

sustainable.

PS: I think we have to work with the tools we

have. In the United States the market is probably

the best tool that we have to produce change. If

I were writing in Europe, I might think that the

political system is more useful as a way of

bringing about change. But in this country, the

political system has not shown itself to be

responsive to consumer demand when it challenges

major businesses like agribusiness. While maybe

that will change, at the moment if we want to

get-to use Chipotle as an example-more pigs

outdoors, not confined indoors in factory farms,

one way of doing that is by consumers switching

their consumer choices from chains that sell

factory farmed pork to chains that sell humanely

raised pork. If Chipotle's doing that, well,

good; I hope more people go there and switch

their patronage to them because of it.

MJ: You write briefly about the ethics of obesity

and suggest that we revive the idea that gluttony

is a bad thing. Why?

PS: When you look at food as an ethical issue in

the Christian tradition, you don't find very much

about it. You don't find, as you do in the Jewish

or Islamic or Hindu traditions, a lot of

restrictions saying you can eat this but you

can't eat that. But what you do find is this idea

that gluttony is a sin and that it's something

that we ought to be ashamed of. But it's

interesting that although the United States sees

itself as a very Christian country, this

something that is not talked about very much.

Christian leaders talk about a variety of sins,

but gluttony is generally not one of them. If you

look at their congregations, often you can see

why, because many of the members are pretty

grossly obese. I think that this is something

that we need to think about. It is related to the

impact we are making on the planet. Somebody who

eats twice as much factory-farmed products as he

or she needs to is clearly doing twice as much

damage. From a utilitarian point of view, that's

twice as bad.

- Dave Gilson is the associate editor of Mother Jones.

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