From Silo to Spoon Local and Global Food Ethics

by Thompson, Paul B.

• ISBN13: 9780197744734
• ISBN10: 0197744737
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2023-11-02
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Following the pattern of From Field to Fork (OUP, 2015) Paul B. Thompson provides a highly readable and up-to-date analysis of contemporary ethical issues connected with food. Thompson reinterprets Peter Singer's work on famine relief in light of the history of funding development assistance through food aid, defends locavore diets against philosophical critics, and analyzes the ethics of food labeling in light of J.S. Mill's On Liberty. Further exploring today's key ethical questions about food, Thompson compares anthropological and toxicological approaches to pollution and defends a revised notion of agricultural sustainability. These topics provide an entry point for a novel approach in practical ethics that blends pragmatist philosophy of language, historical interpretation of agrarian thought, and recent philosophical writings on race and structural racism.

Author Biography

Paul B. Thompson is a philosopher of technology and the environment. He has held joint professorships in departments of philosophy and in college of agricultures at Texas A&M University, Purdue University and Michigan State University, where he is now Professor Emeritus. Thompson was the inaugural occupant of the W.K. Kellogg Chair in Agricultural, Food and Community Ethics at Michigan State, where he taught courses in environmental science and sustainability, as well as philosophy. In addition to award winning books such as From Field to Fork: Food Ethics for Everyone (OUP, 2015), Thompson authored over 200 research articles and book chapters.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1: A Little Throat-Clearing before Dinner
Chapter 2: Food Ethics Arrives (or Does It?)
Chapter 3: The Ethics of Food Aid and Famine Relief
Chapter 4: Local Food: The Moral Case Reconsidered
Chapter 5: The Ethics of Food Labels
Chapter 6: Pollution as a Moral Problem
Chapter 7: Sustainable Food Systems
Chapter 8: Agrarian Pragmatism
Chapter 9: Food Ethics and the Philosophy of Race
Bibliography
Index