Ethics of Food Production and Consumption - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 236

problem (Mepham 1996). The ethical matrix spells out the different ethical possibilities
over all stakeholders. This approach is helpful in delineating various possibilities but
does not assist in procedural questions; moreover it leaves out value-oriented ethics and
long-term processes.
he value -oriented approach resembles the two top-down approaches, but begins
by positing right values, and then delineating what a valuable agriculture could be
(Sandler 2007). A kind of ideal picture is sketched, and concrete reality is measured
against that standard. A last approach, the pluralist democratic approach, starts with
the practices that people are involved in, and then tries to find their standards of excel-
lence and their aims; on the basis of these operative values and norms, it searches for
problems, inconsistencies, and failures, and then develops ideas for improvements
(O'Neill et al. 2008; Keulartz et al. 2004). Although the pluralist approach uses the
other approaches as searchlights in these processes, they are not used as principles. For
example, in the case of animals, this approach would mean that the a priori abolitionist
position of a theorist such as Regan is rejected; one looks instead to practices in which
human-animal relationships can flourish, and attempts to expand these (Donaldson
and Kymlicka 2011; Haraway 2008). This approach has a clear connection with the
capabilities approach of Amartya Sen (2010), who stresses that the concept of justice
can be given shape, step by step, in comparing different practices that let people's capa-
bilities flourish.
Food ethicists try to give a broad view of all the important aspects of food and food
production—nutritional, social, ethical, esthetical, cultural, religious, and personal
aspects of food. Concepts from neighboring scientific disciplines are also incorpo-
rated, such as “ecosystem services;” sustainability becomes one additional principle, as
agriculture is embedded in natural systems of necessity. One definition of sustainable
agriculture is:
agriculture that conserves and enhances natural resources. It uses an ecosystem
approach that draws on nature's contribution to crop growth . . . and applies appro-
priate external inputs at the right time and in the right amount to improved crop
varieties
( www.fao.org/ag/save-and-grow)
In defining and elucidating food ethical problems, food ethics, as a branch of philoso-
phy, is bound up with other nonethical philosophical disciplines like social philosophy,
epistemology, and philosophy of science and technology. For example, from animal
ethics, the concept of animal integrity is deployed in discussions about genetic modi-
fication of domesticated animals, although the concept originally was used for an abo-
litionist' purpose with an emphasis on the superior value of wild animals. One can, on
the basis of these connections, discern at least four types of perspectives on agricul-
ture that all have some answers to the issues listed earlier. They, respectively, put spe-
cial emphasis on industry, science, farmers, or civil society. The industrial perspective
views good agriculture as a kind of industry, to be steered by global markets in which
producers and consumers determine food streams in market interactions. The second