From Silo to Spoon : Local and Global Food Ethics

Paul B. Thompson addresses ethical issues in food ads, local diets, food labelling, agricultural pollutants, and sustainability in five new essays that pick up where his book From Field to Fork left off. Thompson places his examination of the issues into the context of contemporary pragmatism, agrarianism, the philosophy of race, and the relationship between persuasive speech, social control, and open-ended ethical inquiry.

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 labelling 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.