SYMPOSIUM

Food Ethics: Issues of Consumption and Production

Self-Restraint and Voluntaristic Measures Are Not Enough

Rob Irvine

Received: 29 March 2013 /Accepted: 5 April 2013 /Published online: 8 May 2013# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013

Keywords Food ethics . Food advertising . Ethicalconsumption . Veganism

The articles in this symposium issue of the Journal ofBioethical Inquiry (JBI) explore some of the moral,political, and social concerns bearing on the produc-tion and consumption of food issues. In The Ethics ofFood, biomedical ethicist Gregory Pence wrote:“Food makes philosophers of us all. Death does thesame … but death comes only once … and choicesabout food come many times each day” (Pence 2002,vii). The contributions presented here in this issue ofthe JBI underscore Pence’s point and raise importantquestions about ethics, morality, values, and the law aswell as the responsibilities consumer-citizens, the foodindustry, and government authorities have to eachother and to non-human animals in the market placeof products and ideas. In addition to the articles, thereis a set of case study commentaries by three leadingauthorities, all of whom are involved in the criticalanalysis of various aspects of animal welfare, ecology,environment, and sustainability in their research andwriting.

The Papers

Reeve (2013) provides valuable insights into the op-eration and outcomes of self-regulatory systems offood advertising to children. Using two Australiancodes as an entry point—the Australian Food andGrocery Council’s Responsible Children’s MarketingInitiative (AFGC 2010) and the quick service restau-rant industry’s Initiative for Responsible Advertisingand Marketing to Children (QSRI 2009)—she interro-gates the adequacy of voluntary codes of practice thatare to bring about morally and politically meaningfulchange to the governance of the food industry and itstelevision campaigns.

The food industry spends billions of dollars onadvertising to reach into and shape consumer subjec-tivities and to create consumer cultures (Bakir andVitell 2010). Food and beverage companies are espe-cially active in constructing children as consumers(Bagdikian 2000). Direct marketing of “non-core” orunhealthy foods to children is a sensitive and morallycharged issue. Recent research suggests a link betweenchildren’s use of media (TV, videos, video games, andcomputers) and media targeted to children (particular-ly sophisticated advertising campaigns) with the rapidincrease in childhood obesity. The marketing tacticsand strategies that are mobilized by the food industryhave led to calls for the introduction of stricter regu-lations on food advertising directed at children.

Reeve notes that the food industry in Australia, in itsattempt to avoid legislation and additional regulations,has reacted to the issues that external stakeholders have

Bioethical Inquiry (2013) 10:145–148DOI 10.1007/s11673-013-9446-7

R. Irvine (*)Centre for Values, Ethics and the Law in Medicine,The University of Sydney,Sydney, Australiae-mail: rirvine@med.usyd.edu.au

raised with codes of practice grounded in a self-regulatory apparatus. Codes of practice such as theRCMI and QSRI provide a framework of norms andethics in which industry and employees can operate.These legal-like formulations set out industry standardsof conduct, establish benchmarks of accountability, andarticulate fundamental rules and principles of the indus-try (Commonwealth of Australia 2011).

Reeve argues that these socially and institutionallylocated practices of self-regulation are problematic.She does acknowledge that the two codes are coex-tensive with some tangible benefits for consumers:The codes of practice seem to establish transparencyand accountability measures. However, the codes raiseissues of morality and power and should not be treatedat face value as the manifestation of a regulated sys-tem. Industry attempts to maintain control over thediscourse through the self-administration of moralrules and rules of behaviour limit their transformativepotential. More specifically, forming a part of a widerfield of governmental rationalities the codes of prac-tice have failed to bring about meaningful outcomes interms of stakeholder participation in self-regulatorynetworks of governance. Reeve’s findings do not rep-resent an isolated case. A study by the Yale RuddCenter for Food Policy and Obesity reported similarfindings (Harris et al. 2013). Likewise, the Interna-tional Association for the Study of Obesity in its report“A Junk-Free Childhood 2012: The 2012 Report ofthe StanMark Project on Standards for MarketingFoods and Beverages to Children in Europe” labelsthe self-regulation of food advertising to children afailure (Persson et al. 2012). In order to move beyondthis situation, Reeve concludes that there are stronggrounds for governments to engage more directly withthe governance of food advertising through the imple-mentation of social policy, enforced self-regulation,and co-regulatory schemes.

The second article in this symposium by Parker,Brunswick, and Kotey (2013) foregrounds issues to dowith the production of moral discourse and a mass ofimages that surround the Australian egg industry. Tak-ing the standpoint of an Australian consumer, Parkerand her colleagues investigate a form of ethical speechthat has emerged in food industry discourse, the “free-range egg,” and the availability of free-range eggs forsale in outlets in Australia.

History shows us that food consumption is steeped inmorality and is a means for the practical transformation

of moral and political visions into social practice (Zwart2000). The evolution of ethical consumption—the ideathat consumer-citizens in industrialized countries canbring about social change through their consumptionchoices based on ethical criteria—is a case in point(Stolle, Hooghe, and Micheletti 2005; Stolle andMicheletti 2006). For some consumers, making ethicalfood choices on the products they purchase is a politicalact: an attempt to contest, construct, shape, direct, anddetermine policy through the decisions they make aboutwhat they buy and what they eat (Clarke 2008). As apractice, ethical consumption may mean buying differ-ent products and boycotting others. Consumer demandfor commodities from free-ranging animals is a recentexample of an ethical consumption initiative that isdirected against intensive farming techniques (Maurer2002; Pence 2002; Sharman 2007/2008).

Motivated moral agents who wish to act on theirethical preferences and achieve particular outcomes inthe public sphere require information. Food labels areloaded with a range of signs and symbols and materialvalues that go beyond nutrition and health. Today,moral discourse has become an important commodityin its own right as a medium of exchange. The “free-range” product label forms an integral part of a com-plex cultural process through which information aboutfood commodities is constituted and encoded. Corpo-rate efforts to demonstrate “responsibility” and sensi-tivity to the animal issue within production networksturn on discursive constructions like “free-range.” La-belling the product “free-range” endows eggs with anaura of moral legitimacy that may win public support.Free-range discourse has been mobilized in attemptsto enhance a particular brand identity from that ofcompetitors, gain market share, and give productsgreater price value (Herman 2012).

Parker and her colleagues conclude that the “free-range” label is an unreliable source of information onproducts consumers want to purchase. The meaning offree-range is hard to pin down in the sense that there are amultiplicity of standards and ethical meanings present infree-range discourse. Moralized discursive constructionsare inevitably situated and contextualized. Enmeshed inthe discourses and practices of the market, the “free-range” label does not reveal the facts behind the livesand deaths of chickens down on the (factory) farm, theconditions under which eggs are produced, and henwelfare. In order to effect meaningful change necessarilyrequires, these authors suggest, the transformation of

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some of the basic structures of everyday production,marketing, and consumption.

The final article in this symposium is a rework of apaper presented at the Newcastle Animal Ethics andSustainable Food Policy Conference at NewcastleUniversity in the United Kingdom in December 2011in which Jan Deckers (2013) outlines and defends theconcept of the “vegan project.” Deckers defines thevegan project as “the project that strives for radicallegal reform to pass laws that would reserve the con-sumption of animal products to a very narrow range ofsituations” (2013, under “Abstract”).

Veganism emerged in the 1940s in Britain as aninitiative at the intersection between ethics, morality,and politics to affect public attitudes and promoteaction to benefit non-human animals. As both an ide-ology and a set of dietary practices, vegan discoursetook a public stand against the consumption of animalproducts. As a political site of resistance to non-humananimal inequality, veganism broke with conventionand sought to displace conventional and well-established discourses and frames of justification thatlegitimated the use of animals with a new form ofevaluation. Vegan discourse reformulated what ourrelationships as individuals, as societies, as nations,and as a human community with non-human animalsand nature should be.

Vegan discourse also instantiated a new type ofconsumer, the highly motivated pure ethical vegan.Pure ethical veganism articulates a moral system thatwe abstain from consuming altogether all of the prod-ucts of the animal economy. Today, pure ethical veg-anism continues to connect critically with theconsumption, production, and the politics of food(Cross 1951; Steiner 2013; Stepaniak 2000; Wrenn2011). Deckers takes a different approach to pureethical veganism by emphasising liminality in themove toward a vegan culture. The distinction betweenthe two positions relates to the pragmatic conclusiondrawn from the foundational moral principle that kill-ing animals is wrong. The concept of “minimal moralveganism” is the argumentative linchpin to drive homethe vegan project. Deckers constructs vegan diets asthe “default diets for the majority of human beings”(2013, under “Abstract”). However, minimal moralveganism makes some moral allowance for the selec-tive dietary consumption of animal products. Theremay be exceptional personal, social, and cultural orecological situations that preclude individual moral

agents from adopting a vegan diet. Similar discoursesare articulated by a number of theorists and veganorganizations (see, for example, “moral vegetarian-ism” and “tentative veganism” in Zamir 2004, 368and 374, and Vegan Outreach in Lamey 2007, 334).Minimal moral veganism, like its antecedents, offersitself as a principle, a model of attitudes, and anapparatus for moral decision-making from which thedevelopment toward a vegan food ethics into a veganculture logically flows.

Conclusion

The food consumption issues that are canvassed by theauthors in this symposium are at once historicallysignificant, live, and inescapable. Each article isfreighted with moral meaning and carries within itsstructure a powerful condemnation of the practice ofethics that characterises current food systems. Whilethe authors approach the issue of food at differentpoints of the production and consumption system—from food advertising directed at children to dietarypractices—running through the papers like a redthread is the conclusion that self-restraint groundedin voluntaristic measures freely chosen and guidedby strong ethical commitments is not enough. To bringabout positive change in the current system of foodproduction and consumption, the authors direct ourattention to a more prescriptive, legislatively focussedroute to provide stratagems for intervention.

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