ONLINE FIRST
published on July 8, 2017
Jeffrey M. Brown
https://doi.org/10.5840/socphiltoday20177748
Paternalism, Health and Dietary Choices
Commentary on Paul B. Thompson¡¯s From Field To Fork: Food Ethics for Everyone
Paul Thompson¡¯s From Field to Fork: Food Ethics for Everyone is a wonderful book, indeed accessible to a wide audience¡ªto ¡°everyone¡±¡ªinformative, provocative, wide-ranging, and infused by the author¡¯s engaging, knowledgeable, and fair voice. After summarizing what I take to be a few of the appealing general features of the book I will attempt to articulate a genuine puzzle that the book raises for me. The puzzle derives primarily from my personal response to reading chapter 5, ¡°Livestock Welfare and the Ethics of Producing Meat,¡± and from working through what are, for me, the two most intriguing chapters in the book: chapter 7, ¡°Green Revolution Food Production and Its Discontents,¡± and the final chapter, ¡°Once More, This Time with Feeling: Ethics, Risk, and the Future of Food.¡± The puzzle concerns a cluster of issues: the limits of liberal tolerance, the suspicion of (any or all) authority, the risks of ignoring science, and what I will call, inspired by Linda Zagzebski, a desire for epistemic self-respect. The puzzle, I must insist, is a genuine puzzle for me and is not a criticism of Thompson¡¯s book. Indeed, the book has helped me to become clear about the components of the puzzle.