Food ethics

Ethical eating or food ethics refers to the moral consequences of food choices, both those made by humans for themselves and those made for food animals. Common concerns are damage to the environment, exploitive labor practices, food shortages for others, inhumane treatment of food animals, and the unintended effects of food policy. Ethical eating is a type of ethical consumerism.

Certain methods of food production and certain types of foods have greater environmental impacts than others. The Union of Concerned Scientists advises that avoiding eating beef is one of the two most important actions most people can take to help the environment because of the large amounts of water needed to produce beef, the pollution from fecal, ammonia, carbon dioxide and methane waste associated with raising cows, the physical damage from grazing, and the destruction of wildlife habitat and rainforests to produce land for grazing. Industrially produced meat, such as that from animals raised in Confined Animal Feeding Operations or CAFOs, has "the greatest impact of any food product on the environment".

Packaging of commercially produced foods is also an area of concern, because of the environmental impact of both the production of the packaging and the disposal of the packaging.

Transportation of commercially produced foods can increase that food's impact on the environment.

Within the food system there are many low-paid occupations. Many farm workers are paid below-minimum wages or work in substandard conditions, especially farm workers in developing countries and migrant workers in industrialized nations. Jobs within food processing catering and food retailing are also often poorly paid and sometimes hazardous.

Since the 1980s, policies promoting global free trade have increased the amount of food exported from poorer countries, which may adversely affect the food available for their own populations. Campaign to reduce levels of food imports, however, may reduce the incomes of farmers in poorer countries, who rely on export sales.

Since the 1950s, the food system has become increasingly global and a small number of multi-national corporations now dominate trade in many foodstuffs. One result is that the proportion of industrially processed foods in diets is increasing globally.Public health researchers label these changes the nutrition transition, arguing that, in poorer countries, they are causing increasing rates of non-communicable diseases, such as diabetes.

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