The Ethics of What We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter. This item is unavailable.The Ethics of What We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter

Ethicist Singer and co-author Mason ("Animal Factories") document corporate deception, widespread waste and desensitization to inhumane practices in this consideration of ethical eating. The authors examine three families' grocery-buying habits and the motivations behind those choices. One woman says she's "absorbed in my life and my family...and I don't think very much about the welfare of the meat I'm eating," while a wealthier husband and wife mull the virtues of "triple certified" coffee, buying local and avoiding chocolate harvested by child slave labour, though "no one seems to be pondering that as they eat."In investigating food production conditions, the authors' first-hand experiences alternate between horror and comedy, from slaughterhouses to artificial turkey-insemination ("the hardest, fastest, dirtiest, most disgusting, worst-paid work"). This sometimes-graphic expose is not myopic: profitability and animal welfare are given equal consideration, though the reader finishes the book agreeing with the authors' conclusion that "America's food industry seeks to keep Americans in the dark about the ethical components of their food choices." A no-holds-barred treatise on ethical consumption, this is an important read for those concerned with the long, frightening trip between farm and plate.

PETER SINGER, is author of Animal Liberation and coauthor of Animal Factories, is one of the highest-profile writers on ethics today, regularly drawing fire for his views on such hot-button issues as abortion, euthanasia, war, and animal rights. Born in Australia, he has taught at Princeton University since 1999 and lives in New York.

JIM MASON is the author of An Unnatural Order and the coauthor of Animal Factories. He is also an attorney and the fifth generation of a Missouri farming family. He lives on Virginia's Eastern Shore.