talk
february 2007
2:30pm - 4:00pm
The Ethics of What We Eat
Sun 18th | 2:30pm - 4:00pm
The Edge
hosted by | Vegetarian Network Victoria
Would you choose Tasmanian over Atlantic salmon, thinking that buying locally was the right thing to do? Have you ever taken the organic option in the fruit shop? Ever looked in a dumpster outside a supermarket? Visited a pig farm, or a chicken shed? We make decisions about food every day, but most of us won't ever look beyond the label. Perhaps we should. In The Ethics of What We Eat Peter Singer and Jim Mason take a standard meal enjoyed by three American families and trace the ingredients back through the production process to see what ethical issues arise. From turkeys specially bred to have massive breasts so they can no longer stand up, to chickens dropped alive into boiling water; from revelations of child and forced labour on coffee plantations, to the lack of policing of the term 'organic' and the reasons why buying Australian may not always be best. The authors raise questions about people's everyday food choices and challenge us to think before we buy. After all, we must eat. On what should conscientious consumers dine? And what is all this stuff doing to our health? What Singer and Mason discover about food choices and their links to human health, animal suffering and environmental degradation will shock and challenge you. Containing essential information on ethical but practical shopping and dining, The Ethics of What We Eat will forever change the way you look at food.
Peter Singer
Peter Singer was born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1946, and educated at the University of Melbourne and the University of Oxford. He has taught at the University of Oxford, La Trobe University and Monash University, and has held several other visiting appointments. Since 1999 he has been Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics in the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. From 2005 on, he has also held the part-time position of Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne, in the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics. Peter Singer first became well-known internationally after the publication of Animal Liberation. His other books include: Democracy and Disobedience; Practical Ethics; The Expanding Circle; Marx; Hegel; Animal Factories (with Jim Mason); The Reproduction Revolution (with Deane Wells), Should the Baby Live? (with Helga Kuhse), How Are We to Live?, Rethinking Life and Death, Ethics into Action, A Darwinian Left, One World, Pushing Time Away, The President of Good and Evil, How Ethical is Australia? (with Tom Gregg) and The Way We Eat (with Jim Mason). He also co-authored The Greens with Bob Brown, founder of the Australian Greens. Books he has edited or co_edited include Test_Tube Babies; In Defence of Animals; Applied Ethics; Animal Rights and Human Obligations; Embryo Experimentation; A Companion to Ethics; The Great Ape Project: Equality Beyond Humanity, Ethics, A Companion to Bioethics, Bioethics: An Anthology, The Moral of the Story and In Defense of Animals: The Second Wave. His works have appeared in more than 20 languages. He is the author of the major article on Ethics in the current edition of the Encylopaedia Britannica. Two collections of his writings have been published: Writings on an Ethical Life, which he edited, and Unsanctifying Human Life, edited by Helga Kuhse. Peter Singer was the founding President of the International Association of Bioethics, and with Helga Kuhse, founding co-editor of the journal Bioethics. Outside academic life, is the co-founder, and President, of The Great Ape Project, an international effort to obtain basic rights for chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans. He is also President of Animal Rights International. Peter Singer is married, with three daughters. His recreations, apart from reading and writing, include hiking and surfing.
info@vnv.org.au