From Silo to Spoon Local and Global Food Ethics

Following the pattern of From Field to Fork (OUP, 2015) Paul B. Thompson provides a highly readable and up-to-date analysis of contemporary ethical issues connected with food. Thompson reinterprets Peter Singer's work on famine relief in light of the history of funding development assistance through food aid, defends locavore diets against philosophical critics, and analyzes the ethics of food labelling in light of J.S. Mill's On Liberty. Further exploring today's key ethical questions about food, Thompson compares anthropological and toxicological approaches to pollution and defends a revised notion of agricultural sustainability. These topics provide an entry point for a novel approach in practical ethics that blends pragmatist philosophy of language, historical interpretation of agrarian thought, and recent philosophical writings on race and structural racism.

Paul B. Thompson is a philosopher of technology and the environment. He has held joint professorships in departments of philosophy and in college of agricultures at Texas A&M University, Purdue University and Michigan State University, where he is now Professor Emeritus. Thompson was the inaugural occupant of the W.K. Kellogg Chair in Agricultural, Food and Community Ethics at Michigan State, where he taught courses in environmental science and sustainability, as well as philosophy. In addition to award winning books such as From Field to Fork: Food Ethics for Everyone (OUP, 2015), Thompson authored over 200 research articles and book chapters.