The Ethics of Food

Gregory Pence brings together a collection of voices who share the view that the ethics of genetically modified food is among the most pressing societal questions of our time. The volume addresses a broad range of subjects including the meaning of food, moral analyses of vegitarianism and starvation, the safety and environmental risks of genetically modified food, issues of global food politics and the food industry, and the relationships among food, evolution and human history. Will genetically modified food feed the poor or destroy the environment? Is it a threat to our health? Is the assumed healthfulness of organic food a myth or a reality? The answers to these and other questions are pursued in these essays.

Author Biography

Gregory E. Pence is a medical ethicist with twenty years of experience reviewing significant cases in bioethics, and is professor in the School of Medicine and the Department of Philosophy at the University of Alabama. Pence has contributed to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, and the Journal of the American Medical Association. He is the author of Classical Cases in Medical Ethics: Accounts of the Cases that Shaped Medical Ethics, 3rd edition (2000) and Who’s Afraid of Human Cloning? (1998).