The Ethics of Food Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

The Ethics of Food - Term Paper Example Ethical considerations with respect to the food industry are a maze of complex questions that pin moral responsibility on any number of different sources, whether consumers, producers, the media, the government, or scientists. In the increasingly intricate food production process, there are many steps in the process where things could be positively changed and such positive changes could be introduced by any of these ethical food sources. Ethics is the philosophical study of moral values and rules. Applied to food, this means a study of what values and rules ought to be embraced as the norm for the production and consumption of food through each step of the process. An ethics of food is particularly important because food is essential to human life. For instance, to deny a person food for any prolonged period will inevitably lead to that person’s death. Although the denial of a specific person food for a time is not subject to ethical debate, millions of people each year die o f hunger that could be prevented in theory. Here, we will examine the sources of ethical duty within the food production process, starting with governments and ending with scientists. This analysis depends, in large part, on an overview of theory with a great deal of empirical application and comparison to real life. When dealing with an applied ethical issue such as the ethics of food, it is particularly important to bear in mind that one’s philosophical conclusions have very real and widespread effects on human life. Sources that serve as a general introduction to the ethics of food often take the form of a series of questions, of which there are always more than there are answers. All of these questions have something to do with the distinction between an ethical and an unethical act. For instance, a question might be â€Å"Is buying ‘local’ food always better for the environment?† (Prince, et al., 2007, p. 2). This question implicates food consumers mo st directly, but also food producers. The explicit moral value is the environment; namely, how does one best achieve what is best for the environment, which is taken to be morally superior to an act that degrades the environment. The moral duty implied for consumers in this question revolves around the issue of how one goes about helping the environment, and an answer to this question (if it exists) would make this moral duty more clear. Additionally, the question presumes some role of producers in helping the environment: namely, that by producing and selling foods locally, food producers can help the environment in ways that previous generations of producers have not been able to. Accordingly, every question posed in the ethics of food should be addressed in this manner: first, identifying to what or to whom the question implies we have a moral obligation to, secondly identifying the nature of that moral obligation, and thirdly specifically who bears that moral obligation. An addi tional preliminary comment is that moral obligations about food choices bear weight. The objection that food choice, or the ethics of food, does not really matter will not work. The majority of Americans deal with obesity, which affects the American workforce, healthcare costs, and a degraded environment. Unhealthy food choices lead to decreased brain function, developmental problems in children, and malnutrition from a lack of vital nutrients. Environmentally, poor diets compromise our resources by increasing the need for pesticides and fertilizers that corrupt lakes, streams, and oceans, creates disease in livestock, and releases greenhouse gases that cause irreversible damage in terms of global warming. At current trends, this kind of diet will lead to even more significant social problems in the future (Young & Leehr, 2009). In this sense, one cannot claim that food choices do not matter, or that ethics does not have a role in which direction Americans take. At this point, as Yo ung and Leehr (2009) contend, it does not matter which side of the debate between agri-business

Representative of Asian American Experience Essay

Representative of Asian American Experience - Essay Example The minor groups living here are suffering the problems of identity and existence. They want to be recognized as Americans but at the same time they cannot keep their own culture away from their life. They cannot forget their originality and the native people always make them aware about their ethnic originality. Many books were written on the problem of Asian American communities in America. Many movies hit the box office disclosing the problems of these people. Many documentaries have been made on these minority groups. Here in this essay we are trying to find out which creative work is best suitable to represent Asian American culture and community. Asian Americans are only five percent of the entire US populations. Even though they have a very rich culture they often suffer by the crisis of distinctiveness because the native people from America have nothing to do with their culture even if it is rich. The purpose of this paper is to focus Asian and American culture from different perceptive and with the reference of different means of media such as films, documentary, feature films etc. Before taking into consideration the different above mentioned factors, Lets discuss about what is the term â€Å"Asian Americans.† This is a wide study which encompasses the wide range of topic as well as theatrical approaches. We can explore the concept â€Å"Asian American† by considering various fields such as psychology, history, sociology, politics, economics, literary texts and the films which are the representatives of Asian American culture. For this research paper we have included two feature films. First is â€Å"Chan is missing† and second is â€Å"Better Luck Tomorrow,† then a documentary, â€Å"Who Killed Vincent Chin?† and the graphic novel â€Å"Donald Duk,† by Frank Chin. The common thing in all these creative works is that