Project Spotlight: |
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how we grow our food shapes the world.
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Ethical Omnivores: Better Eating For Everyone (to Be Published February 2025)
Description: What should we eat? In one way or another, we grapple with this seemingly simple question every day. Food choices have profound implications for the health of the environment, animals, and our families. Many eaters are concerned about these impacts, but confusing food labels and packed supermarket shelves have made it harder than ever to eat a healthy and ethical diet. In this overstuffed and confusing foodscape, how do we eat in a way that aligns with our values? The author—Samantha Noll a food and agriculture ethics expert— discusses how one group of eaters is answering this question. Ethical omnivores care about how food choices shape our communities and the environment and they’re trying to change the world with their forks. Ethical omnivorism is at once a new food ethic, diet, and global movement aimed at providing a flexible path for eaters committed to bringing about lasting change one meal at a time. The book is unique, as it explores the viability of omnivorism, a dietary choice which is not devoid of animal products, but one which embraces eating local, eating organic, and eating humanely raised food products. In doing so, ethical omnivores build on the local food movement’s desire to know where food comes from and stresses the importance of maintaining high animal welfare and environmental standards. Overall, this book provides a foundational overview of ethical omnivorism and guidance for those interested in eating ethically, while recognizing that many factors influence dietary choices. |
"When food, in the minds of eaters, is no longer associated with farming and with the land, then the eaters are suffering a kind of cultural amnesia… Both eater and eaten are thus in exile from biological reality. But vision can be restored, and hearts changed." ~Wendell Berry
Photo: Detroit Water Brigade
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For many people, the world feels like it’s spiraling out of control, as we face overwhelming issues, such as ensuring food and water security, mitigating climate change impacts, and learning to live in a world without many of the species with whom we share this planet. In this context, some hope that technology can help us face these challenges, but cutting-edge technologies (such as genomics, artificial intelligence, and clean energy) bring about a host of other ethical issues. My research engages with the challenges that we face today, in an increasingly complex world. In short, my work is problem oriented, meaning that it focuses on analyzing real-world problems and the impacts of potential solutions, as well as developing tools that may be useful for bringing about change. My engaged philosophical work includes the following areas:
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PHILOSOPHY OF FOOD & Agriculture |
Philosophy of Technology
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ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY
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Food & Agriculture Ethics and Policy:
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Emerging Technologies in Food Systems:
Emerging technologies have the potential to help address a wide range of problems that we face, from increasing food security, to providing clean energy. However, as climate change illustrates, technology is often a contributor to our current dilemmas. My work engages with the expanding scope and unprecedented impact of technologies to help cultivate a critical understanding of the practical consequences of their application. Technologies can be utilized in a multiplicity of ways. As we move forward, it is imperative that we discuss the ethical and social implications of these applications. In particular, my research focuses on the application of genomics technology in the context of agriculture and medicine. |
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Looking to the Future
Environmental and Agricultural Impacts of Climate Change:
Climate change is producing observable environmental impacts around the globe, such as shrinking glaciers, rising sea levels, changes in weather patterns, and more intense heat waves and wildfires. Additionally, biodiversity levels are shrinking, as extinction rates rise, and plant and animal species are being forced to shift their ranges. In this context, societies around the world will have to adapt to environmental changes and to the new realities of living in the "Age of the Anthropocene." Hard decisions will have to be made and these decisions will have wide-ranging consequences. Understanding the ethical and value-laden implications of these decisions is imperative. |