For the environmentally minded carnivore, meat poses a culinary conundrum. Producing it requires a great deal of land and water resources, and ruminants such as cows and sheep are responsible for half of all greenhouse gas emissions associated with agriculture, according to the World Resources Institute
For the environmentally minded carnivore, meat poses a culinary conundrum. Producing it requires a great deal of land and water resources, and ruminants such as cows and sheep are responsible for half of all greenhouse gas emissions associated with agriculture, according to the World Resources Institute
For the environmentally minded carnivore, meat poses a culinary conundrum. Producing it requires a great deal of land and water resources, and ruminants such as cows and sheep are responsible for half of all greenhouse gas emissions associated with agriculture, according to the World Resources Institute.
That’s why many researchers are now calling for the world to cut back on its meat consumption. But some advocates say there is a way to eat meat that’s better for the planet and better for the animals: grass-fed beef.
But is grass-fed beef really greener than feedlot-finished beef? Let’s parse the science.
Ali Berlow interviews our Ruth Faden about Food Ethics. What is a food ethicist? People who work on the ethics of food are studying the rights, duties, and harms associated with the ways in which we produce, process, and consume our food
Ali Berlow interviews our Ruth Faden about Food Ethics. What is a food ethicist? People who work on the ethics of food are studying the rights, duties, and harms associated with the ways in which we produce, process, and consume our food
Ali Berlow, left (AB) is a founding editor and publisher of this magazine, a food activist and host of Cook’s Notebook on WCAI. Ruth Faden (RF) is the founder of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Ethics and an expert on the ethics of food. She lives seasonally in Chilmark.
AB:What is a food ethicist?
RF: People who work on the ethics of food are studying the rights, duties, andharms associated with the ways in which we produce, process, and consume our food. We’re asking: Who gets harmed? Who benefits? Are there anybody’s rights that are going to be infringed or violated by doing X or Y? Are people being harmed as a consequence? Is the environment being harmed? Are future environments being harmed? And, of course, there are questions of fairness — who wins and who loses, and in what relations of power do they stand with one and other.
The American food system would be very poorly graded. It would not do well.
AB:Do you have a priority list of urgencies?
RF: Near the top of the list are concerns about the environment. To think about a sustainable food system — a food system that can meet the needs of the growing global population within the planetary boundary. The reason why we’re not doing well from an ethics point of view is that we’re desperately behind in terms of the changes we need to make in the ways we make, process, and distribute our food.
One in a series of guest blog posts from leading voices in global development on achieving long-term sustainability and growth while ending hunger, poverty, and malnutrition.
For the third year in a row, the recently-released FAO State of Food Insecurity and Nutritionreport highlights global increases in undernourishment after decades of decline. Meanwhile, the report notes, no region is exempt from widespread micronutrient deficiencies and the rising trend in overweight and obesity. The same week in June, we published a piece in the journal Global Food Security looking back 75 years to the pioneering 1943 UN Conference on Food and Agriculture in Hot Springs, Va., where the first international commitment to ending hunger was made.
That conference set the goal of “freedom from want of food, suitable and adequate for the health and strength of all peoples” that should be achieved “in all lands within the shortest possible time.” Seventy five years after this clarion call, as well as the dozens of similar global declarations made in the interim, it is sobering that various complex forms of malnutrition persist in most countries.
Strict European court ruling leaves food-testing labs without a plan. Scientists struggle to detect the unauthorized sale of gene-edited crops whose altered DNA can mimic natural mutations
Strict European court ruling leaves food-testing labs without a plan. Scientists struggle to detect the unauthorized sale of gene-edited crops whose altered DNA can mimic natural mutations
A landmark European court ruling that made gene-edited crops subject to the same stringent regulations as other genetically modified organisms (GMOs) has created a conundrum for food-testing laboratories across Europe.
The ruling that the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) delivered on 25 July 2018 requires these scattered laboratories — which already spot-check freighters and supermarkets for foods that contain unapproved GMOs — to look for gene-edited crops. But there is no easy way to do this. Gene edits often alter just a few DNA letters, whereas conventional genetic modifications often involve transplanting longer stretches of DNA from one species to another.
“Some of these [gene-editing] alterations are small enough that they are simply indistinguishable from naturally occurring organisms,” says Martin Wasmer, who studies the legal aspects of genome editing at the Leibniz University Hannover, Germany. “It will not be possible to enforce in those cases.”
Obesity isn’t a problem of overabundance. In fact in many cases, obesity and hunger go hand in hand—and both are rooted in poverty, writes bioethicist Jessica Fanzo.
A Bloomberg Distinguished Associate Professor of global food and agriculture ethics and policy at Johns Hopkins, Fanzo is an expert in food systems and how agriculture, environment, and climate affect human health and nutrition. In an op-ed for Bloomberg, Fanzo notes that roughly 40 million Americans are considered food insecure, meaning they have difficulty buying enough safe and nutritious food to meet their household needs.
The problem of food insecurity has been linked with obesity, and “many of the same people who struggle with extra weight also regularly go to bed hungry,” Fanzo says. Food insecure people are 32% more likely than others to be obese, and children in households with food insecurity—numbering about 540,000 in the U.S.—are more likely to be overweight or obese.
The U.S. is notorious for its weight problem. With just 5% of the world’s population, it’s home to 13% of the world’s overweight and obese people. Roughly two-thirds of adults in the U.S. are overweight or obese and, even more alarming, 38% of boys and girls ages 10 to 14 are.
On first glance, these numbers seem to reflect overabundance — Americans have more food than is good for them. But the problem is more complicated than that, and worse: Many of the same people who struggle with extra weight also regularly go to bed hungry. That may sound like an impossible contradiction, but dig deeper, and it quickly becomes clear how hunger and obesity are related. Both are often rooted in poverty.
Jessica Fanzo is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of global food and agricultural policy and ethics at the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, the Berman Institute of Bioethics and the Department of International Health of the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. She is on sabbatical for one year to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in Rome.
Dr Jessica Fanzo stood in front of a large screen filled with a colourful plate of food. Most of it was filled with an assortment of fruits, vegetables, plant-based proteins, legumes and nuts. A sliver of the plate was reserved for animal-sourced protein and dairy products, some added sugars and starchy vegetables
Dr Jessica Fanzo stood in front of a large screen filled with a colourful plate of food. Most of it was filled with an assortment of fruits, vegetables, plant-based proteins, legumes and nuts. A sliver of the plate was reserved for animal-sourced protein and dairy products, some added sugars and starchy vegetables
“This is the reference diet, and much of it is mired in controversy and debate,” explained Fanzo, director of the global food ethics and policy programme at Johns Hopkins University, to the thousand-odd delegates attending the EAT Stockholm Food Forum 2019 in Sweden last week.
“Obviously, as many other reports have shown, we need to increase wholegrains, fruits, vegetables, legumes, healthy nuts, seeds and reduce the amount of protein sources, particularly red meat and processed meat.”
Fanzo is one of 37 authors of Food in the Anthropocene: the EAT-Lancet Commission on Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems, a three-year undertaking published in January in The Lancet.
On the opening day of the Future of Food Symposium, FAO and the Johns Hopkins University have formalized their agreement to work together to support evidence-based policy for improving nutrition, health, and well-being, particularly for the world’s most vulnerable and under-served populations. With our Jess Fanzo.
On the opening day of the Future of Food Symposium, FAO and the Johns Hopkins University have formalized their agreement to work together to support evidence-based policy for improving nutrition, health, and well-being, particularly for the world’s most vulnerable and under-served populations. With our Jess Fanzo.
FAO will work closely with Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Berman Institute of Bioethics to promote interdisciplinary and policy-focused research on systems thinking for nutrition, and to raise awareness about malnutrition in all its forms, including undernutrition, inadequate nutrition, overweight and obesity. The partnership also foresees greater engagement with global policy mechanisms to support systems-oriented food and nutrition policies at global, regional and national levels.
Over the course of the partnership, a number of activities will promote knowledge exchanges, through joint research activities regarding nutrition in humanitarian contexts, courses and seminars that address systems thinking for food security and nutrition, and country policy analyses on nutrition and food systems with the aim of supporting food systems policies and programmes.
Dr. Sunil Kumar, the Provost of the Johns Hopkins University, welcomed the agreement. “This is an exciting partnership with FAO, not only to strengthen the research on food systems for better diets and nutrition, but also to build the capacity of our students to tackle the grand challenges that our global food system faces. By joining forces with Hopkins’ Alliance for a Healthier World and the Berman Institute of Bioethics, we will bring together experts at Johns Hopkins University and FAO to take on innovative work that will address the multiple burdens of malnutrition and food insecurity that is stifling progress to reach the Sustainable Development Goals.”