Jim Mason's The Ethics of What We Eat

By Carolyn Soley

On Tuesday, September 30th, 2008, over 400 people attended Veg Week's kick-off presentation "The Ethics of What We Eat - Why Our Food Choices Matter" by Jim Mason. Mason is an attorney, author, and lecturer, who is concerned with human, animal, and environmental issues. Mark Berkson, a professor of religion at Hamline University, introduced Mason to the audience, calling him a tirelessly passionate hero for animal rights. Berkson believes that the tipping point will be reached when people become more informed, think about the ethical dilemma of animal agriculture, and open their hearts to the plight of factory-farmed animals.

Jim Mason's presentation, named after the book he co-wrote with Peter Singer, follows three families and their food choices. One family ate the "standard American diet," the second family ate was Mason called a "conscientious omnivore" diet, and the third family was vegan. They traced the origins of the food these families ate to see what affect our food choices have on the world. Most of the food the "standard American diet" family ate came from factory farms. Getting access to these farms was difficult for Mason and Singer, who were told that visiting these facilities would expose proprietary information. What they finally found was hormone-injected animals crammed into extremely small living spaces. The animals ate unnatural diets, and suffered inhumane deaths. The "conscientious omnivores" made food choices that Jim believes resulted in less cruelty, but still probably more than that family might have been lead to believe, as many food labels can be misleading. For example, even so-called "free range" farms, such as Niman Ranch, still perform castrations without anesthetics on male pigs.

The vegan family, in addition to not buying products that led to animal cruelty, also bought products that were better for the environment and society. They tried to buy food labeled organic, fair-trade, and local. Even with the case of this diet, it wasn't always easy to do the right thing. While local foods are often the least resource-intensive, in one case locally-grown hothouse tomatoes turned out to use more energy than simply shipping the same tomatoes from Florida. Mason did speak positively of fair-trade practices, which ensure that the people producing the product receive a fair price for their goods.

Mason said that buying food can seem impossible after hearing all of the things that can lead to suffering. He emphasized five principals that should be used in order to make better food decisions. First, there must be transparency on the part of producers, so that everyone can know exactly where their food came from and how it was made. Second, trade should be fair, with no hidden environmental costs that are not passed directly onto consumers. Third, food production should be more humane (of course, eating a vegan diets is the most humane diet of all). Fourth, we must be socially responsible, and provide fair wages for all involved in producing food. Fifth, while standards may be different when survival is at stake, there is no excuse for not being conscious of where one's food comes from in normal circumstances.

After the presentation, attendees were provided with an array of delicious vegan foods that included cookies, Pizza Lucé pizza, and slices of Tofurky. Jim Mason stayed after the presentation to sign books and talk to attendees one-on-one. People are often reluctant to change their eating habits, but after listening to Jim Mason's lecture, they are bound to take their food choices more seriously.