While I don’t often write about it, I’ve always been interested in the hows and whys of the food that arrives at my table.  My grandfather was a stockyard worker, and it was early in my life that I followed a pig from the stockyard to the back of his truck to the slaughterhouse to the butchering table to my dinner plate. It was a good lesson in the costs, choices, and implications of what I ate then, and has remained something of a framework in my choices about what I eat now. I’ve never been particularly evangelical about my food choices, and my interest in the ethics of food production and consumption have generally been limited to wanting to ensure that my own choices were consistent with my values. But the recent reemergence of food supply as a political issue (if you’re in the US or Europe, you might not have noticed it, but it’s definitely becoming a problem) has heightened my interest in food policy and supply. I’ve encountered some difficulty in getting useful and interesting analysis, though. This subject area tends to attract a lot of what I call “true believer” authors who are steadfastly dedicated to their cause (organic farming, local sourcing, etc.) to the exclusion of all other perspectives. While these folks occasionally produce an interesting read, I don’t come away feeling like I’ve got any better understanding of the bigger issues.
Enter Ethicurean. I only recently discovered it when a regular read linked this summary of Obama’s various food policy-related positions. I found it well written, and as I poked around the site for a bit more, I found a good mix of big picture policy pieces and this-cheese-shop-is-great bits. Despite multiple authors, it’s got a consistently informed tone that I quite appreciate. Maybe you will, too. Give it a read.
