Essay Sample on Ethical Food Choices: A Growing Concern

Introduction

Consideration of ethics is becoming more central in the food choice of a consumer because of unease expression by different individuals concerning the rising gap between the process of production and consumption. The trending factors indicate that there are three types of ethical concerns that consumers usually have. The first moral concern is covering some substantive issues like the welfare of animals; the second concern covers the requirements regarding the reliable information and lastly, participation and involvement.1The study is assessing the reason why most consumers are diversifying the choices of their food towards a rise in food style diversification and the corresponding production and farming styles.

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Ethical Implications Arising from Leopold's Concerns and Budolfson's Observations

Some barriers block ethically conscious consumers and the food choices of producers can be discerned. The main ethical requirements that are talked of are; production methods to be more diversified, moral traceability needs, taxing unhealthy ingredients and sufficient prices need. All these are effective at the expense of values of ethics like the rise in the environmental impacts.2 The sector of food is bright in the future if only it can live with social contextualization and diversity through participation and involvement of consumers in the production of food.1

The modern consumers are not involved in the production of food; therefore, they have minimum trust and knowledge in the process of creation. That is why there is a need to advocate for the change in the global production methods of food to reduce the effect on the environment.2 Food production associated with human-made activities contributes to the destruction of biodiversity, scarcity of water, degradation of soil and climate change.

Many consumers have risen about the barriers preventing them from knowing ethically conscious food choices. As the implications of the social studies framing cooking, eating and buying as both individuals are concerned with the issues of ethics associated with the production of food. The fact that consumers are faced with different difficulties like who and what to believe about the information about the ingredients provided on the label of the product many researchers have neglected the fact.1

The consumer's co-responsibility with the producers concerning their choices of food has enormous consequences for product development, advertising and labeling. It indicates that consumers do not have beliefs that are uniform, explaining why production styles, food movements and emerging trends are achieving more prominence and importance.

Reshaping Food Production and Economy

Food is regarded as ideologically and politically neutral, and the issue is not quality. There is a strict division of responsibilities among consumer organizations, governments, and companies. The food industry is concerned with the food choices organization and production, the consumer organization lobby for fair access to the supply of food for all and food availability, and the authorities guarantee the safety of the food.

The gap between the places where the consumers shop for their products, prepare and consume a meal, and the areas where the final products are produced, determine different kinds of production practices which are ethically unacceptable. It also results in the increased consumer alienation feeling and consumer's lack of trust.

The marketing strategies and policy measures have resulted in new awakening concerns of ethics concerning the production of food. Such occurrence has affected the intuition and new ethical issues emergence, perspectives and argumentations. Ethics is constructed partly by and is a marketing tool for firms that promote distinct ethical standards. Thus how such moral orientations have existed depends on how marketing activities, communication and press conceptualize consumers and their importance.

There are some positions that influence consumers having a voice in the market of food. The Chicago school of economics states that the market ought to be value-free and the consumers occasionally have sufficient information and enough skills to make the appropriate choices of consumption.1 Otherwise, there is also an alternative part that the consumers need to be covered against inappropriate or contrary decisions by the state.

Another argument militates against the sovereignty of consumers as the street which is dead-end, making them be utilities maximizes their utilities, for instance, purchasing cheaper products and always will follow their preferences and interest.

The evidence provided about the consumers might not be correct. To begin with, markets are never free since norms of decency and trust are always less or more upheld by the market. Secondly, provided that some consumers, especially children, are still vulnerable, many consumers are in a position to shape their views concerning the product provided the increase in knowledge system and widespread education.1

There are seven ethical issues, including; food quality, food safety, food healthiness, the effect of food production of food on the landscape quality, fair treatment of farmers and food product effects on the environment. The widespread alienation is feeling from the food chain and the assessment of consumer efforts being used to fill the gap between consumers and producers.

The situation which is existing within the sector of food is very far ethically acceptable. Frequently, consumers are always faced with biased and unreliable information, with the food supplies which are not healthy, disobeying human rights, environmentally unfriendly among others.2 Even though the ethically unacceptable acts above cannot be related to the practice of huge companies only, such huge companies are still having a more significant stake in the continuation of morally unacceptable conditions which are existing.

The sector of food needs to learn to stay with the diversity and the contextualization of the social through the involvement of the consumers and food chain participation. Moreover, the steps and coexistence schemes to build trust is necessary. It is only possible as the impacts of the integrated way of consumer involvement are a needed decision regarding food styles, management, and research.

For over some time, food ethics was only interested in the security of food and consequently with the misdistribution and distribution monitored against the procedure of fair distribution. However, since the genetically modified foods which have dominated the western world over the last few decades, the whole political, social and cultural structure has been rapidly changed - providing new challenges not only to the policymakers and the food industry but also to the food ethicists and the food ethics discipline. 1

Conclusion

Even though the difference existing between producers and consumers increases the consumer alienation, it is proper that it not only morally unacceptable issue to lack food, but lack of consumer's voice representation in the food chain is a concern of ethics. The larger group of minority consumers often want to be covered, but want to be heard so long as the sector of food is a will to transit towards consumer push and pull and to evaluate new societal participation types.1

The extent of the impacts caused in the environment concerning the production of food is related to how and where the food is produced and the available resources locally, such as water and soil2. Most of the time there is always a trade-off between the factors in an environment and until today, there are no principles that are set to check if one food product is sustainable environmentally than the other.

Bibliography

Fanzo, Jessica. "The Ethics of Food in the Health System Architecture." AMA Journal of Ethics 20, no. 10 (2018): 913-917. The concept of environmental sustainability and healthy feeding of the world is deeply rooted in ethics.

Schlottmann, Christopher, and Jeff Sebo. Food, animals, and the environment: an ethical approach. Routledge, 2018. Food ethics is an abroad area that covers the situation, animal and food production and more needs to be discussed the issue.