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Farming systems: from exploitation to stewardship and back; ethical eating in a diverse world (part 6 of a series)

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Farming system analysis is at the core to what food really is. It describes the ecology of men in  nature, or the place of nature in the human environment. This is why this chapter is central in our series. As with every story, a tentative to a coherent picture is presented, while reality is much more muddled.

Domestication: a special case of symbiosis

The hunter gatherers could cook, and with this they set themselves apart from the other animals. But the impact of cooking on the environment was not an environmental revolution: humans managed to spread around the globe, invading most ecosystems, but their numbers stayed limited to the carrying capacity of the ecosystem around them. Cooking is special, but so is the capacity of beavers to create plains and marshland with their dams. So is the capacity of coral reefs to create islands. As an efficient hunter, men could cause the population of vulnerable animals collapse, such as perhaps with the mammoth. However, those animals had it coming, as they were apparently defenseless against the first capable predator. It was not the first time that a new predator changed the balance in an ecosystem.
The hunter gatherer exploits his environment: he takes from it, without too much thought about long term sustainability. Indeed, nature itself limits the crop, by limiting the number of humans to the carrying capacity of the area. Too many humans leads to too little resources, and humans die until the equilibrium is restored. This is why they prefer to roam to new hunting grounds. Once there are humans everywhere, the territorial fight for hunting grounds is of life or death importance.
In nature, a wonderful cooperation can develop between different species that are totally unrelated. Ants cut leaves to grow fungi for food, or protect aphids against predators, and are paid for it by the aphids with energy rich, sugary drinks. Birds feed from the meat between the teeth of a crocodile, and clean the teeth in the process, other birds pick parasites from cows or hippos. Plants come to the same type of relations: birches live in symbiosis with a fungus which receives sugar and provides the plant with water and nutrients in exchange. A symbiosis is a relationship of mutual support, in contrast with exploitation.
Symbiosis between two different creatures can be compared to a marriage: some are abusive, but as both parties share the same fate, making the best of it is in both sides’ interest.
This type of relationships increase the complexity of the ecosystems, bringing mutual benefits in the equation. However, primates, except for living with beneficial bacteria, are not known for developing this kind of relationship. In Symbiosis, the totality is cared for, moving away from pure exploitation to a more caring and system based approach.
According to the fossil record, for most of his history, the human hunter gatherer was not very good at bonding. But then, another pack animal was drawn to cooperate with men, and hunt together. Men and Wolves/dogs hunt together since 15000 BC. Both men and dogs adapted to the cooperation. Men by developing warm and fuzzy feelings towards puppies, dogs by changing in a lot of ways, the main trait of domestication being to become nicer to humans, or “tame”.
The mutual benefits of a symbiosis between herbivores and men are enormous. Men protect the animals from predators, and guarantee a food supply by herding or feeding in a stable, provide regular water and shelter. The animal gives his healthy flesh to the humans, after a life span normally longer than average in nature. Both humans and domestic animals have been fertile and multiplied thanks to this arrangement.
Not all animals are fit to live in symbiosis with men: initially, they had to fit with the semi-nomadic lifestyle, and be prepared to eat a diversity of food. Moroever, they should be nice and recognize the leadership of the human. Animals roving around in herds, like sheep or goat are a perfect fit for living with the early hunter gatherers. Nasty creatures, like the African Buffalo, never were domesticated.
Another kind of symbiosis requires a permanent settlement. Symbiosis of plants requires the grower to stick around for the complete crop cycle; pigs and chicken are not that easy to move around.  This wave of domestication Happened as from 9000 BC. Cats apparently only moved in with granaries and mice.
Michael Pollan has an interesting take on domestication in “the Botany of Desire”: corn might have manipulated mankind to plow fields, to sow and fertilize, all this to multiply the genetic material of corn.
While environment was destiny in the hunter gatherer days, now the farmers begin to master the environment. While over-hunting makes game more scarce, and means mostly hunger for the hunter, overgrazing with cattle can cause desertification. In order to have a decent harvest of wheat,you must clear the field from every competing plant, calling them weeds. Going beyond the carrying capacity leads to generalized environmental degradation, and loss of short and long term carrying capacity. The strategies to cope with these aspects, lead to farming systems as a response to the different short and long term challenges. Farming systems are an important element in the ethics of food, and should be treated seperately. A managed, stable farming system is a stable ecological situation, unlike the exploitation of the earlier systems.
Genetically, over time both sides of the symbiosis will adapt to get the most from the collaboration. Humans that can digest milk as an adult will thrive, while others die earlier. Meek, fast growing and productive animals will be allowed to multiply, while others get slaughtered young.

The ethics of domestication.

Domestication is a natural phenomenon, pushed to extremes by humans. As domestication is in essence an inter-species collaboration and a more complex system, it looks like a positive evolution in itself. However, “with great power comes great responsibility”: the effects on the environment can be devastating. Plant domestication of annual grain crops seems in this regard the more threatening, as it is requires a complete slash of the competing vegetation, eliminating biodiversity and leaving the soil exposed for erosion. The effects of animal domestication are less total on the spot, but over the years, it leads to a wider impact on whole regions. Indeed, sometimes bush is burned regularly to leave room for the more hospitable grasses, or overgrazing can lead to desertification. Moreover animal husbandry can cross the ethical line and degrade to animal abuse.
In this framework, it seems unethical to assign as a general rule lesser intrinsic value to domestic animals, and a higher value to the wild beings.

Only vegetation of 4-5 meters high gives a blaze that is suitable for annual crop farming: semi-nomadic agriculture or sustainable exploitation.

Undisturbed, in most areas, vegetation develops from fallow to grass to a bush and later to a forest. Under a thick bush, soil is well drained, aerated by soil fauna and roots. Moreover, the organic matter of good quality gives the soil ideal properties for agriculture and ample reserves in plant nutrients. Typical for good quality humus (the organic material in the soil) is the C/N ratio of around ten, which is the ratio typical for soil microorganisms. The part above the soil however, is high in carbon with wood or straw having a ratio of up to 100. The species in a bush are perennial, competing well in bush over the years, but not thriving in the environment of annual crops: bush species are not weeds for agriculture. The soil however is often rather acid for annual crops. The best way to restore soil fertility (make the field good for agriculture, including the soil structure, drainage capacity, nutrient content and weed competition) is to let the bush grow long enough, so you have 4-5 metres of vegetation.Sufficient for a good blaze.
Cutting down the forest and planting in the residue would mean bacteria would decompose in a hurry all the cut down material, immobilizing the Nitrogen to create a ration of ten, down from 100. Starving the crops from this vital nutrient. Termites and other insects would multiply and decimate the crops. The soil acidity would stunt growth of every annual crop. A good burn however, maintains the soil fertility, while eliminating the above mentioned problems. The ashes would bring down soil acidity, while adding Potassium and Phosphorous to the soil. After 2-5 years of culture, the amount of weeds will increase, the nutrient status goes down, the structure degrades. It is time for the farmer to clear a new plot. Adding chemical fertilizer would improve the nutrient status of the soil for some time, but the weed infestation, structure and organic content of the soil still goes down, making yields harder to get. Throwing in herbicides could stave off the need to move on for another year or so, at a cost in long term soil protection.
A slash and burn rotation, manages to maintain average soil fertility for centuries. However, with population rise, or sedentarisation, the holy fallow gets shorter. Yields go down and erosion strikes.  Where did the Maya’s go? The answer is simple: “every civilizations disappears with the 15 cm of fertile topsoil”. A more sustainable system than slash and burn is needed for building a lasting civilization.

Humus farming: sustainable intensive systems, stewardship with knowledge

In different parts of the world the conundrum of soil fertility decline was solved. This lead to stable societies practicing agriculture for centuries on the same plot, without any long term decline in soil fertility. There was not one solution, but a mesh of small measures, based on a thorough understanding of the interactions between all elements of the farming ecology. Some elements are common to those systems: firstly, as much attention to long term fertility as to short term yield, with special attention to humus economy and the valorisation of residues and secondly, the need for extensive local, even plot specific knowledge.

You don’t actually own the land, you take care of it for the next generation.

The farming system has a long term view, measuring progress in fertility in generations, not in years, in an environment where life expectancy can be as low as 25 years. This is perhaps why they must be traditionalist and have good reason to honor the ancestors.
The organic matter in the soil degrades only slowly, and you can farm in temperate climates for 20 years without experiencing a crop decline by not taking care of it. This is a common practice for farmers knowing they will sell the land, not leaving it to their children. This also means that in regions without reliable property rights, long term sustainable agriculture is an illusion. Weed infestation  too builds up over the years.
In different farming systems the humus problem has been solved by integrating animal husbandry with agriculture. Indeed, farm animals valorise mostly residues, creating on a fast track stable humus with a good C/N ratio in the process. Grass, crop residue and leaves feed ruminants, growing in places unfit for annual crops, such as the roadside or wetlands, or in between perennials like in orchards. Pigs savor sub-par human leftovers and acorns or truffles. Chicken feast on the worms and maggots living in the dung of the farm animals around the house. Farm manure, in an integrated farm in the 18Th century, was probably the most valuable animal product, with meat, milk, wool, as an added bonus.
The farms were optimized for soil fertility maintenance, maximizing the total long term production within the limited available resources. Every element in the farm was used in different ways. The willow was used for broomsticks, basket weaving, shade for cattle, drainage of wetland, fuel, nesting for mice-hunting owls, and emergency fodder for ruminants. The benefits of the willow are weighed against the diminished grass production in the shade. The system was not optimized to maximize just one crop on one field during one year.
Controlling weeds and pests happens by manipulating the environment, making it hostile for a weed species to take over. By rotating crops, the weed that do well in a certain year, gets clobbered in a next year. For instance a weed blooming in 20 days after germination will do well in an open crop, like leeks, needing a lot of weeding, but will be eliminated in a crop that covers the land well during the bigger part of the year, like clover. If necessary, the land can be covered with grass for a few years to eliminate all annual weeds and crop pests.

Minimizing the ecological footprint

In an integrated farming system with husbandry, agriculture and forestry, the ecological footprint of the total is lower than the sum of the components. Indeed, the ecological footprint of beef is said to be way above the one for grains. However, in a farming system where the cow is browsing on lots unsuitable for annual crops or eating crop residues the footprint tends to zero. Humus-farming without animals seems like an enormous waste in comparison. To keep your humus content high, you have to forage for organic matter or gather crop residue for making compost. Keep the temperature of the compost high and tumbling the product regularly to kill of germs and weed seeds. While with less work, you could have meat, eggs and milk as an added by-product, just by letting animals do the composting.
In this system the loss from leaching and export is very limited. The export from the farm is only the grain itself, no crop residue. In peri-urban areas, the nutrient in the grain returned to the land as night soil or kitchen spoils for direct fertilizing or as swine swill.

From humus farming to capitalism

At the onset of the chemical revolution in agriculture, in the old agricultural areas, the farming systems were mostly sustainable. The soil properties were near optimal. Adding chemical fertilizer to this mix was explosive: suddenly the plants were placed in an optimal environment with added to it optimal macro element nutrition. Micro elements were available in the soil already.
With benefits now depending mostly on the use of inputs in a short time span, the elements composing the old humus based farming system broke down. Indeed: soil structure can be improved by heavy plowing; nutrient status by adding chemical fertilizer; weed control can be obtained by using herbicides; it is cheaper to import soybeans to feed the cows than to make hay for the winter.
The local nutrient and humus cycle is not relevant for the bottom line of the farmer any more: by increasing the total yield, including crop residue, the humus content of the field can be maintained. Spreading 10 bags of 50 kg on an hectare of fertilizer is cheaper in labor and total cost than gathering and spreading 30 tonnes of compost or farm manure. Because of the cheap energy (to make fertilizer, transport everything, to work the field) the economical picture of agriculture has changed completely. Optimizing the farm for capital and labor, the integrated system has little chance. Through the law of comparative advantages, the different elements of production get split between farms, regions or continents.
While the integrated farming system was heavily based on ecological knowledge of the farm and the different living creatures on it, this knowledge is less of an asset in modern farming. Indeed, the solutions for every problem are similar in most cases: more fertilizer, more herbicides, more insecticide. The detailed knowledge of the benefits of crop rotation for weed control is less important. However, most farmland has stayed productive under modern agriculture, proving it is not rushing us to disaster.
The biodiversity of an integrated farming system is important, domesticated and otherwise. There is probably more biodiversity in this kind of small scale farming system, with small plots, hedges, woodlots, crop rotations than in the original climax vegetation, which is often dominated by only a few species. . Although the macro fauna (bears, wolves) might be limited, there is a lot of diversity in bird life, insects, rodents, all kind of weeds and other plants. The modern agriculture by contrast, is very poor in biodiversity. A well maintained corn crop is not a lot more diverse in biological life than a tar road.

Cognitive dissonance, alienation and the longing for the idyllic Arcadia

The humus focused integrated farming system is the image all people have when we buy milk or meat, and the dissonance with the current reality with muddy, bare feedlots, is striking. We long for an Arcadia that did not produce enough to pay for a decent life for the farmer.
The ethical question we ask ourselves when filling our shopping basket is how much deviation from the “natural”, becomes rape of the earth, the plants, the animals.
Capitalism disassembles the integrated local system and creates a global instead of local system. Soybeans for growing pigs in Denmark are imported from Argentina, Fertilizer for the soybeans in the US comes from Morocco. The sense of ownership, the holistic approach is replaced by a sense of loss.

Did we go wrong? successful modern farming and ethics.

There is no doubt that the main ethical imperative is to feed all humans, with a price affordable by the poor. The quality must be acceptable and balanced with the price.

There is equally no doubt that this is only feasible using modern farming methods, the sustainable, low-input systems of yore will just not do. In order to limit the damage to nature, it is also imperative to limit the area under cultivation, meaning maintaining high yields. Indeed, when the agricultural industrialization started, Malthusian thinking was the norm: farming systems were sustainable, but is was accepted that, with projected population growth, famine would execute population control. This did not happen. Whatever is proposed, as an ethical system to produce human food, planning for famine is not acceptable.

With benefit and pricing as the main driver, and cheap inputs to raise yields, 4 issues are not taken (sufficiently) into account:

  1. The rape of the earth through unsustainable exploitation is not checked. For instance burning down the rainforest for only a few years of annual crops
  2. The externalities from industrial agriculture. To name just a few: the decline of biodiversity, the destruction of the environment from over-fertilization, pesticides,
  3. Instrumentalization of animals, beyond what is acceptable in a compassionate society. Chicken in batteries, cows in feedlots, “gavage”, force feeding of goose.
  4. Production for remunerative markets, not based on needs. As there is a good market for meat, and poor don’t have the means to buy staple food, the food is used to produce meat (I hesitate to say raise livestock).

The environmental footprint: products or systems?

As a picture tells more than a thousand words, I refer gladly to The International Institute for Environment and Development that prepared a picture comparing how an integrated farming system produces an egg, to industrial egg production.
A comparable picture can be created for (soy) milk production and even pig raising. Of course, if you feed the chicken fish meal, soybeans, maize, the footprint of eating eggs will be higher than the footprint of eating the grains immediately (and leave the fish in the sea, using fish meal might be immoral in itself, as it exterminates all fish indiscriminatingly emptying our seas).  However, when the chicken aerate your you compost and produce eggs in the process, with only additional feeding, the footprint might be close to zero. The footprint of industrial farming  rotation of maize-soybean, with its vast fields without any biodiversity left, relying on long-lasting herbicides, over-fertilization and use of heavy machinery is humongous.
The “footprint”, the calculation of the environmental impact should never be see the product as a commodity: it should take the production, marketing and transformation system into account to produce this specific chicken in my oven. Moreover, it should not only be calculated on simple measures, such as carbon balance or water use, but also on the impact on biodiversity, or environmental damage through pollution. Also the impact on producing communities  is important. An approach of Fair miles is more indicated than just counting food miles.
As a basis for ethical choices, lists of products out of their farming systems context are worse than useless. They lead the consumer to make an irrelevant choice, and feel self righteous about it. Moreover, they stand in the way of promoting the needed changes. A product based approach would direct the farming system not to overall efficiency, but on product based efficiency on the global level. The demand for soybean would go up, monoculture or not, while the demand for integrated chicken production would go down. The final outcome would be thus more industrial agriculture.
A better approach would be to give a label to an individual product or to a farm of farming community. To the same degree a sheep grown in his natural habitat at the other side of the world (e.g. New Zealand) can have a smaller footprint than a local sheep fed with valuable grains.
Moreover, in most farming systems optimized for sustainability, animal husbandry has its place, especially milk and egg husbandry, meat as a by product. But it is impossible to satisfy the gluttony of a slab of meat with every meal without wasting valuable resources and being animal unfriendly.

The ethical consequences of a farming system approach

The question whether humans should eat killed plants or animals is not directly relevant to the issues discussed in this chapter, and shall be dealt with later.
Looking at the farming systems, ethical food choices will strive to diminish the negative impact of industrial agriculture. Some possible guidelines:
  1. Higher production per unit of area is an ethical imperative. Local if possible, global if necessary
  2. The raping of the earth should stop. Growing respect for plants and the earth must be promoted. There is clearly an ethical aspect to how tracts of land are used in a way that leads to biological death or pollution in the wider environment. Cutting down the rain-forest for unsustainable annual crops, dumping pig manure on maize fields, radical extermination of all competing soil life or plants from a farming system, leading to extreme impoverishment of the biodiversity, the use of fish meal from industrial fisheries as animal fodder are but a few examples.
  3. Respect for animals, domestic or otherwise , is imperative. Where you draw the line on ethical treatment of animals cannot be cast in stone. Acceptable treatment of humans might be a benchmark. A sliding scale can be followed, where with time, increased education and higher income, better treatment for animals is expected.
  4. From the environmental viewpoint, there is nothing wrong with eating animal products from an integrated farm. However, the current levels of meat consumption are unsustainable.

And what about Genetically modified crops?

Is there any ethical problem or just a manageable, subject to regulation, safety hazard problem with GM? I notice the ethical question is not asked when using vaccinations with GM bacteria. I would like to get better answers on this issue.


Ethical eating in a diverse world; the taboo: to define identity by exclusion (part 4 of a series)

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There might be as many taboos as people

A taboo food is a food from which people abstain for cultural or religious reasons. As the common meal is an important way to share common humanity, the food taboo is an important way to separate “us” from “them”. While the laws of hospitality join everybody around the table, the food taboos strengthen the inner circle by excluding the other. Strict adherence to food taboos makes reciprocal hospitality impossible.
Cannibalism might be the oldest taboo. It seems  that cannibalism was practiced by different groups at one stage, although direct testimonies are rare. It was mostly something told about “those people over there”. Now cannibalism is taboo in most cultures. This might be originally a health prescription and not a real taboo: diseases transmit easily by eating flesh of deceased specimen of your own species, with Creutzfeld-Jacob as a grueling example. Slaughtering healthy humans for their flesh doesn’t make you a lot of friends neither in an environment where life is nasty, brutish and short.
Taken together as a group, the religious taboos are mainly proclaimed for their power to exclude “the other”, the unfaithful. Indeed, the essence of a religious taboo is the confirmation of prejudices and often apparent illogical rule. Humans should not question the divine law. Afterwards, people weak in their faith,seek a post facto rationalization, although second guessing a Divine order is always risky. The sometimes quoted health reasons for religious taboos suffer from confirmation bias: most foods have positive and negative effects on health. Looking for an explanation for the taboo only the negative is highlighted. Indeed pigs can be carriers of illness, but in most era’s of human history the health benefits of having a decent meal with (fried) bacon were higher than the risks carried by contagious pigs.
For the nomadic early Arabs and Jews it was easy to forgo pork: hogs, due to their physiology, need water and don’t support traveling. It was the domestic animal of the sedentary farmer and the city dweller: them, not us. Moreover, there is good reason to accept that the taboo was “cast in stone” in a period of increasing water shortages in the region. Some go as far as stating that Islam has been spread mostly into regions where pigs don’t thrive anyway. Meanwhile in regions where Islam and pigs thrive, a more tolerant form of Islam with small scale pig farming is often practiced. The animal of the arabic peninsula, the goat, is meanwhile instrumental in deforestation, desertification, and making the ecology more hostile to pigs and agriculture, more prone to nomadism.
Another well known religious taboo is the vegetarianism practiced by Jain, linked to an ethical choice for non-violence. The taboo on beef-eating in Hinduism could also be explained by environmental factors: Cattle is too precious providing milk and power, to have it slaughtered for meat. In traditional agriculture, the surplus of calves for slaughter is limited. In Hindu and Jain vegetarians do eat other animal products, such as milk. Non-religious Vegetarianism and its modern pendant, veganism are discussed later.
Some cultures extend the cannibalism taboo to “friendly” species. In the Anglo-Saxons don’t eat companion animals like horses and dogs while they savor drought oxen  without impunity. This has nothing to do with flavor or nutritional aspects, it is an ethical judgment. Frogs are too prince-like to eat for the English, while the French eat them without regret.
A special form of cultural taboo are the fake health recommendations: suddenly a food gets labeled with a health risk, with little or no scientific basis. Before you know, it is conventional knowledge. A kind of nutritionist political correctness. Examples abound: carbs, fat, etc. I mention these taboos here, as they are part of a sub-culture and not really health concerns.
Some people stop eating a certain animal or plant because of the risk for extinction or the damage to the environment caused by the culture. Notorious examples are the eating of turtle eggs, eating whale meat, or the consumption of soybean or maize grown under over-fertilized monoculture. These are not really taboos, as the reason for not eating is ethical and not cultural nor religious,.

The ethics of taboos

For ethical purposes, four main groups of taboos can be identified:
  1. Private taboos, which are kept in the home. E.g. some subcultures have a taboo against soft drinks, but when they organize birthday parties or eat out the taboo is not community  enforced. This kind of taboo is ethically neutral, as it clearly considers the importance of community acceptance higher than the enforcement of the taboo. A lot of people abide in this way to religious taboos too.
  2. House rules are linked to the family: the taboo is not enforced when going out in the community, while it is expected from the others to abide with the house rules when visiting the home. This kind of taboo is coherent with the laws of hospitality. It accepts diversity, and forces everybody to face the diversity (when in Rome, do as Romans do).
  3. Missionary taboos impose themselves on the environment. The aim of the taboo is to separate oneself from the community or to proselytise the  community change its ways. The missionary taboo demands respect, but it is not respectful itself. Most strictly enforced religious taboos fall in this category. The taboo is seen as an absolute value, higher than the other values in the community. Worse: the community is defined as those accepting and following the taboo.
  4. Personal taboos: while the individual always abides with the taboo, no behavior change from the community is asked. An example can be the consumption of alcohol.

At what point do bad manners turn  into unethical behavior?

Private taboos and house rules pose in general little ethical problems, as long as the taboo does not lead to child malnutrition, health costs for the community, or degrades to a form of psychological child abuse.

Some religious leaders have taken a strong stance against missionary food taboos: “It is not what enters into the mouth that defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man (Mathew 15:11).” Indeed, the general effect of a missionary food taboo is its divisive impact. It separates us from them, and attaches a moral superiority to the followers of the taboo. The taboo goes nuclear on the shared meal, bringing division at our table. Moreover the taboo diminishes freedom of choice and food diversity for an individual. By limiting the access to diversity it is limiting the development of a person to its full humanity. Due to these negative properties, the balancing positive properties of a particular taboo must be very convincing in order to be acceptable.

In a modern ethos most religious taboos are difficult to defend as a missionary taboo for their limited advantages to mankind, and the divisiveness they bring. As they have scant rational basis, their enforcement on the community as a missionary taboo is at least a show of bad taste.

Refusing to eat some food because of the negative impact on the environment is on a stronger ethical foundation. It is however, not really a taboo, as the reason for not eating it nor cultural nor religious. However, the scientific basis for these choices is often shaky. Some of these taboos are just a sign of black and white thinking or environmental myths, without attention for the nuances of reality. In this case, they are food taboos as they are a sign of adherence to a sub-culture an not a science-based ethical choice.

This aspect will be addressed in the part on farming systems. When is an environmental effect so important it should be law, when should it be “the right thing to do” and when is it just individual lifestyle choice?  When is this taboo just not important enough to go nuclear on our shared meal? What is the effect on the environment of eating meat just only once at the shared table, compared to the use of a car? In the chapter on veganism some of these elements will be further explored.

The taboos against eating animals emotionally close to us seems to have little objective ground, but the attitude of respect it shows for companions is important.

By Sam Gardner

Ethical eating in a diverse world: at the table (part 3 of a series)

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Dining together to create a common identity and as an educational tool

Dining together, is an important community-building institution. Extended family and community are less defined by bloodlines than by sharing a meal on a regular basis or on special occasions such as Christmas, marriage or funerals.  Indeed, the genetic offspring was never sure for men, but the moral offspring, those with whom the daily meal is shared,is obvious.

In some traditional hunter-gatherer societies a woman offering a man some cooked food and the man accepting it boils down to a marriage. Sex is less central to the family bond than food exchanges.

Table manners set apart insiders and outsiders. The use of utensils, sticks, cutlery or hands, the time of the meal, eating with open or closed mouth, these habits separate the people like us (class, culture, family) from the others.

Research has confirmed the importance of the shared meal. The family dinner seems to be central both as an educational tool, assuring that children do well at school and grow up to be valuable adults, as to instill a reflex in the family members to care about nutritional habits.

Looking at the importance of shared meals in historical, cultural and educational context, it can be concluded that the ritual of the shared meal has an intrinsic ethical value on its own, strenghtened when the food or the occasion are special. However, for the global citizen, it is not always clear what rituals and table manners he should use. The laws of hospitality answer this question.

The laws of hospitality, defining identity by inclusion

The laws of hospitality, common in traditional cultures, build on the sanctity of the common meal. These laws contain rules for the visitor and for the host: ” In an accurate reflection of ancient Greek culture, rules of hospitality are among the most revered social and religious laws in the Odyssey. Men are measured by the way they play host or guest, and those that antagonize the hero often do so by failing their part of this important contract. Guests are expected to bring gifts to their host, respect the house and servants, and act with grace and appreciation. Often, the guest is a source of news and bearings from the outside world and expected, in some ways, to sing for his supper. The host is then to provide food, shelter, and even money and transportation if the guest is in need. Breaking these obligations in the Odyssey is disrespectful to the gods and indicates a somewhat subhuman status”

The laws of hospitality are a way to codify the coming together of 2 identities: the identity of the guest, who comes into the house of the host, and will be invited to share the ritual of the common meal that defines the identity of the hosting family, according to their table manners. The guest will receive food and shelter, but must respect and become part of the identity of the host. The identity meaning, amongst others, what they eat and how they eat: what you eat is who you are.

The laws of hospitality, inviting people and be their guest, are still a very important ethical pillar of our day to day human interactions. While less central than in the days of yore, the laws Ulysses abode with are still valuable in the current western culture. Tinkering with the laws of hospitality changes the inherent quid pro quo in the arrangement, to a degree to make it less adapt to our modern society. Indeed, if the idea of full immersion of the guest in the identity of the host gets lost, and the guest does not participate in the sharing of the food and the rituals of the host, the walls between the cultures are not broken down: each partner keeps up his own shield and observes the other from behind it as an outsider. The new arrangement will lead to less cross fertilization and hybridisation than the tested arrangement. As the guest does not share the common meal, there is less “communion”, and less obligation for the host to defend the guest as if he was a part of the family or clan.

by Sam Gardner



Ethical eating in a diverse world: our biological identity is cooked (part 2 of a series)

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The cooking hunter-gatherer

Humans should not return to their “cave man diet” to be healthy. What a creature eats in the wild is not necessarily the best option. In the wild, the full potential of a species cannot be developed due to a lack of available nutrients, illness, competition with members of their own species, and predators. Life is poore, nasty, brutish, and short (1) . Following the diet that was feeding this crippled existence is probably not on the road to a long, happy, and fulfilled life. Biology sets the framework inside of which the individual can develop its potential. This means that it is important to investigate our roots and to know the limitations and possibilities linked to our biological identity–but please keep in mind that history is not destiny.

It is a fact that the human is (existentially) an omnivore Our gut and body need nutrients from milk or meat that herbivores can produce themselves or extract from plants. Moreover, we need nutrients that are only found in plants. Vegans have to resort to highly processed and reprocessed or even chemically produced alternatives for the nutrients from animal products. Carnivorous humans, like Inuit, need to “burn” the proteins from meat in the furnace provided by animal fat, because eating only lean meat for energy leads to “protein poisoning” and death after only a few weeks.
Negating the fact that humans are build to be omnivorous is like negating that earth is a warming globe (OK, not exactly a globe, but rather a globe than flat, you get the gist). Some debates should just be cut short.

The Professor of Biological Anthropology, Richard Wrangham, makes in his book:”Catching fire; how cooking makes us human” a very convincing argument for putting cooking central to our being. A first jump in human development happened when the social Australopithecus increased the amount of meat in the diet, this improved the quality of the diet and increased the amount of energy available for growth and brain functions. The biggest evolutionary jump however happened when we started cooking, and so more or less doubled the nutritive value of our food, while expanding the number of comestible species of plants and animals. This extra food and energy was used to build our bigger brains, leading to all this.
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Cooking makes whole groups of plants and parts of animals comestible and digestible. Digestion means that we can actually use the nutrients that are enclosed into them, so they don’t end up feeding only the bacteria in our gut or beyond. Without cooking, the range of foods available for consumption would be limited to a frightening degree. We would not be able to digest cereals, and most tubers and vegetables would have the nutritional value of a fiber. This would leave us reliant on fruits, nuts and meat. Agriculture would never have taken off, while nomadism might just have worked. The earth would only be able to provide for a pre-caveman population density.

Cooking is also one of the first activities where economies of scale and specialization really count. The centrality of cooking as part of the human identity, creating a formal “meal” leads to the sanctity of the shared meal, as covered later.

An ethical system should respect our biological identity, so an absolute choice for or against a complete food group like meat or cereal negates, or chooses to ignore human nature. When there is no choice, there is neither a question of ethical options. Is it an option to forgo all meat or all vegetables? There is a choice when relying on chemically or otherwise processed additives. However, for now this is an unsustainable universal human ethical code.
However, randomly picking items of a few groups and declaring them out of bounds is possible. This will come with some cost as it does not authorize to optimize the available natural resources to their fullest extend, but these taboos come with some benefits too, as discussed later.

The dangers of blind adherence to traditional norms: history is not destiny

Richard Wrangler dedicates a chapter of his book on how cooking freed men to do something beside eating, to increase his success in his travails and create elaborate social structures. Another chapter deals explicitly with the gender balance at the advent of cooking and in hunter-gatherer societies.
The picture is ugly, where the hunter-gatherer marriage, with norms extending to our current times, is aimed at providing the hunting (or socializing) men with a cooked meal when they get home in the evening. A single woman preparing food for an unrelated man in such societies often equals to a marriage. In the end, the woman is expected to provide a cooked meal for the man. The whole relationship looks very much like a racket, where woman can escape their food being stolen by linking up to one man, who will be beating her if she doesn’t cook well enough.Traditional norms are abandoned for good or bad reasons. It may be because they stopped being relevant, as new food, such as potatoes, replace the centrality of turnips in the meal. It can be because the initial investment needed to make the social contract work can be escaped when social control breaks down, leading to an implosion of the system. It may also be because a traditional meal can only be prepared if there is one family member (e.g. a woman) full time assigned to cooking, eliminating other ambitions for this individual.
With the evolving  needs and ethics of society, the centrality of the home – cooking from scratch for the family might be questioned as an institution, thanks to the evolving technical possibilities such as deep freeze, eating out, fast food and ready made meals.

While slow food seems to be inherently more valuable, this value must be weighed against the cost to the individuals who must sacrifice their time for the preparation, and the fulfillment they get from doing so.

by Sam Gardner


notes

1 As the copyright of the original quote has expired, I can claim this phrase of Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan) as mine.

Ethical eating in a diverse world: an introduction

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The relationship to food is at the heart of the culture which we learn from our parents. Eating is–with its do’s and don’ts and its daily rituals–a central cultural institution like literature, songs, architecture, or music.  Since eating has been confused with nutrition and dieting, it seems like the “ethics of eating” is in danger of being reduced to a simplified ethics of what you eat, with each food group or even chemical component labelled as good or evil.

In the following series  some dimensions of the ethics of eating will be explored, with special attention paid to the link between self-identity and food. The objective of the series is to map the ethical  dimensions of the daily meal within the cultural, the biological, the economical, and the ecosystem. The objective is to paint a rainbow of ethical reflections, beyond a black-and-white approach. 

 -by Sam Gardner

Designer Baby

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The knowledge of our genetic code and the technical tools to use it to our own advantage may inspire fear; it threatens the human race’s natural evolution. The consequences of these new technologies are extremely relevant, but are mostly not threatening if regulated. However, the changing science and society will need the moral tools to navigate this uncharted territory.

Nothing new under the sun: Natural Selection

In a way, humans have been genetically designed for a long time; what we see as beauty in male and female — such as beautiful hair or a smooth skin — are indicators of health, and when we have the choice, we tend to choose our partner with properties we want to see in our children.

Traditionally nature had the biggest impact on selection: with a blunt axe, it weeded young children for genetic fitness, but also for simple bad luck — like falling out of a tree without a doctor around. Selection for resistance against child death, pestilence, and disease is strong in the environment. Congenital diseases that show up after 40 are of little relevance in an environment where people rarely live long, and those genes are not eliminated — they accumulate in the gene-pool.

The kind of snapshot product from this evolution is the current homo sapiens. The variation of traits is important, since different pressures in changing cocktails of selection and preference depend on place, environment, and time.

From puck to pit bull

Would humans, when facing the possibility to select their offspring according to their whims, follow the route of the peacock, and go for all kinds of quirks? The choice of dog breeds for pets could make us fear for the worst. The selection of dogs for physical attributes is only marginally limited by nature, and we can see that humans choose for a wide range of forms and properties, apparently with scarce regard for practical needs. Dogs are selected for cute floppy ears — this leads to regular ear infections — or a deformed nose — which can lead to breathing problems. They can be big and hairy or small and hairless, or even the other way round.

However, when looking at the list of the most common dogs in the US (American Kennel Club), common sense prevails: in the first place, the friendly family dog, the Labrador Retriever; in the second place the space-conscious Yorkshire Terrier, and thirdly the trainable guard dog, the German Shepherd. When given a choice on how to chose their best friend, most people apparently choose quite reasonably, yet, there are still 158 different breeds on the list. Still, most dogs are mutts and the healthier for it.

What would the new potential for choice mean in humans? Would we create designer babies with floppy, big ears, cute wide eyes and a snout? Or would we go for a race of Nobel prize-winners, with a brain double of what we have now? A moral code seems to be necessary to protect children from the imagination of their parents or creators.

Health and clones

The blunt ax, killing children with disease and pestilence, has all but disappeared in many nations. Meanwhile, the knowledge of hereditary diseases and how to identify them even before conception, could lead to their elimination within a few generations. Health is more widely defined than what natural selection does; we want our children to live way beyond the age of fertility. This selection is even more stringent in bona fide sperm and egg donor banks. Regulation is needed to guarantee the physical and psychological potential of the genetic material.

It seems like the resistance against childhood illness will probably diminish, as the broad “natural” selection disappears, but the acute genetic problems might also disappear. And as parents choose more than only health factors from sperm or egg donors, we could possibly come closer to selecting our dream partners than the drive to breed a superior race.

However, when we go on selecting against genes for congenital diseases, will we start eliminating genes for for bad looks or stupidity? To what degree can we tamper with the gene composition of our offspring? What is decent, what is unethical, and what is criminal? Our humanity, gene pool, and cultural diversity, is created by the lottery of random processes during the meiosis — the forming of sexual cells. Turning off this process and choosing for uniformity, even for only some people, is a very fundamental choice to limit the by-nature imposed variability. This seems to be one of those moments where it would be better to be safe than sorry.

As far as health concerns go, it will be everyone’s responsibility to choose the outcome, but stronger regulation will definitely be needed. Finally, it isn’t too strong a statement to say that human genes should never be subject to the forces of the market.

Nothing new under the sun: the need to protect the child

Designer babies are already amongst us in their most basic form — by controlled genetic selection. Our impact on the genes of our offspring will grow fast. Terrible abuse is possible, and will probably happen. But as is the case with most scientific progress, if it is timely and properly regulated to protect the weakest from abuse and neglect and the megalomaniacs from themselves, the future seems rather bright.

Saving Your Wallet and the Environment

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Go for your personal interest and save the world in one go.

The green tide, a tide that was swelling just a few months ago, seems to have turned. This has happened before; the “greening of America1” in the late sixties, died from the economical realities of the oil shock. The public attention moves in waves, and an issue can go from paramount to naught in only a few weeks. When an issue rides on the top of the wave, it rakes in unnecessary and promises that should not be realized in the long term. The public faith in ethanol in 2007, for example, did not balance with the other needs of the human environment, causing basic food prices to rise worldwide.

However, it is important to remember that the green cause is more than dealing with carbon and green gadgets. There are more and more reasons to green our lives and livelihoods. Regardless of the current economical crisis, the green lifestyle needs to stay on the top of the agenda. With the current green paradigm this seems improbable. The green discourse focuses totally on global warming and asks a drastic change in lifestyle without offering direct incentives to the participating individuals; we should do it for the common good and humanity’s future. The “commons” have been very broadly defined: not the family, not the neighborhood, in many cases not even the country, but the world at large. In the economic climate of fall 2008, with families cutting back on their basic expenses, this altruistic focus won’t sell. Very strong incentives will have to be imposed by governments to make this paradigm work: it will not happen voluntarily.

Due to a changed socio-economical environment, measures that bring about economical savings or direct benefits will become more important, and the choices will depend on incentives for the individual. There will be the benefit of a more balanced debate; integrating elements of environment, economy ,and general public interest, will guide the choices towards more long-term solutions. Local environmental issues, such as air quality, noise, and biodiversity can receive a higher priority, since they are more relevant to the directly experienced quality of life.

Ecological investments make economical sense for the individual and society.

The initial investments in personal ecology make economical sense. There are ample examples of this, and most of them are well documented across the Internet. Once past the first investments, science can catch up to make the second, more important ones, economical too.

By just applying the economical logic within an ecological mind-frame, we might get very far. So, why is our average energy use not going down quickly? Why do more and more people own a personal spa, buy a second home, and as a result make all investments in light bulbs useless? One reason is because the dice are loaded against a sustainable lifestyle. A lot of the consumers’ behavior is not driven by informed economic self-interest or health concerns. Social pressure and status-seeking are major driving forces. Be honest: what is the utility of this outdoor, heated spa in winter? As a bonus, the not-so-hidden hand of the government seems to support consumption more often than eco-logic. This is also the reason why “fad” greenery and green gadgets seem to attract more followers than a balanced approach that takes all environmental and economical aspects into consideration.

It is obvious that the drive for a more sustainable society should not suffer during the downturn, on the condition that the right priorities are set and the right incentives are in place. Start with direct short term goals that make environmental and economical sense, both on the personal, local, national and global level, and move on from there.


1. The Greening of America, Charles Reich, 1970

Galileo Day Campaign: 29 February 2012

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The day to celebrate the Earth and Science

Leap day is the single day we all think about our place in the universe, and how we know that place; it honors the earth we live on and our knowledge of the science of

nature. This is why we propose to baptize the 29th of February 2012 ?Galileo Day?: a day of wonder about the beauty of the universe around us. A day to recognize the benefits of science and of the scientific method.

Finally, a day to honor the individuals who stand up for what they know is true. As Galileo Day or Earth Moves (Us) Day, Leap Day could eventually become a public holiday.

Now that the last leap day has sped us by, it is the right moment to launch this campaign as it is important to start early.

There is still time to weigh the pros and cons of such a day without the need to rush.

A day with a message Leap day is the single day where we all think about the workings of the world in the wider universe. Every person using the Western calendar will pause at least once during this day and contemplate the orbit of earth around the sun. An orbit that takes a year, that cannot be exactly divided in a number of full earth days. It is the day every person is just a bit proud that He Understands His Position on a Moving Object in Heliocentric Space, contrary to flat-earthers or geo-centrists, who share, in our mind, a place next to Neanderthals and other extinct species.

Predicting seasons is a practical skill

In the tropical hunter-gatherer societies, seasons came and went, and many of these societies used the lunar year rather than the solar year. It was rather the approximate onset of the seasons than the possibility to predict them with precision that counted. However, agricultural societies or seafaring communities, were very keen on predicting when they could expect the seasons to come. The agricultural societies tended to follow a calendar that follows the movements of the sun, and the skill of predicting the seasons was held in high esteem. Priests and scientists are the custodians of this lore, and we are still in awe of the skills of the Egyptians, Mayans, and Chinese in calculating the calendar and the orbit of the stars. It is difficult for 21st century city dwellers to grasp the urgency of the precision and difficulty to calculate the calendar up to the accuracy of the need for a leap day. Over the lifetime of a person of 60 years, leap days make a difference of maximum 15 days, while the onset of spring or the rainy season varies by more than 10 days from year to year.

In regions with a limited growing season for agriculture, 15 days can mean the difference between life and death. Only through indirect astronomical observations is it possible to define the length of the year precisely. The calculation of the calendar was a practical science for early agricultural societies. However, with the accumulation of scientific knowledge, it became apparent that the reality, as perceived by the direct senses or passed down the generations, did not correspond with the newly acquired powers of observation. The Greek seafarers and travelers already knew that the earth was not flat, but round (spherical). Near the end of the middle ages, improved observations led Copernicus to propose a new world order, with the Sun in the middle, and the Earth in orbit. As this information initially only travelled in a small circle of intellectuals, this view did not stir much opposition.

E pur si muove! And yet it moves!

This changed when the Renaissance broadened the impact of ideas: hunger for knowledge and science was boosting progress all over Europe and this knowledge was spread more widely. One of the better known proponents of the Renaissance is Galileo Galilei. Galileo was a devout Catholic all through his life. He was a typical renaissance man and well-rounded scientist: a philosopher, physicist, astronomer, and above all, the one considered as the father of the scientific method. He worked from a hypothesis, he tried to test his hypothesis through rigorous experiments, and was ready to accept the results of his experiments instead of his own cherished ideas.

Galileo improved the telescope, invented in the Netherlands, and soon became one of the leading astronomers of his time, able to disprove some long held views of his contemporary scientists. When this public figure gave his full support to the findings of Copernicus, placing the sun in the center and the earth in orbit, his enemies, who had suffered defeat arguing against him on other scientific issues, started a campaign against him. According to some of the clerics, heliocentrism, putting the sun in the center of the universe, was contradictory to the Bible and thus heresy. Galileo took Augustine”s position on the Bible: not everything was to be taken literally, even more so when the passages were meant to be poetic or symbolic. This campaign, like a modern press-smear campaign against a public figure, and the subsequent trial, forced Galileo to recant his position on an object orbiting around the sun. We are talking about the inquisition here, and he was probably glad to make it alive. According to popular legend, Galileo muttered after recanting his theory: and yet it moves?. Recognition of the beauty of the world and the benefits of science Indeed, it still moves us, the earth, spinning around its axis, spinning around the sun and around the center of the Milky Way. Galileo died in 1642 and in 1758 the Church authorized the full publication of Galileo”s work. The acceptance of the Copernican world view was postponed, but as it was grounded in reality, observation and scientific method, it prevailed. This is not the story of faith against science, it is the story of jealous competitors bringing down a brilliant man through a public campaign based on prejudice. And ultimately, the scientific method prevailed, but at a huge personal cost for the involved individual. While Galileo was banned from public life, he wrote what is now considered to be one of the main works of physics ever, and the basis of the work by Newton and others. He is known as the father of modern science, while his enemies can be said to be the at the origins of the tabloid method of justice.

Leap day, Galileo day, a day to celebrate the Earth and Science

29 February 2012: Galileo / Earth moves day. We would like to propose to baptize the 29th of February ?Galileo Day?: a day of wonder about the beauty of the universe around us. A day of recognition of the benefits of science and of the scientific method. Finally, a day to honor the individuals who stand up for what they know is true. In the schools, it would be good to highlight on this day the history of the human knowledge, and the facts on our position in the universe. Scientific institutions should certainly take a day off, and governments should allow their personnel to attend to Galileo day celebrations. Post Scriptum:

Definition of Galileo Day

The 29th of

February. A day of wonder about the beauty of the universe around us. A day of recognition of the benefits of science and of the scientific method. Finally, a day to honor the individuals who stand up for what they know is true.

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h3>Call it a day

Leap Day would be a logical name, as it is already in use. However, does it speak sufficiently to the imagination? Galileo Day seems rich with images and meaning (like Columbus Day). However, Galileo is very much part of the Western heritage, and the meaning of this name might be lost beyond the people educated in the fine print of European history. Earth Moves Day is nice, but could be confused with Earth Day, held on the spring equinox or the 22nd of April. Another option would be to

allude to the centripetal force that holds us in place, and go for Rodaytion. For now, as one of the editors has just finished a divine pasta dinner accompanied by a superb Italian wine, Galileo Day is the favorite. However, we are open to support another name, depending on the quality of the associated food and drinks.

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