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13 - The food we eat: the right to be informed and the duty to inform

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2014

By
Michiel Korthals
Edited by
Ruth Chadwick ,
Mairi Levitt  and
Darren Shickle
Michiel Korthals
Affiliation:
Wageningen University
Mairi Levitt
Affiliation:
Lancaster University
Darren Shickle
Affiliation:
University of Leeds
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Summary

Introduction: the evolving gap between food production and consumption as the context of the desire to know

One of the most salient features of human evolution is the continuing reduction of time needed to produce, prepare and digest food (Wrangham 2009). This evolution reveals simultaneously one of the main ethical paradoxes of food: humans have become what they are now due to the continuing reduction of food processing time (time-saving cooking mechanisms), and this enables them to be severed from food (production), to forget about food (production), even to degrade food (production). The evolutionary advantages in the reduction of food collecting, producing and digesting time create also the risk that people become both alienated from food and subordinated to the corporate production of food. In the end, many people no longer know what to buy and what to eat – but of course they must eat. They know how to unpack a prepared box or how to put its content in the microwave, but no more. This gap between consumption and production and the complexity of food production make the sector a very inaccessible one; each food item is processed and traded many times before it lands on the shelf and even producers at the beginning of these processes do not know what happens later. Alienation is the core word here; it derives from the gap between food production and food consumption. However, nowadays many consumers feel alienated and lose trust in the food sector (Berg 2011); some want to go back to the earlier situation of food self-sufficiency (Pollan 2006); others want to find relevant knowledge, discuss new ways of food preparation and food production, and even become involved in new types of production (Stolle and Micheletti 2013). Indeed, it is not very fruitful to overcome this disconnection by returning to the ways of food production of two hundred years ago: new technologies have developed, new types of relationships between farmers, processors and consumers have emerged, and the role of food in our social life has changed (to name just a few factors).

Type
Chapter
Information
The Right to Know and the Right Not to Know
Genetic Privacy and Responsibility
 , pp. 196 - 208
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

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