Topic: Food Ethics

Prof. Fanzo shapes Lancet food systems report

The average person’s daily diet will need to change drastically during the next three decades to make sure everyone is fed without depleting the planet, a panel of experts including the Berman Institute’s Jessica Fanzo has concluded.

Global consumption of foods such as red meat and sugar will have to decrease by about half to make sure the Earth will be able to feed a growing population of 10 billion people by 2050, according to the EAT-Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems.

Written by 37 scientists from 16 countries and published Wednesday in the medical journal The Lancet, in conjunction with an advocacy group called the EAT Forum, the report was funded by the Wellcome Trust and Stordalen Foundation. In addition to the recommendations on meat, it calls for curbing food waste, a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, and overhauling agriculture so it doesn’t worsen deforestation and the depletion of scarce water.

“It’s not a blanket approach, but when you look at the data there are certain individuals or populations that don’t need that much red meat for their own health,” Fanzo, Bloomberg Distinguished Associate Professor of Global Food & Agricultural Policy and Ethics, said in a New York Times interview. “There’s a real inequity. Some people get too much. Some people get too little.”

Fanzo serves as the Director of the Global Food Ethics and Policy Program at the Berman Insitute, and plays key advisory roles in Johns Hopkins’ Alliance for a Healthier World on the food security and nutrition theme, as well as the Bloomberg American Health Initiative on obesity and food systems.

She is currently serving as the co-Chair for the Global Nutrition Report, and is the Team Leader for the High-Level Panel of Experts for Food Systems and Nutrition for the UN Committee on Food Security.

Fanzo also appeared in a Lancet podcast to discuss the need for a transformation in the way we eat, and was quoted in National Geographic’s coverage of the report.

 

Nicole Civita, J.D.

Nicole holds an LL.M. in Agricultural and Food Law from the University of Arkansas School of Law, a J.D., magna cum laude, Order of the Coif, from the Georgetown University Law Center, and an A.B. in American Studies and Creative Writing from Columbia University.

Alan Goldberg, PhD

Dr. Goldberg actively serves/d on the International Animal Welfare Advisory Boards of Shell, and Procter & Gamble, consults with CeeTox (an in vitro toxicology CRO) and Epithelix. In the non-profit area, he is a trustee of the Humane Society University, a member of the Advisory Board of Faculty for the Department of Institutional Review Ethics and Administration in Nicholas Cardinal Cheong Graduate School for Life, The Catholic University of Korea, (South Korea), a member of the Alexandra Foundation (Monaco), a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Scientific Communication (ISC); and is on the Toxicology Panel of EFSA (European Food Safety Authority in Parma, Italy).

Starting in 2007, Dr. Goldberg served as a Pew Commissioner on the study of the Impact of Industrial (US) Farm Animal Production, on issues of public health, environment, animal welfare and social justice. While on the commission, Dr. Goldberg studied with the Talmudic Scholar Rabbi Avram Reisner to learn the Jewish laws dealing with food animal production. At the request of the Committee on Jewish Law of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism Dr. Goldberg shared his understandings of farm animal welfare. Dr. Goldberg also chairs the management board of Orange House Partnership, a Belgium NGO dedicated to provide training on food safety to the developing world.

Currently, Dr Goldberg is working on define an ethical framework for feeding the world at an anticipated population of 9+ billion people.

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The CHOOSE FOOD PROJECT aims to help producers and consumers make ethical food choices by giving them access to easy to use, high-quality information about food. It is developing:
  • A Framework for ethical assessment of the food system
  • Educational resources
  • Cutting-edge digital tools
The project aims to guide actors throughout the food value chain to make, market, and choose products more ethically.
To date, our team of experts has articulated 49 Core Ethical Commitments that set parameters for ethical conduct and goals for ethical improvement of food products. These commitments can guide actors along the food chain who have the power to make ethical improvement to production practices. They also provide guidance to consumers who prefer to buy foods that cohere with their ethical values.

Travis N. Rieder, PhD

Travis’ work tends to fall into one of two, quite distinct research programs. The first concerns ethics and policy questions about sustainability and planetary limits. Much of this research has been on issues in climate change ethics and procreative ethics with a particular focus on the intersection of the two – that is, on the question of responsible procreation in the era of climate change.  His publications have appeared in several journals on this topic, as well as in a short book with Springer, entitled Toward a Small Family Ethic (2016). He also works on food ethics related to climate change and sustainability, and is currently a member of the Global Food Ethics and Policy team, focusing on ethical issues concerning high-emissions food, in particular animal-sourced foods.

The second, and much newer, research program concerns ethical and policy issues surrounding America’s opioid epidemic. In this area, Travis has published an essay in Health Affairs concerning physician responsibility for safely weaning patients off prescription opioids, and co-authored a National Academy of Medicine Perspective Paper on Physician Responsibility in combating the opioid crisis.

In addition to his more scholarly writing, Travis is firmly committed to doing bioethics with the public, and to that end writes and interviews regularly for the popular media; his work has appeared in very many high-impact publications, including The Guardian, Washington Post, NPR’s All Things Considered, New Republic, and IFLScience. He writes regularly for The Conversationand blogs occasionally at The Huffington Post and the Berman Institute Bioethics Bulletin.