Eating Ethically

Rev. Amy Russell - 2009-04-19

Eating Ethically
Rev. Amy Russell
April 19, 2009
When I was growing up, every summer my parents would pack up the five of us kids into the Ford station wagon and drive from wherever we lived at the time to my grandfather’s farm in Dayton. His farm was right here in Centerville, off of Lebanon Pike. At one time, his farm was one of just a few family farms in Centerville that now are replaced with the suburban sprawl that you see from 725 and out. When I’m driving out that way I still gaze nostalgically at the old stone farmhouse that is now surrounded, not with sheep and cows, but with Paul Revere Village and other small suburban houses.
Each morning at the farm, I’d wake early and hurry downstairs to help my grandmother. Even before breakfast, she would take me out to her vegetable garden and we’d pick luscious ripe tomatoes, green beans off the vine, and fresh ears of corn right off the stalk. Sometimes we’d pick zucchini, or yellow squash, or tender lettuce leaves for salad. The most exciting thing for me about this enterprise was taking part in actually providing the food we ate for dinner. Sitting down with my family and saying grace, giving thanks for the food that we were provided was a truly spiritual experience because of the real connection we felt to the source of our food.
Last year at the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly that was held in Fort Lauderdale, the delegates to the Assembly voted to make “Ethical Eating” the Study/Action Issue for the next three years. Each year a timely issue is chosen to study by the Commission on Social Witness who provide congregations with study guides on the topic. When the topic “Ethical Eating” was chosen in the Assembly last summer, I have to admit to feeling a little uncomfortable with why this topic was so important. And I admit I was mostly uncomfortable with it because I knew nothing about it.
Hearing from Donna and Cindi today makes this issue much more real for me. I’ve been doing a lot of reading about the issue this week, but it really becomes personal when we hear from people who have decided to make this awareness a fundamental part of their lives.
Every time we sit down to eat can be a spiritual experience. In many religions, dietary practices are an essential part of a person’s spiritual practice. Many of the dietary practices that we hear about that Orthodox Jews honor are based on cultural norms from a time in the history of that religion. The matzoh crackers that are used at the time of Passover are representative of the fact that the Jews escaping from Egypt with Moses didn’t have time to let the bread rise, so they baked the bread flat. Japanese Buddhists on New Year’s day eat a rice cake to welcome in the new year. And the Christian Holy Communion reflects the Last Supper when Jesus and his disciples sat down and broke bread and drank wine together. In every culture, families approach mealtime as a special time to be together.
Since I have started reading more about the approach of “ethical eating” I have had a very different experience both when shopping for my food and when I sit down to eat. Now I stop and ask these questions:
- Where was this food grown?
- Who grew it?
- How was it grown? Were there chemicals involved in its growth? Was there genetic engineering involved?
- Who picked it?
- And how did it get here?
Most of us don’t have vegetable gardens in our back yards where they can go and pick the salad or the vegetables for their meals. Most of us don’t live on farms or even near farms where we could have access to freshly grown food very close by. And that means that every time we go to the grocery, we are interacting with people all over the world who have planted, harvested, prepared, and transported the food that we buy and bring home to feed to our families.
Now I want to make it clear that I am not telling you all this to make you feel guilty. I don’t think guilt is a very motivating factor in changing the way we act in the world. This idea of being intentional about what we eat is a whole new approach for me. And I’m not sure how I will change now that I’ve been “sensitized” to the issue. I like what the Earthkind web site says, “Ethical eating, like ethical living is not about absolutes. It’s about doing the best you’re willing and able to do, and nurturing a will to keep doing better.” That’s all we can do.
I learned a lot from my research this week about the issues. For instance, seeds. I knew nothing about seeds. But I learned that the small seed companies in this country are shrinking and there are about six large companies who control 98% of seed sales. The large corporations like Monsanto, which is a chemical company now owns some of the largest seed providers. Why should this concern us? Well, I guess it depends on what you believe about the direction we should be going in agriculture.
Agri-business today has the goal to increase food production capacity in controlled ways. One of these ways is through genetic modification of seeds. Through controlling the genes in crops like corn, soy, and canola, the companies can control much of how dependent farmers become on these companies. For instance, through genetic engineering a bacterial gene can be fostered in a seed that makes it hardy enough to withstand “Roundup” so that herbicide can be used. This seed is actually sold by Monsanto, who also sells Roundup. Or the gene can be altered so that it’s sterile and therefore, the seeds cannot be saved for next year’s crops. In fact, it is illegal in some places to save seeds from year to year from certain kind of crops because the seed companies expect the farmers to have to buy new seeds every year.
There’s a story told in Barbara Kingsolver’s book, Animal, Vegetable, and Miracle about a Canadian farmer, Percy Schmeiser who was growing canola next to a farm growing canola with the Monsanto genetically engineered seed that withstood Roundup. When pollen from these engineered plants blew onto this farmer’s fields, the genetically engineered pollen interacted with his plants which now contained this gene. Monsanto sued the farmer for using their genes which he had not purchased, but which had blown into his fields. The Canadian laws protect possession of the gene itself, no matter how it was obtained. Percy lost his court case which went all the way to the Canadian Supreme Court. At least he was not asked to compensate Monsanto for their gene which had now permanently changed his seeds which he had been saving for 50 years.
In Canada, the National Farmers Union has now called for a moratorium on all genetically modified foods. In this country, 24 states have proposed or passed legislation to limit genetically modified seeds and hold the producers of such seeds responsible for alteration of farmers’ seeds when the wind carries them into their fields.
Another scary scenario that the large agri-businesses may have created is the increasing reduction of genetic diversity of the foods we grow and eat. Due to the advantage of producing large crops of the same variety of vegetable, fewer and fewer varieties of vegetables are being produced. Diseases that attack crops are constantly changing to adjust to the changes in the crops being grown. The bacteria that attack plants find new ways to kill crops each year. When there are fewer and fewer varieties of plants, that leaves less room for the natural evolution of the survival of the fittest. Diversity of plants has been narrowed to the seeds chosen by business for production. There is more chance of one or two of the varieties being grown being wiped out by a disease leaving us with fewer options for future plants.
There are organizations working to prevent this. The Seed Savers Exchange has over 8,000 members who grow, save, and exchange seeds to promote more bio-diversity in the world. Another group, Slow Food International works to protect the variety of foods from the modern fast food industry that promotes just a few kinds of foods.
So, these are some of the issues we may have to be aware of about where and how our food was grown. The next question would be how does it get to us? And how much fuel does it take to have this food available to us?
Buying local produce and food allows us to do two things: support small farmers who are local, and uses less fossil fuels in transporting them.
Now, I’m not naïve enough to think that we are all going to stop eating fresh produce in the winter since we’ve all become used to that. And it’s a wonderfully healthy way to live. But thinking intentionally about our food, makes us ask the question- where was this food grown? Is it possible to get a hothouse variety that was grown locally.
Now you might ask, why don’t we want to support the small farmer producing those wonderful avocados that arrive in our supermarket from Ecuador? I’m told that most of the produce that appears in our markets from other countries was produced by some major agri-business like Dole, who pays the farmer a less than fair wage. That is why we promote Fair Trade coffee and chocolate. We try to support those organizations that are bringing products to market which were grown with fair trade practices.
Another question that I will find myself asking as I go to buy my food now, will be what kind of chemicals were used in the production of my food? And how did the use of those chemicals affect the environment?
Much of what the agriculture industry has done over the years is to develop ways to increase the yield of produce per acre of land. Many would say this is a good development since we can feed more people. However, in order to go from the 24 bushels of corn per acre that was produced in 1930 to the 160 bushels per acre today, farmers must use applications of nitrogen on the soil in the form of super-fertilizers. When nitrogen is applied, about half of it drifts up into the clouds and becomes a part of the rain that falls on us. This rain is often called acid rain. Or it can also stay in the atmosphere as greenhouse gasses. Or when the nitrogen washes off the land as runoff, it can end up in lakes causing massive algae blooms that choke off other plant life that live in these lakes. This in turn affects the creatures who swim in the lake and live around the lake.
All of these stories about the difficulties facing us in our current agricultural picture, remind us that we are part of the “interconnected web” that our seventh principle is all about. There is no isolated event in the world that doesn’t affect others.
I would imagine that this sounds much like other services we’ve had on environmental issues. I often nod my head when I hear about these issues, but feel inside, “What can I do, I’m only one person? I can’t change the way the world economy works.” I often feel helpless when faced with these issues.
And some of you may feel, “Don’t tell me what to eat or where to buy it. That’s just another way the Uu’s try to make us feel guilty.” And sometimes I feel that, too.
So, in my head, I’m trying to figure out what I can do to make this work in my life. What can I do without completely turning my family’s life upside down from the way we eat? Michael Pollan suggests that you don’t eat anything that your great, great grandmother wouldn’t have recognized as food. Well, that lets out about half of what we put on our dinner tables today.
Here are some things that your friends here at MVUUF suggest of things you can do:
- Consider when you buy produce how far it had to travel to get to the market to reduce transportation energy.
- Consider who grew the food and who will be supported by your purchase.
- Try to learn what food has been grown with genetically modified seeds or with certain chemicals.
- Try to buy food with less packaging to create less non-recylable waste.
- Find out more about fair trade initiatives and support products grown that way.
You know, the spiritual practice of sitting down at the dinner table with family or friends, or just with yourself, having cooked a wonderful meal full of fresh produce and healthy proteins should be part of everyone’s life. We can’t always cook our own meals and we can’t always buy the most locally grown items. But in becoming more intentional about what we do, we change the way we approach our eating. Our eating becomes a statement about how we interact with the rest of the world.
They say “We are what we eat” and maybe that’s true. Maybe eating isn’t just about nutrition, maybe it’s also about the ethical issues of what we eat and how we obtained it.
This past Easter I made a wonderful dinner for my family and some of their friends. My daughter made the salad, her boyfriend made the salad dressing. My son, Doug, entertained us while we were cooking with tales of his life in NY. My husband bought and poured the wine. And my dog followed us all around hoping to find a morsel or two dropped on the floor. And when we sat down to eat and they all looked at me and asked if we were going to say a blessing, I being rather weary after a full day, I just sighed and said, “Thank God for this meal!” But maybe I should have said, “Thanks for the farmer who grew the lettuce and the asparagus, thanks to the company who raised the lamb and brought him to our table, to the winegrowers who bottled this wine, and to my family for coming together in gratitude on this day.”
Bibliography
Kingsolver, Barbara, Animal, Vegetable, and Miracle, 2007
Pollan, Michael, Omnivore’s Dilemma, 2006.
Winne, Mark, Closing the Food Gap, 2008.