Tom Regan: We Are What We Eat

Tom Regan: We Are What We Eat
In "We Are What We Eat," Tom Regan discusses a number of health and environmental consequences of food production and identifies some of the moral questions these consequences raise. Regan begins by describing the extensive of use of chemicals such as pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers in modern agriculture. Traces of these dangerous chemicals can remain in the food we eat and surface runoffs can contaminate the water we drink. Moreover, the industrial production of these chemicals in petrochemical plants pollutes the air we breathe and contributes to phenomena like acid rain and dead lakes. These effects threaten not only our own health, but that of future generations as well. Regan therefore asks whether we are doing enough to protect the interests of generations yet to come.
Chemical use is also extensive in the meat industry, where factory farms subject pigs, chickens, and cows to a range of growth stimulants and antibiotics. This again raises concerns about the effects of chemical residue in our food, but factory farms raise other issues as well. For one, they are inefficient in that the amount of protein they produce in meat products is less than the amount of vegetable protein they consume in animal feed. In a world where millions of people die of starvation every year, Regan asks whether such a wasteful method of producing food is morally acceptable. Moreover, there is the question of the treatment of farm animals themselves. Factory farms condemn millions of conscious beings to lives of frustration and misery every year. For Regan, any morally serious examination of modern food production must take the treatment of these animals into consideration. Regan also raises moral questions regarding wild animals, which are increasingly endangered because of chemical contamination of the environment and habitat destruction caused by urban growth. Do animal species have a value independent to human interests (including economic interests) that makes their survival a good thing?
-Despite their treatment of farm animals, factory farms produce food efficiently.