Agricultural ethics

     Not too long ago, a committe in Switzerland was charged with trying to delineate a reasonable ethics of plant use.  The Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Gene Technology wrestled with this sticky question since the approval of experiments in genetics and subsequent funding require that the ethical dimensions of the experiment pass muster.

Check out the following article in the New York Times from yesterday: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/22/dining/22eco.html?_r=1&oref=slogin (Of Church and Steak: Farming for the Soul.)

There are a couple of key points in this article that describe the current state of affairs in a broad context,

"In the past few years protecting the environment has emerged as a religious issue. Now, something similar is taking place in the way people of faith view their daily bread."

Pork production in the United States is a moral and virtuous activity in that it creates an abundant, continuous, safe, low-cost and nutritious supply of food for people and families in this country and all over the world.  Providing food for others as a vocation is to daily dedicate oneself to the most elementary affirmation of life itself, for without food there is no life. 

Beyond this most basic affirmation of life, food plays an equally fundamental role in creating and defining the deep cultural bonds and family traditions which connect people to each other and to their history thereby creating and sustaining the human family in all of its rich and diverse customs and identities.  By daily shouldering the unique and challenging production and economic risks and performing the hard work inherent in agricultural endeavors, pork producers along with other farmers free countless millions, whose first obligation would otherwise be to grow food for themselves and their families, to follow their own callings and passions, explore alternate careers and enables them to create value and find fulfillment in every other field of human venture.