Ethics of Food panel stirs it up on Friday at Dallas Institute of Humanities

by Teresa Gubbins

Folks who like to sit around talking about food attended a panel discussion Friday night on the Ethics of Food, hosted by the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture.

The event spun around a presentation by Austin professor-author Dr. James McWilliams, who has a new book promoting his "contrarian agrarian" theories on how we should eat. The panel included what the institute described as "spokespersons from a variety of environmental fields": rancher Robert Hutchins from Rehoboth Ranch in Greenville; lawyer David Denney; and writer Kim Pierce.

Having merely attended the panel discussion and not read the book, my summary of its contents comes from a point of ignorance. But McWilliams' main thesis seemed to be that eschewing meat has a better impact on the environment than the approach offered by "locavores," which says that you can aid by the environment by buying foods produced in your immediate area.

Embracing another controversial arena, McWilliams is also a proponent of genetically modified foods, and he favors fish farms as a source of protein in the future.

McWilliams says he reached these positions after decided that the locavore movement wasn't properly questioning its own assumptions. He wrote an article for the NY Times claiming that "buying local" was not the proper environmental position. He says that the ensuing ruckus got him a book deal which, despite its confrontational title (Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly) is not, he says, for the "average Joe."

"My goal is to hit policy people, to get people at food and agricultural organizations to read this book, and I have been very pleased to be brought into conversations with corporate heads, with people who write about policy," he said.

Still, it was plain old Average Joes, not policy makers, who attended the symposium Friday night, and they responded most favorably to rancher Hutchins, who seemed to be the only panel member who'd read the book and digested it sufficiently to offer feedback. The audience laughed at his admission that he was enthusiastic about coming "until I found out the author was going to be here," he said.

Hutchins 1. questioned the bias of the studies and research used by McWilliams; 2. suggested that "the absence of livestock" is not the answer, and that livestock could be used to improve soil and plant quality; and 3. disputed McWilliams' plea to "abandon idealism," declaring that we all have some kind of ideology and should own up to what it is, rather than pretend we don't have one.

Everyone agreed that McWilliams' book had some good material and that it was a good idea to talk about these things. And then some audience members left and, instead of talking about food, ate some.

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