What should we eat? Food choices and our obligations to the public's health

Our production and consumption of animal products has significant implications for the public's health. 40 percent of the earth's surface is devoted to agriculture, and nearly 70 percent of that is for livestock grazing and feedstock. Animal agriculture makes the largest contribution, from a single source, to greenhouse gas emissions—a full 18 percent. It produces unregulated wastes that imperil the health of rural communities. Animal agriculture has also catalyzed the growth of zoonotic superbugs while consuming an excess of water, oil, and crops to the detriment of populations starved for these same resources. Agricultural run-off has spawned upwards of 400 dead zones in coastal waters world-wide, totaling 245,000 square kilometers, suffocating aquatic ecosystems and depriving those same communities of an important source of food. And finally, the type and amount of animal products we consume is linked with the growing burden of chronic disease and preventable death, including obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and major cancers. Given its highly significant implications for individual, environmental, and global health, we argue that animal agriculture should be a focus of discussion in public health ethics. Not only do animal agriculture's detrimental effects raise questions about personal obligation and responsibility, they raise questions about possible ethical parallels between dietary change and other behaviors mandated in the name of the public health, for example vaccination. Finally, we suggest that the relevant moral community in public health ethics should include nonhuman animals, a recognition that only increases the ethical importance of modern animal agriculture.