Walk into most supermarkets today and the consumer is faced with choices. To buy organic or genetically modified produce? Free-range or intensively farmed? Individual decisions will be based on a whole raft of considerations: questions of price; assessments of quality, freshness and taste; concerns for the environment including such issues as food miles or animal welfare; life-style choice and even self image. The simple act of choosing, say, carrots, is thus an engagement (whether people choose to acknowledge it or not) with wider bioethical debates surrounding the politics of food.

As we saw in chapter 1, sustainable sources of food (such as battery farmed eggs) are not always the most ethical sources (e.g. free-range eggs). And there are certainly many bioethical and political issues surrounding the mechanisms via which we fill our mouths
 

Above image developed at the University Of Nottingham