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Operationalizing Ethics in Food Choice Decisions

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Abstract

There is a large gap between attitude and action when it comes to consumer purchases of ethical food. Amongst the various aspects of this gap, this paper focuses on the difficulty in knowing enough about the various dimensions of food production, distribution and consumption to make an ethical food purchasing decision. There is neither one universal definition of ethical food. We suggest that it is possible to support consumers in operationalizing their own ethics of food with the use of appropriate information and communication technology. We consider eggs as an example because locally produced options are available to many people on every continent. We consider the dimensions upon which food ethics may be constructed, then discuss the information required to assess it and the tools that can support it. We then present an overview of opportunities for design of a new software tool. Finally, we offer some points for discussion and future work.

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Notes

  1. Coined by Bonnie Azab Powell in 2006, as a possible name for the blog she was starting, which became known as the Ethicurean (http://www.ethicurean.com), with the tag line “Chew the right thing”.

  2. Accessed April, 2011

  3. Accessed April, 2011

  4. Accessed September, 2013

  5. Accessed September, 2013

  6. Accessed July, 2013

  7. Acccessed September, 2013

  8. Accessed September, 2013

  9. Accessed September, 2013

  10. Accessed September, 2013

  11. Accessed September, 2013

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Acknowledgments

Daryl Hepting acknowledges the support of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. The authors also wish to thank Jaz Choi and Marcus Foth for their encouragement.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Regina, Regina, SK, S4S 0A2, Canada

    Daryl H. Hepting, JoAnn Jaffe & Timothy Maciag

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  1. Daryl H. Hepting
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  2. JoAnn Jaffe
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  3. Timothy Maciag
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Correspondence to Daryl H. Hepting.

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Hepting, D.H., Jaffe, J. & Maciag, T. Operationalizing Ethics in Food Choice Decisions. J Agric Environ Ethics 27, 453–469 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-013-9473-8

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