Food Ethics

Food Ethics is Andrew Chignell's Princeton course on how concerns about animals, workers, the environment and community should inform what we eat. Rather than prescribing answers, it aims to give you the tools to reflect effectively: a knowledge of four leading ethical theories and a grasp of the key empirical issues in food production, distribution and consumption. The six modules are served as dishes: utilitarianism and animal agriculture, from utilitarianism to Kantianism with a side of alternative meat, God, virtue and some non-Western approaches, food justice, race and diet-related disease, a local food-systems model, and food politics with a closing look at making a difference.

Coursera labels the course beginner level with a flexible schedule and estimates five weeks at ten hours a week; the only stated prerequisite is an interest in food, philosophy or both. The page states that all features of the course are available for free and that, as per Princeton University policy, no certificates, credentials or reports are awarded.