Abstract
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) defines food security as “access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life.” In contrast, food insecurity should be addressed as an issue of wide public health concern that deserves attention by lawmakers due to its detrimental health and socioeconomic effects. Bioethics can present a framework to view the issue of food insecurity and can allow agencies of authority and action in American society to combat the issue with moral imperatives. Prior research has sought reasoning for applying bioethics to the economic argument around the agricultural business such as the production and consumerism of genetically modified crops, to using a human rights framework to create policy addressing food insecurity, and to using ethics to identify the extent of food insecurity. There is a gap in research addressing the application of bioethics in public health agendas and lawmaking regarding the pressing issue of food insecurity, food access, and food resource allocation. This paper provides a real-world application of three of the main principles of utilitarian bioethics to the fields of public health and law in order to combat food insecurity in the United States: 1) beneficence, 2) non-maleficence, 3) justice.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
BIOETHICS, FOOD INSECURITY, PUBLIC HEALTH, LAWMAKING, FOOD ENVIRONMENTS, FOOD EQUITY
