In Genesis, God created plants with seeds to produce more plants. But today there is an attempt to control that seed rather than see it as a gift from God, Norman Wirzba said at a discussion on “Faithful Eating” held Sunday at the Duke Divinity School.

Wirzba, a Duke Divinity research professor of theology, ecology and rural life, is writing a book called “Food and Faith.” His talk, sponsored by the Congregation at Duke Chapel, included an eco-friendly vegetarian lunch provided by Mediterranean Deli. Lunchers drank water out of plastic cups and used real plates, silverware and cloth napkins.

Eating is one of the most important environmental acts you can do, Wirzba said, because food factors into every issue of our economy, including agriculture, resources and transportation. The industrial food system is creating massive amounts of damage, Wirzba said, and it is becoming globalized.

He painted the image of a small farm with a red barn and animals and several crops. That has been replaced with factory farms that produce commodities, he said, like corn, soy, cotton and wheat that feed not local people but products and corporations. Because farms grow just one thing, there are no plants feeding off each other, he said, so fertilizers and herbicides are used, which is bad for the land, he said.

Animals, too, suffer from factory farms, Wirzba explained. Rather than the big red barn and cows feeding on grass, cows, pigs and chicken are held en masse in confinement animal feed operations, never seeing the sun.

“Animals are not meant to live this way,” he said, adding that we don’t think of them first as animals, but rather units of production. To keep those animals alive, they are fed antibiotics and steroids. It all raises questions of cruelty, he said.

“But the industrialized system is very efficient. The average American is eating more meat than ever before,” Wirzba said. The latest is genetic engineering for profit, he said.

“The agriculture system is at odds with what you’d expect. It’s not what you think of with God’s good earth,” Wirzba said. Is this the kind of agriculture and food we want? he asked. Without years of testing, we’re the experiment as far as health effects go, he said.