This paper is an attempt to examine issues and problems raised by agricultural biotechnology by drawing on the richness of contemporary ideas in ethical theory and thereby contribute to the project of establishing new approaches to these problems. The fundamental argument is that many of the negative aspects of agricultural biotechnology are generated at the level of the underlying conceptual frameworks that shape the technology's internal modes of organization, rather than the unintended effects of the application of an inherently benevolent set of techniques. If ``food ethics'' is to address the adverse impacts of agricultural biotechnology, it must ultimately challenge these conceptual frames, which, I argue, emerge from Enlightenment, liberal, political, and economic theory. The translation of traditional bioethics (focusing on principles such as autonomy and rights, justice, and well being) into food ethics does not produce the critical tools that are able adequately to challenge the harmful legacy of Enlightenment thinking. What is needed are reorientations of ethics that are capable of formulating concepts and approaches that to some extent break with the presuppositions that underpin biotechnology at its foundation. This paper suggests that narrative and feminist critiques of medical bioethics are a good place to start in this project.