The Trade-Off Between Chicken Welfare and Public Health Risks in Poultry Husbandry: Significance of Moral Convictions

AbstractWelfare-friendly outdoor poultry husbandry systems are associated with potentially higher public health risks for certain hazards, which results in a dilemma: whether to choose a system that improves chicken welfare or a system that reduces these public health risks. We studied the views of citizens and poultry farmers on judging the dilemma, relevant moral convictions and moral arguments in a practical context. By means of an online questionnaire, citizens (n  = 2259) and poultry farmers (n = 100) judged three practical cases, which illustrate the dilemma of improving chicken welfare or reducing public health risks forCampylobacter, avian influenza and dioxin. Furthermore, they scored the importance of moral arguments and to what extend they agreed with moral convictions related to humans and chickens. Citizens were more likely than farmers to choose a system that benefits chicken welfare at the expense of public health. These different judgments could be explained by differing moral convictions and valuations of moral arguments. Judgments of citizens and farmers were associated with moral arguments and convictions, predominantly with those regarding thevalue of chickens andnaturalness. Citizens agreed stronger with moral convictions regarding the intrinsic value of chickens and regardingnaturalness than farmers did, while farmers agreed stronger with conviction regardingfairness. We argue that opinions of citizens and farmers are context-dependent, which may...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research