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Why Be Cautious with Advocating Private Environmental Duties? Towards a Cooperative Ethos and Expressive Reasons
This article start from two opposing intuitions in the environmental duties debate. On the one hand, if our lifestyle causes environmental harm, then we have a duty to reduce that impact through lifestyle changes (lifestyle-matters intuition). On the other hand, many people share the intuition that environmental duties cannot demand to alter our lifestyle radically for environmental reasons. These two intuitions underlie the current dualism in the environmental duties debate: those arguing for lifestyle changes (private duties) and those arguing that our duties are limited to promoting just environmental institutions (prom...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - July 26, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

How New are New Harms Really? Climate Change, Historical Reasoning and Social Change
AbstractClimate change and other contemporary harms are often depicted asNew Harms because they seem to constitute unprecedented challenges. ThisNew Harms Discourse rests on two important premises, both of which we criticise on empirical grounds. First, we argue that thePremise of changed conditions of human interaction—according to which the conditions regarding whom people affect (and how) have changed recently and which emphasises the difference with past conditions of human interaction—risks obfuscating how humanity’s current predicament is merely the transient result of long-term, gradual processes and developme...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - July 25, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Veganism and Children: A Response to Marcus William Hunt
AbstractIn this paper I respond to Marcus William Hunt ’s argument that vegan parents have pro tanto reasons for not raising their children on a vegan diet because such a diet is potentially harmful to children’s physical and social well-being. In my rebuttal, first I show that in practice all vegan diets, with the exception of wacky diets, are bene ficial to children’s well-being (and adults as well); and that all animal-based diets are potentially unhealthful. Second, I show that vegan children are no more socially outcast than any other group. In other words, veganism does not harm the lives of children. Having c...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - July 24, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Is Animal Suffering Really All That Matters? The Move from Suffering to Vegetarianism
AbstractThe animal liberation movement, among other goals, seeks an end to the use of animals for food. The philosophers who started the movement agree on the goal but differ in their approach: deontologists argue that rearing animals for food infringes animals ’ inherent right to life. Utilitarians claim that ending the use of animals for food will result in the maximization of utility. Virtue-oriented theorists argue that using animals for food is callus, self-indulgent, and unjust, in short, it’s an unvirtuous practice. Despite their different appro aches, arguments for vegetarianism or veganism have a common step. ...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - July 22, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Patel, Raj and Stephen Moore: A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet
AbstractThis work reviews and relates relevant information from the book.A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet. In this book the authors trace how seven essential ‘things” were made cheap by capitalism, pushing the closer to environmental catastrophe. The seven ‘things’ investigated by Patel and Moore are nature, money, work, care, food, energy and lives. The authors examine the history of each ‘cheap’ thing and way capitalism has rendered it a co mmodity and then cheap. The authors employ the term ‘cheap not in a colloquial sense, by cheap t...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - July 8, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Genome Editing and Responsible Innovation, Can They Be Reconciled?
AbstractGenome editing is revolutionising the field of genetics, which includes novel applications to food animals. Responsible research and innovation (RRI) has been advocated as a way of ensuring that a wider-range of stakeholders and publics are able to engage with new and emerging technologies to inform decision making from their perspectives and values. We posit that genome editing is now proceeding at such a fast rate, and in so many different directions, such as to overwhelm attempts to achieving a more reflective pace. An alternative location for reflection is during the much slower process of taking products from ...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - July 7, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Glitters as a Source of Primary Microplastics: An Approach to Environmental Responsibility and Ethics
AbstractThis paper is about “glitters”, one of the sources of primary microplastics, which, in turn, are deemed an emerging source of pollutants affecting the environment. Today, most glitters available on the market are essentially microplastics, as they are made of polyesters and are of a size smaller than 5 mm. The tin y, shiny, decorative and colorful glitters are used in a wide range of products including but not limited to make-up or craft materials, clothing, shoes, bags, ornaments, and various objects. The marketing of micron-sized plastic materials, the environmental risks of which are no longer disputable, a...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - June 27, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Ethics in the Anthropocene: Moral Responses to the Climate Crisis
AbstractThis review essay looks at Andrew Brei ’s edited volume,Ecology,ethics and hope (Rowman& Littlefield, London,2016), Candis Callison ’sHow climate change comes to matter: The communal life of facts (Duke University Press, Durham,2014), Randall Curren and Ellen Metzger ’sLiving well now and in the future: Why sustainability matters (MIT Press, Cambridge,2017), Willis Jenkins ’The future of ethics: Sustainability,social justice,and religious creativity (Georgetown University Press, Washington, D.C.,2013), and Byron Williston ’sThe Anthropocene project: Virtue in the age of climate change (Oxford Universi...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - June 24, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Carlo Alvaro: Ethical Veganism, Virtue Ethics, and the Great Soul
(Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics)
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - June 23, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Conceptualization of Ecological Management: Practice, Frameworks and Philosophy
AbstractThis paper investigates practice, frameworks and philosophy in the field of ecological management, a novel integrative approach to closing the gap between ecological and economic theoretical models and ecological and economic behavior. First, I will present the current status in this emerging field and discuss management in relation to various sub-disciplines, including agroecology, circular economy, industrial ecology, and urban sustainability. This provides a basis to analyze the theoretical frameworks found in profitable, ecologically-based businesses and identify key general features that characterize this appr...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - June 20, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Is Speciesism Wrong by Definition?
AbstractOscar Horta has argued that speciesism is wrong by definition. In his view, there can be no more substantive debate about the justification of speciesism than  there can be about the legality of murder, for it stems from the definition of “speciesism” that speciesism is unjustified just as it stems from the definition of “murder” that murder is illegal. The present paper is a case against this conception. I distinguish two issues: one is descript ive (Is speciesism wrong by definition?) and the other normative (Should speciesism be wrong by definition?). Relying on philosophers’ use of the term, I first...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - June 19, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Pain in Pig Production: Text Mining Analysis of the Scientific Literature
This study reviewed the interest of the scientific research on the pain issue in pig production to assess if the societal instances may be a driving force for the research activity. A li terature search protocol was set up to identify the peer-reviewed papers published between 1970 and 2017 that covered the topic of ‘pain in pigs’ using Scopus®, database of Elsevier ©. One hundred and thirty papers were selected and they were mainly focused on the practice of castration (64%) followed by tail docking (24%). The scientific community first focused on these painful practices as a way to improve production efficiency and...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - June 6, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

The Moral Complexity of Agriculture: A Challenge for Corporate Social Responsibility
AbstractOver the past decades, the modernization of agriculture in the Western world has contributed not only to a rapid increase in food production but also to environmental and societal concerns over issues such as greenhouse gas emissions, soil quality and biodiversity loss. Many of these concerns, for example those related to animal welfare or labor conditions, are stuck in controversies and apparently deadlocked debates. As a result we observe a paradox in which a wide range of corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, originally seeking to reconnect agriculture and society, frequently provoke debate, conflic...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - June 6, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

How Farm Animal Welfare Issues are Framed in the Australian Media
AbstractTopics related to ethical issues in agricultural production, particularly farm animal welfare, are increasingly featured in mainstream news media. Media representations of farm animal welfare issues are important because the media is a significant source of information, but also because the way that the issues are represented, or framed, defines these issues in particular ways, suggests causes or solutions, and provides moral evaluations. As such, analysis of media frames can reveal how issues are being made public and identify the cues that audiences are given to help them make sense of complex ethical issues. Pre...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - June 5, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

“That’s the Way We’ve Always Done It”: A Social Practice Analysis of Farm Animal Welfare in Alberta
AbstractAlthough beef and dairy production in Alberta, Canada, enjoys strong public support, there are enduring public concerns, including farm animal welfare. Evolving codes of practice and animal care councils prescribe changes and improvements to many areas of farm management, and may be seen by farmers as an appropriate response to public animal welfare concerns. However, codes of practice do not address every animal welfare concern, and new concerns can arise over time. Drawing on social practice theory and in-depth field research with 36 cattle and dairy farmers, this paper explores the materials, competencies, and m...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - May 27, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research