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From the Editor: Preface to this Special Issue on Animal Welfare Impact Assessment
(Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics)
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - September 23, 2017 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

How Should Death Be Taken into Account in Welfare Assessments?
AbstractThat death is not a welfare issue appears to be a widespread view among animal welfare researchers. This paper demonstrates that this view is based on a mistaken assumption about harm, which is coupled to ‘welfare’ being conceived as ‘welfare at a time’. Assessments of welfare at a time ignore issues of longevity. In order to assess the welfare issue of death, it is necessary to structure welfare assessment as comparisons of possible lives of the animals. The paper also demonstrates that excl uding the welfare issues of being deprived of life from the ethical assessment of killing distorts the ethical consi...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - September 12, 2017 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Recovering Food Commons in Post Industrial Europe: Cooperation Networks in Organic Food Provisioning in Catalonia and Norway
AbstractThis paper explores food commoning through an ethnographic case study in Catalonia as our primary site while the Norwegian case is juxtaposed as a comparison, two agriculturally and economically different European countries. The ethnography analyses cooperation networks between organic food producers ’ and consumers’ involving different nodes of community gardening initiatives, self-employed growers, local farmers and all of them under a unique cooperative integrating a community economy. The result it is a myriad of exchange practices ranging from reciprocity and barter to market exchange w ithout intermediari...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - September 11, 2017 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Causal Inefficacy and Utilitarian Arguments Against the Consumption of Factory-Farmed Products
AbstractUtilitarian objections to the consumption of factory-farmed products center primarily on the harms such farms cause to animals. One problem with the utilitarian case against the consumption of factory-farmed products is that the system of production is so vast and complex that no typical, individual consumer can, through her consumer behavior, make any difference to the welfare of animals. I grant for the sake of argument that this causal inefficacy objection is sound and go on to argue that the utilitarian nevertheless has the resources to conclude that at least in some cases it is wrongful on utilitarian grounds ...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - September 9, 2017 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Consumer Food Ethics: Considerations of Vulnerability, Suffering, and Harm
AbstractOver the past years, various accounts of ethical consumption have been produced which identify certain concepts as central to mediating the ethical relationship between the consumer and the consumed. Scholars across disciplinary fields have explored how individuals construe their ethical consumption responsibilities and commitments through the notions of identity, taking care and doing good, proximity and distance, suggesting the centrality of these themes to consumer engagement in ethical practices. This paper contributes to the body of research concerned with unravelling consumers ’ conceptually mediated relati...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - September 8, 2017 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Bovine Tuberculosis Policy in England: Would a Virtuous Government Cull Mr Badger?
AbstractBovine tuberculosis (bovine TB) is the most important animal health and welfare policy issue in Britain. Badgers are a wildlife reservoir of disease, although the eight-year Independent Scientific Group (ISG) Randomised Badger Culling Trial concluded with a recommendation against culling. The report advised government that bovine TB could be controlled, and ultimately eradicated, by cattle-based measures alone. Despite the ISG recommendation against culling, the farming and veterinary industries continued to lobby government for a badger cull. The 2005 –2010 Labour government followed the ISG advice and decided a...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - August 28, 2017 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Bovine Tuberculosis and Badger Culling in England: An Animal Rights-Based Analysis of Policy Options
AbstractBovine tuberculosis (bovine TB) is an important and controversial animal health policy issue in England, which impacts humans, cattle and badgers. The government policy of badger culling has led to widespread opposition, in part due to the conclusions of a large field trial recommending against culling, and in part because badgers are a cherished wildlife species. Animal rights (AR) theorists argue that sentient nonhumans should be accorded fundamental rights against killing and suffering. In bovine TB policy, however, pro-culling actors claim that badgers must be culled to avoid the slaughter of cattle. The first ...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - August 24, 2017 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Bovine Tuberculosis and Badger Control in Britain: Science, Policy and Politics
AbstractBovine tuberculosis (bovine TB) is the most economically important animal health policy issue in Britain. The problem of what to do about badgers has plagued successive governments since a dead badger was discovered with bovine TB in 1971. Successive Labour governments (1997 –2010) oversaw the Randomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT) from 1998 to 2006. Despite the RBCT recommendation against culling, the 2010–2015 Coalition government implemented pilot badger culls. This paper provides an account of the evolution of bovine TB and badger control policy, focusing on the 1997–2010 Labour, the 2010–2015 Coalition...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - August 24, 2017 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

The Development of an Animal Welfare Impact Assessment (AWIA) Tool and Its Application to Bovine Tuberculosis and Badger Control in England
AbstractBovine tuberculosis (bovine TB) is a controversial animal health policy issue in England, which impacts farmers, the public, cattle and badgers. Badgers (Meles meles) act as a wildlife reservoir of disease. Policy options for badger control include (1) do nothing, (2) badger culling, and (3) badger vaccination. This paper argues for mandatory Animal Welfare Impact Assessment (AWIA) for all policy that significantly affects sentient animals. AWIA includes (1) species description, and (2) AWIA analysis stages. In this paper, AWIA is applied to impacts of bovine TB policy options on cattle and badgers. Over 4  years,...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - August 19, 2017 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Bovine Tuberculosis and Badger Culling in England: A Utilitarian Analysis of Policy Options
AbstractBovine tuberculosis (bovine TB) is an important animal health policy issue in Britain, which impacts farmers, the public, domestic farmed cattle and the wild badger population. The Westminster government ’s badger culling policy in England, which began in 2013, has caused considerable controversy. This is in part because the Independent Scientific Group advised against culling, based on the Randomised Badger Culling Trial. Those opposed to badger culling support more stringent cattle-based measure s and the vaccination of badgers. This paper argues for ethical analysis of public policy options which impact sentie...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - August 18, 2017 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Bovine TB, Badger Culling and Applied Ethics: Utilitarianism, Animal Welfare and Rights
(Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics)
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - August 11, 2017 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Animal Ethics and the Culling of Badgers: A Reply to McCulloch and Reiss
AbstractBovine tuberculosis (bovine TB) is an important animal health policy issue in England, which impacts farmers, the public, cattle and badgers. The government has licensed farmers to cull badgers, which are a wildlife reservoir for bovine TB. The policy is controversial, particularly because the Independent Scientific Group recommended against culling based on the Randomised Badger Culling Trial. This paper assesses impacts of bovine TB policy options on cattle and badgers. Policy options assessed are: (1) do nothing, (2) badger culling, and (3) badger vaccination. Impacts are illustrated by Animal Welfare Impact Ass...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - August 11, 2017 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Animal Welfare Impact Assessments: A Good Way of Giving the Affected Animals a Voice When Trying to Tackle Wild Animal Controversies?
AbstractControl of wild animals may give rise to controversy, as is seen in the case of badger control to manage TB in cattle in the UK. However, it is striking that concerns about the potential suffering of the affected animals themselves are often given little attention or completely ignored in policies aimed at dealing with wild animals. McCulloch and Reiss argue that this could be remedied by means of a “mandatory application of formal and systematic Animal Welfare Impact Assessment (AWIA)”. Optimistically, they consider that an AWIA could help to resolve controversies involving wild animals. The aim of this paper ...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - August 4, 2017 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

The Cross-Cultural Importance of Animal Protection and Other World Social Issues
AbstractIn an increasingly global landscape, NFP (not-for-profit) initiatives including those addressing animal protection, are increasingly operating cross-borders. Doing so without respect, local engagement, and a thorough understanding of the issues of concern is fraught with danger, and potentially wasteful of resources. To this purpose, we sought to understand attitudes to the importance of 13 major world social issues in relation to animal protection (including reducing poverty, racial, LGBT and gender equality, environmental protection, sustainable development, genetic engineering and capital punishment) by surveyin...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - July 26, 2017 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Beyond Connectivity: The Internet of Food Architecture Between Ethics and the EU Citizenry
AbstractThis contribution deals with the ethical challenges arising from the IoT landscape with reference to a specific context, i.e. the realm of agri-food. In this sector, innumerable web-connected tools, platforms and sensors are constantly interacting with consumers/users/citizens, by reshaping and redefining the core elements and functions of machine –human being relationships. By sketching out the main pillars which ethics of the Internet of Food (IoF) is founded on, my argument posits that the civic hybridization of knowledge production mediated by IoT technologies may create breeding ground for the move towards a...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - July 22, 2017 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research