Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics This is an RSS file. You can use it to subscribe to this data in your favourite RSS reader or to display this data on your own website or blog.

The Moral Pitfalls of Cultivated meat: Complementing Utilitarian Perspective with eco-republican Justice Approach
AbstractThe context of accelerated climate change, environmental pollution, ecosystems depletion, loss of biodiversity and growing undernutrition has led human societies to a crossroads where food systems require transformation. New agricultural practices are being advocated in order to achieve food security and face environmental challenges. Cultivated meat has recently been considered one of the most desired alternatives by animal rights advocates because it promises to ensure nutrition for all people while dramatically reducing ecological impacts and animal suffering. It is therefore presented as one of the fairest mean...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - November 22, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Justice and Inclusiveness: The Reconfiguration of Global –Local Relationships in Sustainability Initiatives in Ghana’s Cocoa Sector
AbstractPressure from the public and non-governmental organisations is pushing lead companies in the cocoa and chocolate sectors towards becoming more environmentally sustainable and socially just. Because of this, several sustainability programmes, certification schemes and delivery initiatives have been introduced. These have changed the relationship between chocolate companies, cocoa exporters, and small-scale farmers. This paper observes how large companies in the cocoa export and consumer markets are shifting away from their traditionally remote position in the cocoa sector. The pressure to ensure sustainability and j...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - November 21, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

From here to Utopia: Theories of Change in Nonideal Animal Ethics
AbstractAnimal ethics has often been criticized for an overreliance on “ideal” or even “utopian” theorizing. In this article, I recognize this problem, but argue that the “nonideal theory” which critics have offered in response is still insufficient to make animal ethics action-guiding. I argue that in order for animal ethics to be action-guiding, it must c onsideragent-centered theories of change detailing how an ideally just human-animal coexistence can and should be brought about. I lay out desiderata that such a theory of change should suffice so as to be helpful in guiding action. Specifically, a theory of...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - November 3, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Copping Out on Food Systems: How COP26 Failed to Address Food and Climate and How COP27 Can Solve It
(Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics)
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - October 1, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Are Collective Trading Organisations Necessarily Inclusive of Smallholder Farmers?: A Comparative Analysis of Farmer-led Auctions in the Javanese Chilli Market
AbstractOrganising smallholder farmers into groups or co-operatives is widely promoted as a strategy to connect farmers to markets and turn them into price makers rather than price takers. This pathway usually combines co-operative organisational models, based on collective ownership and representation in internal governance, with measures to shorten the agri-food chain, shifting the ownership of intermediary sourcing, aggregating and trading functions to the group. The underlying assumption is that this improves smallholder farmers' terms of inclusion in markets. To scrutinise this assumption, our study compares two examp...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - September 28, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Opportunities and Challenges in Applying the 3Rs to Zoos and Aquariums
AbstractSince Russell and Burch (1959) suggested the principles of replacement, reduction, and refinement (3Rs) as a foundation for animal research, their influence has only grown in the research community. In this paper, we discuss whether the 3Rs can be constructively used as a prism to analyse decisions regarding the welfare of animals housed in zoos and aquariums (henceforth “zoo animals”). We analyse opportunities and challenges for each of the three Rs when applied to zoo animals. We discuss the following reasons to consider the use of the 3Rs in relation to zoo animals: (1) there are similarities between motivat...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - September 23, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

The Harm of Desire Modification in Non-human Animals:  Circumventing Control, Diminishing Ownership and Undermining Agency
AbstractIt is seemingly bad for animals to have their desires modified in at least some cases, for instance where brainwashing or neurological manipulation takes place. In humans, many argue that such modification interferes with our positive liberty or undermines our autonomy but this explanation is inapplicable in the case of animals as they lack the capacity for autonomy in the relevant sense. As such, the standard view has been that, despite any intuitions to the contrary, the modification of animals ’ desires is not harmful (at least not in itself). In this article, I offer a different perspective on this issue, lay...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - September 13, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

The Food System Summit ’s Disconnection From People’s Real Needs
AbstractThe United Nations (UN) Food Systems Summit held in September 2021 has left the world with a jumble of ideas and no clear path forward for transforming the world ’s food systems. The Summit was touted as the ultimate place to provide the world with solutions – but it never clarified the problems with the dominant food systems leaving participants with no coherent or cohesive framework. Most distressingly, the Food Systems Summit did not put the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing food crisis anywhere on its agenda. In this Policy Perspective, the author, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, provides his fi...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - August 17, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

The Influence of Environmental Values on Consumer Intentions to Participate in Agritourism —A Model to Extend TPB
This study examines the influence of environmental values on consumer intentions to participate in agritourism through the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) and value-belief-norm (VBN) theory. It proposes an integrative model by adding two variables, i.e., environmental benefits and the human-nature coordination concept, to the TPB. The study employs a questionnaire survey method and a sample of 640, which was statistically analysed through structural equation modeling (SEM). The results reveal that the “environmental values-attitudes-behavioural intentions” framework has scientific applicability in agritourism. Enviro...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - August 8, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

The role of ethical reflection and dialogue in conceptualising animal welfare
AbstractThis paper argues that ethical reflection and dialogue can assist in understanding what animal welfare is. Questions about animal welfare ’s nature are thorny and contested. Responding to an essay by Donald Bruckner, the paper acknowledges that animal welfare is a type of normative value (namely prudential value) distinct from ethical value and that the methodology for determining prudential value is not simply reducible to ethical thought. However, it contends that connections between ethics and understanding wellbeing are closer than we might expect. The paper argues that: the broad conception of welfare we see...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - July 19, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

The Responsibility of Farmers, Public Authorities and Consumers for Safeguarding Bees Against Harmful Pesticides
This study also finds that a low level of consumer trust in farmers or public authorities increases consumers ’ propensity to purchase organic food, suggesting that those who do not trust that enough action is adopted to protect the environment take on more individual responsibility. This paper adds to the existing literature concerning the allocation of responsibility for environmental outcomes, with emp irical evidence focusing specifically on pesticides and bees. (Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics)
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - July 13, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

The Impacts of Animal Farming: A Critical Overview of Primary School Textbooks
AbstractBased on a sample of 46 Portuguese schoolbooks, this study aims to understand how factory-farmed animals are presented in such books across the themes of food and health, the environment and sustainability, and animal welfare. It examines whether schoolbooks address the importance of reducing the consumption of animal-based products for a healthy diet, whether plant-based diets are recognized as healthy, whether animal welfare and agency are considered, and whether the livestock sector is indicated as a major factor in environmental degradation. The findings show that schoolbooks present animals as essential for ec...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - July 4, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

A complex ball game: piglet castration as a dynamic and complex social issue in the EU
AbstractAnimal welfare in livestock farming is a general concept that involves many concrete ethical issues for which solutions need to be developed. To avoid disturbing the internal market, the European Union encourages market players to develop harmonized solutions to such issues. One issue is the castration of piglets without pain relief, the practice of which causes pain to piglets. Although scientists have found alternatives to replace castration without pain relief, the process of solving the castration issue has stagnated. Questions remain as to why this painful castration practice has still not been addressed after...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - June 21, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Social Membership, Contribution, and Justice
AbstractCentral to the social membership model of animal rights is the claim that relations with nonhuman animals should be reorganized such that domesticated animals are recognized as members of our shared societies. Though some elements of the membership model remain contested, the core of the membership model is that domesticated animals have a claim on, and a direct entitlement to, the benefits of cooperative relations. For many political theorists, however, distributive justice considerations apply only to a certain kind of cooperative relationship. The community of justice recipients is thought to be limited by what ...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - June 21, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Ethical Values in a Post-Industrial Economy: The Case of the Organic Farmers ’ Market in Granada (Spain)
AbstractThe importance of the collective management of immaterial resources is a key variable in the valorisation of products in a post-industrial economy. The purpose of this paper is to analyse how, in post-industrial economies, it is possible to devise alternative forms of mediation between producers and consumers, such as organic farmers' markets, to curb the appropriation of rent by transnational and/or local business elites from the value created by immaterial resources. More specifically, we analyse those aspects of the collective management of ethical values that, in the case of organic farmers' markets, can be a s...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - May 9, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research