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.

What Shall We Eat? An Ethical Framework for Well-Grounded Food Choices
AbstractIn production and consumption of food, several ethical values are at stake for different affected parties and value conflicts in relation to food choices are frequent. The aim of this article was to present an ethical framework for well-grounded decisions on production and consumption of food, guided by the following questions: Which are the affected parties in relation to production and consumption of food? What ethical values are at stake for these parties? How can conflicts between the identified values be handled from different ethical perspectives? Four affected parties, relevant for both production and consum...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - March 4, 2020 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Cooperation with Animals? What Is and What Is Not
AbstractThe idea of cooperation has been recently used with regard to human –animal relations to justify the application of an associative theory of justice to animals. In this paper, I discuss some of these proposals and seek to provide a reformulation of the idea of cooperation suitable to human–animal relations. The standard idea of cooperation, indeed, presupposes m ental capacities that probably cannot be found in animals. I try to disentangle the idea of cooperation from other cognate notions and distinguish it from exploitation, use, and relationship. The upshot is a minimal taxonomy of human–animal relations ...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - March 3, 2020 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Stockpeople and Animal Welfare: Compatibilities, Contradictions, and Unresolved Ethical Dilemmas
AbstractThe cornerstone of any system of livestock production is the stockpeople responsible for the welfare and productivity of the animals they work with. Nevertheless, it has been suggested that the industrialization of livestock production is breaking down the traditional relationship between stockpeople and their animals. Commercial livestock production creates a situation of structurally induced ambivalence for those working in these contexts. Besides, the scientific literature on stockpeople is limited, dispersed and specially focused on animals. Whereby, a review of current knowledge about the compatibilities, cont...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - March 2, 2020 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Animals Deserve Moral Consideration
AbstractTimothy Hsiao asks a good question: Why believe animals deserve moral consideration? His answer is that we should not. He considers various other answers and finds them wanting. In this paper I consider an answer Hsiao has not yet discussed: We should accept a conservative view about how to form beliefs. And such a view will instruct us to believe that animals deserve moral consideration. I think conservatives like Hsiao do best to answer his question in a way that upholds the moral status of animals. Since my answer is one Hsiao has not yet addressed, it is compatible with the main points he makes against various ...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - February 10, 2020 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Just Food: Why We Need to Think More About Decoupled Crop Subsidies as an Obligation to Justice
AbstractIn this article I respond to the obligation to institute the policy of decoupled crop subsidies as is provided in Pilchman ’s article “Money for Nothing: Are decoupled Crop Subsidies Just?” With growing problems of poor nutrition in the United States there have been two different but related phenomenon that have appeared. First, the obesity epidemic that has ravaged the nation and left an increasing number of peop le very unhealthy; and second, the phenomenon of food deserts where individuals are unable to access fresh fruits and vegetables. A possible solution to this problem, as has been proposed by some, i...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - February 4, 2020 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Do All Dimensions of Sustainable Consumption Lead to Psychological Well-Being? Empirical Evidence from Young Consumers
This study examines the association between three dimension s of sustainable consumption: purchasing, simplifying and activism, and the six markers of psychological well-being in a sample of 423 young consumers. The findings show that the relationship between sustainable consumption and happiness is more intricate than depicted in previous studies. Happiness is mainly derived from simplifying behaviors, whereas engaging in activist behaviors is associated with lower levels of psychological well-being. Understanding the relationship between SC and well-being may help leverage points of action to support sustainable consumer...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - December 31, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Predator Free New Zealand and the ‘War’ on Pests: Is it a just War?
AbstractConservation policy in New Zealand is centred around an objective to totally eradicate three invasive species; the ship rat (Rattus rattus), the brushtail possum (Trichosurus vulpecula) and the stoat (Mustela erminea), by 2050. The preferred control method to achieve this is large scale poisoning operations with 1080 and similar toxins. This project is backed up by governmental and non-governmental agencies and surrounded with discourse of ‘war’ and ‘invasion’. The ‘Big Three’ predators are endowed with sinister motives as a means of mobilising support. This self-described ‘war’ is evaluated in term...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - December 15, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Regan ’s Lifeboat Case and the Additive Assumption
AbstractInthe Case for Animal Rights, Tom Regan considers a scenario where one must choose between killing either a human being or any number of dogs by throwing them from a lifeboat. Regan chooses the human being. His justification for this prescription is that the human being will suffer a greater harm from death than any of the dogs would. This prescription has met opposition on the grounds that the combined intrinsic value of the dogs ’ experiences outweighs those of a human being. This objection assumes that the intrinsic value of a whole is simply the sum of the intrinsic values of its parts. This paper offers a ju...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - December 15, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Environmental Individual Responsibility for Accumulated Consequences
AbstractClimate change and many environmental problems are caused by the accumulated effects of repeated actions by multiple individuals. Instead of relying on collective responsibility, I argue for a non-atomistic individual responsibility towards such environmental problems, encompassing omissions, ways of life, and consequences mediated by other agents. I suggest that the degree of causal responsibility of the agent must be balanced with  the degree of capacity-responsibility determined by the availability of doable alternatives. Then, the more an agent has powers as a group member, the more she is responsible to desig...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - December 13, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Review of James Magrini: Ethical Responses to Nature ’s Call: Reticent Imperatives
(Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics)
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - November 24, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

The Ethics of Laying Hen Genetics
AbstractDespite societal concerns about the welfare of commercial laying hens, little attention has been paid to the welfare implications of the choices made by the genetics companies involved with their breeding. These choices regarding trait selection and other aspects of breeding significantly affect living conditions for the more than 7 billion laying hens in the world. However, these companies must consider a number of different commercial and societal interests, beyond animal welfare concerns. In this article we map some of the relevant dilemmas faced by genetics companies in order to outline the scope of opportuniti...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - November 21, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Whose Justice is it Anyway? Mitigating the Tensions Between Food Security and Food Sovereignty
AbstractThis paper explores the tensions between two disparate approaches to addressing hunger worldwide: Food security and food sovereignty. Food security generally focuses on ensuring that people have economic and physical access to safe and nutritious food, while food sovereignty (or food justice) movements prioritize the right of people and communities to determine their agricultural policies and food cultures. As food sovereignty movements grew out of critiques of food security initiatives, they are often framed as conflicting approaches within the wider literature. This paper explores this tension, arguing that food ...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - November 19, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Moral Standing of Animals and Some Problems in Veterinarian Ethics
AbstractThis paper discusses theIndirect Duties View implying that, when our actions have no negative effects on humans, we can treat animals any way we wish. I offer several criticisms of this view. Subsequently, I explore some implications of rejecting this view that rise in the contexts of animal research and veterinarian ethics. (Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics)
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - November 18, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Agricultural Big Data Analytics and the Ethics of Power
AbstractAgricultural Big Data analytics (ABDA) is being proposed to ensure better farming practices, decision-making, and a sustainable future for humankind. However, the use and adoption of these technologies may bring about potentially undesirable consequences, such as exercises of power. This paper will analyse Brey ’s five distinctions of power relationships (manipulative, seductive, leadership, coercive, and forceful power) and apply them to the use agricultural Big Data. It will be shown that ABDA can be used as a form of manipulative power to initiate cheap land grabs and acquisitions. Seductive power can be exerc...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - November 17, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

It ’s Not About Ethical Dilemmas: A Survey of Bavarian Veterinary Officers’ Opinions on Moral Challenges and an e-Learning Ethics Course
AbstractThe presented survey focused on moral challenges of Bavarian veterinary officers in their daily work and their expectations of an (e-learning) ethics module in their training program. The results suggest that Bavarian veterinary officers are confronted with morally challenging situations. However, they do not describe these challenges as dilemmas in which the veterinary officers do not know what the moral right choice would be. They are rather convinced to know what they should do from an ethical point of view but see difficulties with the realization as the crucial moral challenge of their profession. The particip...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - October 31, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research