Concerns have been voiced about the ethical implications of patenting practices in the field of biotechnology. Some of these have also been incorporated into regulation, such as the European Commission Directive 98/44 on the legal protection of biotechnological inventions. However, the incorporation of ethically based restrictions into patent legislation has not had the effect of satisfying all concerns. In this article, we will systematically compare the richness of ethical concerns surrounding biotech patenting, with the limited scope of ethical concerns actually (...) addressed in the patent system. As sources of our analyses we will use literature and document studies and a survey with important stakeholders and experts related to Norwegian patenting in the aquacultural biotechnology sector. We will structure the analyses with an ethical matrix, developed for this purpose. Showing the misalignment of the discussions within and outside the patent system, we suggest that an important reason for the ethical controversy still surrounding patenting is that ethical questions keep being framed in a narrow way within the system. Until a richer set of ethical considerations is addressed head-on within the patent system, the patent system will continue to evoke academic and interest group criticism, potentially contributing to a legitimacy crisis of the whole system. (shrink)

The focus on animal welfare in society has increased during the last 50 years. Animal welfare legislation and private standards have developed, and today many farmers within animal production have both governmental legislation and private standards to comply with. In this paper intentions and values are described that were expressed in 14 animal welfare legislation and standards in four European countries; Sweden, United Kingdom, Germany and Spain. It is also discussed if the legislation and standards actually accomplish what they, in (...) their overall description and ethics, claimed to do, i.e. if this is followed up by relevant paragraphs in the actual body of the text in the legislation and standards respectively. The method used was an on-line questionnaire from the EconWelfare research project and text analyses. This study shows that the ethical values within a set of legislation or private standards are not always consistently implemented, and it is not always possible to follow a thread between the intentions mentioned initially and the actual details of the legislation or standard. Since values will differ so will also the animal welfare levels and the implications of similar concepts in the regulations. In general, the regulations described were not based on animal welfare considerations only, but also other aspects, such as food safety, meat quality, environmental aspects and socio-economic aspects were taken into account. This is understandable, but creates a gap between explicit and implicit values, which we argue, can be overcome if such considerations are made more transparent to the citizens/consumers. (shrink)

In “Do Animals have an Interest in Liberty?” Alasdair Cochrane brings some much needed attention to the ethics of animal confinement (2009a). Of particular significance is the question of whether confinement in itself is bad for nonhuman animal (hereafter, animal) well-being. If confinement conditions cause animals to suffer or frustrate their preferences it is safe to assume that liberty or freedom (following Cochrane, I use the terms interchangeably) would be instrumentally good for them. But, what about seemingly benign conditions of (...) confinement in which animals are not suffering or having their preferences frustrated? Is confinement in such cases bad for their well-being? In other words, do animals have an .. (shrink)