Applied philosophy, ethics in particular, makes a difference in producing and eating food. The current food system, resulting from cooperation between scientific, technological and industrial approaches, disconnects producers and citizens-consumers-farmers. Some try to bridge this gap by bombarding buyers with a stream of often bewildering, unreliable and incoherent facts. Food ethics shows why this gap can only be tackled fruitfully when science, technology and industry grant a structural place to the voices, fears, values and activities of consumers.

A plethora of ethical issues in livestock agriculture has emerged to public attention in recent decades, of which environmental and animal welfare concerns are but two, albeit prominent, themes. For livestock agriculture to be considered sustainable, somehow these interconnected themes need to be addressed. Ethical debate on these issues has been extensive, but mostly started from and focused on single issues. The views of farmers in these debates have been largely absent, or merely figured as interests, instead of being considered (...) morally worthwhile themselves. In this paper the relevance for ethical debates of the ways farmers discuss and engage with moral concerns is explored. The variety of norms that figure in contemporary farming practices is sketched in its multifarious complexity, illustrated by ethnographic fieldwork, and systematized in terms of “orders of worth.” Reviewing the practical arguments and commitments of farmers within this framework reveals that farming practices are subject to mixed motives, in which an amalgam of types of concerns play a role. Recognition of the peculiarly entangled nature of the ethics of farming practices could counter the tendency in policy making, technological innovation, and ethical thought to compartmentalize our moral landscape. Understanding farming practice as the integration of a mosaic of concerns in the light of a variety of moral experiences would foster public appreciation of positions of farmers in debates on improving the sustainability and societal acceptability of livestock agriculture. (shrink)

This article studies the role of entrepreneurship in business ethics and promotes a resource-based ethics. The need for and usefulness of this form of ethics emerge from an analysis of contemporary business ethics that appears to be inefficacious and from a moral business practice formed out of the relationship between the veal calf industry of the VanDrie Group and the Dutch Society for the Protection of Animals in their development and implementation of a Welfare Hallmark for calves. Both organizations created (...) jointly a new meat segment in the market by trust-building and partnership. The relationship shows a remodeling of capabilities of both organizations in the light of co-creation of values. The VanDrie Group established an effectuation of moral goals by being socially sensitive and resource-minded. The DSPA created openings for dialogue by being pragmatic in its ideals. Philosophically, this article sketches a resource-based ethics with Deweyan concepts as end-in-view and transactionality of means and ends. Both organizations show in their entrepreneurship the ability to create, what is called "Room for Maneuver" by exploring, socializing, individualizing, and growing. By maneuvering they set off a form of co-evolution between business and ethics. This article demonstrates what actual moral entrepreneurship can do in bringing about moral change by combining effectively social, policy, norm, and economic related values. (shrink)

Persistent public distrust of food additives is often explained in terms of safety and health issues. The broad variety of ethical, aesthetic, and cultural concerns tends to be structurally ignored by food engineers and occasionally even by consumers themselves. The public controversy of food additives—commonly known as “E-numbers”—in the Netherlands is a case in point. Two discursive mechanisms prevent these concerns from becoming legitimate public issues: irrationalization and privatization. But these consumer concerns may not be as unreasonable as they seem, (...) and they may even turn out to be not that private. As long as ethical, aesthetic and cultural concerns are not recognized by food engineers as legitimate issues, the controversy of food additives is not likely to find closure. Moreover, this lack of recognition blocks the opportunity for meaningful dialogue and trust building between food technology developers, policy makers, citizens and consumers. (shrink)

The Dutch policy objective of a fully sustainable livestock sector without mutilations by 2023 is not compatible with the routine practice of tail docking to minimize the risk of tail biting. To examine farmer attitudes towards docking, a telephone survey was conducted among 487 conventional and 33 organic Dutch pig farmers. “Biting” (of tails, ears, or limbs) was identified by the farmers as a main welfare problem in pig farming. About half of the farmers reported to have no tail biting (...) problems in their own herd. When farmers did report problems, they most often reported figures between 1 and 5 % of the animals. High incidences of tail biting were anticipated when trying to keep undocked pigs. Enrichment materials used in the conventional sector included mainly chains (52–63 % of the farms) and hanging rubber or plastic balls (22–30 %). Straw, sawdust, or wood shavings was hardly provided in conventional pig farming (2–3 %), in contrast to organic farming (88–100 % of farms). Conventional pig farmers feel a curly tail is not very important for sustainable pig farming. They consider enrichment to be less effective and tail docking to be less stressful for them and their piglets than their organic colleagues do. Pig farmers identified climate as a main risk factor for tail biting as opposed to enrichment. The objective of reducing routine tail docking requires solutions for dealing with tail biting problems at the farm level. In this process, transfer of scientific knowledge about enrichment materials and other measures to prevent and cure tail biting is critical, as is a change in farmer attitudes and awareness of the moral issues involved. (shrink)

In this article I sketch several versions of the deliberative approach and then discuss five problems which confront a deliberative ethicist of contemporary problems of the life sciences, in particular about food, nature and agriculture. I begin by discussing problems of unequal participation in deliberations and secondly analyze cognitive and normative uncertainties that abound in the life sciences like biotechnology. Thirdly, these sciences comprise different scripts that steer the type of outcome, like products and services. Dependent on the framing, the (...) products and services look different. Fourthly, multi-level problems are addressed, in particular the relationship between local, regional, national, international opinion formation and decision making. Fifthly, I will turn the table and argue that some scientific and technological project can have a large and severe deliberative impact and others not. Discussing these challenges I will develop some tools, like mapping different arrangements of the interaction between genomics and societal developments, developing imaginary futures by aesthetic explorations and by scenarios, by different moral screenplays and dramatic rehearsals, deliberative leadership, and designing deliberation eliciting technologies. (shrink)

Again and again utopian hopes are connected with the life sciences (no hunger, health for everyone; life without diseases, longevity), but simultaneously serious research shows uncertain, incoherent, and ambivalent results. It is unrealistic to expect that these uncertainties will disappear. We start by providing a not exhaustive list of five different types of uncertainties end-users of nutrigenomics have to cope with without being able to perceive them as risks and to subject them to risk-analysis. First, genes connected with the human (...) body or nutrients can have different functions in interaction with their environment (for instance, one nutrient can be healthy for the heart, but can also be a high risk in relation to cancer). Secondly, uncertainties are formed by risk analyses. Will it be possible to calculate a certain risk of getting a certain condition with a certain lifestyle? Will it be difficult to separate the genetic component and the lifestyle component? How high will these risks be? How will these risks be handled by the actors? In the case of personal genotyping, it is unclear how frequent an adverse polymorphism will occur. Will every individual have a certain vulnerability to a certain disease or will it only be applicable to a small group of the population or particular populations? Thirdly, dietary advices are subject to uncertainties and still to be developed professional standards: some will have adverse outcomes, some will not delay the disease, and some will assume uncertain associations between nutrients, lifestyle, and genetic vulnerabilities. Fourth, with regard to the usefulness of tests it is uncertain to what extent risks indications about obesity and diabetes and other vulnerabilities really influence people to live healthier and therefore will help to prevent these conditions. Fifth, it is uncertain how and what nutrigenomics products will be developed and used. Will it be possible to develop more effectively health improving products? Or is this too difficult and will nutrigenomics continue to be used in not always justified health claims as a commercial and marketing tool? Present-day ethics and theories of responsibilities presuppose that uncertainties will disappear and concentrate on what seems to be fixed and stable in science. We develop provisional thoughts that assume that the dynamic of science to produce uncertainties and dilemmas is endemic, and we stress the need for consumers to institutionalize value searching, exploring, and deliberating devices in the health and food sector to find out the most important uncertainties and correspondingly socially desirable research priorities. (shrink)

The Farm Animal Welfare Council’s concept of a Good Life gives an idea of an animal’s quality of life that is over and above that of a mere life worth living. The concept needs explanation and clarification, in order to be meaningful, particularly for consumers who purchase farm animal produce. The concept could allow assurance schemes to apply the label to assessments of both the potential of each method of production, conceptualised in ways expected to enhance consumers’ engagement such as (...) ‘naturalness’ and ‘freedom’; and the concept of a life worth living as a safeguard threshold below which no animal’s actual welfare should fall, based on each animal’s overall affective states. This may provide a framework for development of the Good Life concept, within scientific and sociological fields, in order to allow reliable and influential use by assessors, consumers and retailers. (shrink)

The overall objective of this dissertation is to study moral entrepreneurship within animal and business ethics in relation to moral change. In particular the current capability in bringing about moral change and its potential to do so.