Paul B. Thompson

Sustainable livestock production: methodological and ethical challenges

Abstract Research and policy for sustainable agriculture can be grouped into two broad paradigms. Those that define sustainability in terms of resource availability emphasize accounting for the rates at which resources are produced and depleted, and frame sustainability in light of strategies for conservation, regeneration and substitution for increasingly scarce resources. Those that define sustainability in terms of functional integrity emphasize dynamic system models of complex ecological and social processes of reproduction, and frame sustainability as relative in light of system vulnerability to anthropogenic stress. Broad comparison of these paradigms shows that a) there is currently greater research capacityy for analyzing issues under a resource availability paradigm, but that b) functional integrity approaches are more likely to produce ethical consensus over the goals and purposes of livestock production, relative to larger social purposes. The functional integrity paradigm is better for understanding the importance of biodiversity, the problem of spatial and temporal scale, and the relationship between society and ecology. Animal scientists should therefore develop a research approach to functional integrity and should also take advantage of a pluri- and interdisciplinary approach. The existing research capacity for resource availability should not limit animal science to addressing the sustainability of livestock production exclusively in resource availability terms.

Nanotechnology, risk and the environment: a review

Nanotechnologies are already interacting with the environment. Scientists and engineers are manipulating matter at the nanoscale, and these nanoscale processes and products are being used by industry in commercially available products. These products are either applied directly to the environment or end up in the environment through indirect pathways. This review examines the state of current environmental risk assessment of nanotechnologies. Nanotechnology is described generally, then both the possible benefits of nanotechnology and the risks are reviewed in a traditional way. Subsequently, a philosophical criticism of the traditional way of looking at risks is offered.

Agricultural sustainability: What it is and what it is not

Philosophy can help clarify hidden assumptions in alternative definitions and approaches to sustainability. Current usage reveals two main substantive approaches, resource sufficiency and functional integrity, as well as widespread non-substantive usage intended to promote social action. Although accounting based resource sufficiency approaches have been the main focus in technical approaches, functional integrity approaches may be more transparent with respect to value judgements that inform the notion of sustainable systems. The ‘paradox of sustainability’ arises because substantive, research based approaches to sustainability may be too complex to effectively motivate appropriate social responses. Nevertheless, debate over the meaning of sustainability can stimulate a fuller appreciation of the complex empirical processes and potentially contestable values that are implicated in any attempt to accomplish sustainability in agriculture.

Food Biotechnology's Challenge to Cultural Integrity and Individual Consent

Consumer response to genetically altered foods has been mixed in the United States. While transgenic crops have entered the food supply with little comment, other foods, such as the bioengineered tomato, have caused considerable controversy. Objections to genetically engineered food are varied, ranging from the religious to the aesthetic. One need not endorse these concerns to conclude that food biotechnology violates procedural protections of consumer sovereignty and religious liberty. Consumer sovereignty, a principle especially valued in this country, requires that information be made available so each individual or group may make food choices based on their own values. And as yet, there is no policy provision for informing consumers about the degree to which food has been genetically engineered.

Value judgments and risk comparisons. The case of genetically engineered crops.

This paper aims to identify and elucidate some of the philosophical issues and value judgments associated with the claim that risks from transgenic and conventional crops are comparable from a scientific perspective. Crops produced using techniques that insert DNA directly into the genome of the

The Reshaping of Conventional Farming: A North American Perspective

Debates over the future of agriculture in North Americaestablish a dialectical opposition between conventional,industrial agriculture and alternative, sustainable agriculture.This opposition has roots that extend back to the 18th century inthe United States, but the debate has taken a number ofsurprising turns in the 20th century. Originally articulated as aphilosophy of the left, industrial agriculture has utilitarianmoral foundations. In the US and Canada, the articulation of analternative to industrial agriculture has drawn upon threecentral themes: the belief that agriculture is, in some way, tiedto democracy; the belief that complex bureaucratic organizationsare inherently opposed to human interests; and the belief thatthe family farms characteristic of 19th century North Americatend to produce people of superior moral character. It has proveddifficult to weave these themes into a coherent vision ofagriculture for the 21st century. Often, risk and health-basedconcerns are the basis for public criticism of conventionalagriculture, but these do not conflict with the utilitarianorientation of the industrial model, and are easily incorporatedinto it. If there is to be a philosophical debate over the futureof agriculture, we must find some way to rehabilitate thequasi-Aristotelean view of agriculture that emerges from thethree critical themes noted above.

The varieties of sustainability

Each of four sections in this paper sketches the philosophical problems associated with a different dimension of sustainability. The untitled introductory section surveys the oft-noted discrepancies between different notions of sustainability, and notes that one element of the ambiguity relates to the different points of view taken by a participant in a system and a detached observer of the system. The second section, “Sustainability as a System Describing Concept,” examines epistemological puzzles that arise when one attempts to assess the truth or falsity of claims that attribute sustainability or non-sustainability. In particular, such claims generally presume bounded systems, but boundary conditions are value-laden. The third section, “Sustainability as a Goal Prescribing Concept,” examines puzzles that arise in attempting to define sustainability in normative terms. In particular, the question of whether sustainability is an intrinsic or instrumental value is examined. The final section, “Sustainability and Bliss,” offers an analysis of the moral responsibilities that human beings have, given the fact that knowledge of conditions for achieving sustainability can never be complete.

Ethical dilemmas in agriculture: The need for recognition and resolution

Agricultural research and education ended 100 years of funding under the Hatch Act with a decade of unprecedented criticism of goals and outcomes. This paper examines the way that planners can accommodate some of these criticisms within a framework for understanding the ethical and social goals of agriculture that is consistent with traditional practice. The paper goes on to state that some criticisms are so fundamental that they cannot be readily incorporated into this framework. They must be regarded as a challenge, both politically and intellectually, to longstanding practices within academic institutions devoted to agriculture.

The social goals of agriculture

An analysis of social goals for agriculture presupposes an account of systematic interactions among economic, political, and ecological forces that influence the performance of agriculture in a given society. This account must identify functional performance criteria that lend themselves to interpretation as normative or ethical goals. Individuals who act within the system pursue personal goals. Although individual acts and decisions help satisfy functional performance criteria, individuals may never conceptualize or understand these criteria, and, hence, social goals for agriculture may not be intentionally sought or desired by any human being. The statement of social goals is not, therefore, reducible to statements about individual desires and preferences, and the validity of social goals does not depend upon deriving a social welfare function, nor upon measuring interpersonal utility.The paper examines a series of strategies for defining social goals for agriculture, beginning with the statement of goals offered by William Aiken in 1983. Aikens view stresses individually based constraints upon action, but social goals cannot be adequately defined on this view. Successively more adequate approaches to the problem of social goals are examined with respect to production and efficiency, Jeffersonian democracy, and ecosystem goals of community and self-reliance. The role of family farms, and the change in farm structure is evaluated in light of this analysis for social goals.

Ethics and the genetic engineering of food animals

Biotechnology applied to traditional foodanimals raises ethical issues in three distinctcategories. First are a series of issues that arise inthe transformation of pigs, sheep, cattle and otherdomesticated farm animals for purposes that deviatesubstantially from food production, including forxenotransplantation or production of pharmaceuticals.Ethical analysis of these issues must draw upon theresources of medical ethics; categorizing them asagricultural biotechnologies is misleading. The secondseries of issues relate to animal welfare. Althoughone can stipulate a number of different philosophicalfoundations for the ethical assessment of welfare,most either converge on Bernard Rollin‘s ’’principle ofwelfare conservation‘‘ (Rollin, 1995), or devolve intodebates over the ethical significance of animaltelos or species integrity. The principle of welfareconservation prohibits disfunctional geneticengineering of food animals, but would permit alteringanimal‘s biological functions, especially when (as inmaking animals less susceptable to pain or suffering)do so improves an individual animal‘s well being.Objections to precisely this last form of geneticengineering stress telos or species integrity asconstraints on modification of animals, and thisrepresents the third class of ethical issues. Most whohave formulated such arguments have failed to developcoherent positions, but the notion of ’’species being,‘‘derived from the 19th century German tradition,presents a promising way to analyze the basis forresisting the transformation of ’’animal natures.‘‘