Affected Ignorance And Animal Suffering: Why Our Failure To Debate Factory Farming Puts Us At Moral Risk

It is widely recognized that our social and moral environments influence our actions and belief formations. We are never fully immune to the effects of cultural membership. What is not clear, however, is whether these influences excuse average moral agents who fail to scrutinize conventional norms. In this paper, I argue that the lack of extensive public debate about factory farming and, its corollary, extreme animal suffering, is probably due, in part, to affected ignorance. Although a complex phenomenon because of its many manifestations, affected ignorance is morally culpable because it involves a choice not to investigate whether some practice in which one participates in might be immoral. I contend further that James Montmarquet’s set of intellectual virtues can provide a positive account of what it means to act as a responsible moral agent while immersed in a meat eating culture; they also represent the moral and epistemic framework for the kind of public discourse that should be taking place.     

Comparative study of transport processes of nitrogen, phosphorus, and herbicides to streams in five agricultural basins, USA

Agricultural chemical transport to surface water and the linkage to other hydrological compartments, principally ground water, was investigated at five watersheds in semiarid to humid climatic settings. Chemical transport was affected by storm water runoff, soil drainage, irrigation, and how streams were linked to shallow ground water systems. Irrigation practices and timing of chemical use greatly affected nutrient and pesticide transport in the semiarid basins. Irrigation with imported water tended to increase ground water and chemical transport, whereas the use of locally pumped irrigation water may eliminate connections between streams and ground water, resulting in lower annual loads. Drainage pathways in humid environments are important because the loads may be transported in tile drains, or through varying combinations of ground water discharge, and overland flow. In most cases, overland flow contributed the greatest loads, but a significant portion of the annual load of nitrate and some pesticide degradates can be transported under base-flow conditions. The highest basin yields for nitrate were measured in a semiarid irrigated system that used imported water and in a stream dominated by tile drainage in a humid environment. Pesticide loads, as a percent of actual use (LAPU), showed the effects of climate and geohydrologic conditions. The LAPU values in the semiarid study basin in Washington were generally low because most of the load was transported in ground water discharge to the stream. When herbicides are applied during the rainy season in a semiarid setting, such as simazine in the California basin, LAPU values are similar to those in the Midwest basins.     

Risk and opportunity in upgrading the US drinking water infrastructure system

This paper presents a practical risk assessment methodology to provide drinking water infrastructure (DWI) decision-makers with an objective risk assessment tool. The purpose of this risk assessment tool is to maintain the desired level-of-service or systems reliability [r(f)], while managing the financial uncertainty of the expected budgetary impact within the capital improvement program (CIP). The goal of this paper is to demonstrate the value of an objective risk assessment tool for estimating the DWI decision-maker's sensitivity to the risk of systems failure (R). The objectives are to: (1) incorporate probability of systems failure [p(f)] into the CIP budgetary analysis process and (2) evaluate the affects of p(f) on the expected CIP budgetary outcome. The magnitude of the expected budgetary impact is managed through the DWI decision-maker's sensitivity to R, which is represented by the level of the rate of reinvestment (RR). The expected result of the proposed risk assessment tool demonstrates that by proactively managing R to maintain a desired r(f) will effectively manage the impact of uncertainty on the expected budgetary outcome within the CIP. The expected contribution of the practical risk assessment methodology is to provide DWI decision-makers with the ability to reduce budgetary uncertainty when allocating limited financial resources among competing operational, repair, maintenance, and expansion activities within the CIP. The conclusions of the paper reveal that if DWI decision-makers assume risk-avoidance positions through proactive asset management (AM) strategies, they will achieve positive affects on expected budgetary outcomes.