Utilitarian killing,replacement, and rights

The ethical theory underlying much of our treatment of animals in agriculture and research is the moral agency view. It is assumed that only moral agents, or persons, are worthy of maximal moral significance, and that farm and laboratory animals are not moral agents. However, this view also excludes human non-persons from the moral community. Utilitarianism, which bids us maximize the amount of good (utility) in the world, is an alternative ethical theory. Although it has many merits, including impartiality and the extension of moral concern to all sentient beings, it also appears to have many morally unacceptable implications. In particular, it appears to sanction the killing of innocents when utility would be maximized, including cases in which we would deliberately kill and replace a being, as we typically do to animals on farms and in laboratories. I consider a number of ingenious recent attempts by utilitarians to defeat the killing and replaceability arguments, including the attempt to make a place for genuine moral rights within a utilitarian framework. I conclude that utilitarians cannot escape the killing and replaceability objections. Those who reject the restrictive moral agency view and find they cannot accept utilitarianism's unsavory implications must look to a different ethical theory to guide their treatment of humans and non-humans.     

So animal a human ..., or the moral relevance of being an omnivore

It is argued that the question of whether or not one is required to be or become a strict vegetarian depends, not upon a rule or ideal that endorses vegetarianism on moral grounds, but rather upon whether one's own physical, biological nature is adapted to maintaining health and well-being on a vegetarian diet. Even if we accept the view that animals have rights, we still have no duty to make ourselves substantially worse off for the sake of other rights-holders. Moreover, duties to others, such as fetuses and infants, may require one to consume meat or animal products. Seven classes of individuals who are not required to be or become vegetarians are identified and their examption is related to nutritional facts; these classes comprise most of the earth's population. The rule of vegetarianism defines a special or provisional duty rather than any general or universal rule, since its observance it based upon the biological capacities of individual humans whose genetic constitution and environment makes them suitably herbivorous. It is also argued that generalizing the vegetarian ideal as a social goal for all would be wrongful because it fails to consider the individual nutritional needs of humans at various stages of life, according to biological differences between the sexes, and because it would have the eugenic effect of limiting the adaptability of the human species. The appeal to the natural interests of omnivores will not justify any claim that humans may eat amounts of meat or animal products in excess of a reasonable safety margin since animals have rights-claims against us.     

Consumer Food Ethics: Considerations of Vulnerability,Suffering, and Harm

Over the past years, various accounts of ethical consumption have been produced which identify certain concepts as central to mediating the ethical relationship between the consumer and the consumed. Scholars across disciplinary fields have explored how individuals construe their ethical consumption responsibilities and commitments through the notions of identity, taking care and doing good, proximity and distance, suggesting the centrality of these themes to consumer engagement in ethical practices. This paper contributes to the body of research concerned with unravelling consumers’ conceptually mediated relationship to moral and ethical issues in the sphere of consumption by revealing a new set of ideas through which people interpret and relate to consumption ethics. Drawing upon findings from an empirical study on self-perceived ethical food consumers, I demonstrate that people’s perceptions and views of ethical problems around consumption are bound up with notions of vulnerability, suffering, and harm, and that these notions permeate and impact all aspects of ethical consumer behaviour. The paper concludes by arguing that we need to further explore the conceptual underpinnings of ethical consumer commitments and practices, and expand the conceptual toolkit of research on ethical consumption to account for a wider range of ideas and notions that shape individual as well as collective motivations, intentions, and actions throughout the process of becoming and being an ethical consumer. Finally, the paper suggests a specific analytical framework to facilitate such research.     

On vegetarianism,morality, and science: A counter reply

I recently took issue with Kathryn George's contention that vegetarianism cannot be a moral obligation for most human beings, even assuming that Tom Regan's stringent thesis about the equal inherent value of humans and many sentient nonhumans is correct. I argued that both Regan and George are incorrect in claiming that his view would permit moral agents to kill and eat innocent, non-threatening rights holders. An unequal rights view, by contrast, would permit such actions if a moral agent's health or life is at stake. I then argued that current nutritional research does not support Professor George's claim that some wealthy adult males (and many fewer wealthy women) are the only persons whose health does not require the consumption of nonhuman animals and their products. In her 1992 response to my critique, George did not address my moral argumentation. She concentrated her entire paper on a wholesale rejection of my discussion of nutrition. Although she now takes a somewhat more moderate position on who can safely contemplate strict vegetarianism, she still believes that most people are not in a position to follow such a diet. In my counter-reply, I argue that her rejection is based upon numerous distortions, omissions, and false charges of fallacy. She even devotes a substantial section of her paper to criticizing me for saying the opposite of what I actually wrote. As I did in my earlier paper, I cite current research, including George's own preferred source on the topic of vegetarianism, to support my view. I conclude that Professor George has still not shown that for most human beings it is dangerous to follow a diet that omits nonhuman animals and their products. Moral agents who take the rights of humansand nonhumans seriously will find vegetarianism well worth considering.     

Genetic Engineering and the Integrity of Animals

Genetic engineering evokes a number of objections that are not directed at the negative effects the technique might have on the health and welfare of the modified animals. The concept of animal integrity is often invoked to articulate these kind of objections. Moreover, in reaction to the advent of genetic engineering, the concept has been extended from the level of the individual animal to the level of the genome and of the species. However, the concept of animal integrity was not developed in the context of genetic engineering. Given this external origin, the aim of this paper is to critically examine the assumption that the concept of integrity, including its extensions to the level of the genome and the species, is suitable to articulate and justify moral objections more specifically directed at the genetic engineering of animals.     

Respecting The Autonomy of European and American Consumers: Defending Positive Labels on Gm Foods

In her recent article, “Does autonomy count in favor of labeling genetically modified food?,” Kirsten Hansen argues that in Europe, voluntary negative labeling of non-GM foods respects consumer autonomy just as well as mandatory positive labeling of foods with GM content. She also argues that because negative labeling places labeling costs upon those consumers that want to know whether food is GM, negative labeling is better policy than positive labeling. In this paper, we argue that Hansen’s arguments are mistaken in several respects. Most importantly, she underestimates the demands of respecting autonomy and overestimates the cost of positive labeling. Moreover, she mistakenly implies that only a small minority of people desire information about GM content. We also explore the extent to which her arguments would apply to the US context, and argue that any discussion of the relationship between autonomy and labeling should include not just considerations of consumer autonomy but also considerations of what we call citizen autonomy.     

Steel consumption and economic growth in Korea: Long-term and short-term evidence

This paper examines the long-term and short-term causal relationships between steel consumption and economic activity in Korea between 1975 and 2008 using vector error correction and vector autoregression models. This study disaggregates steel products and steel-consuming industries because the consumption of a specific steel product is closely linked to the output of the corresponding industry. This approach can provide a clear and reliable causal relationship between variable pairs. The results show that total steel consumption and GDP have a long-term equilibrium relationship, running from GDP to total steel consumption. However, a long-term bi-directional causal relationship exists between flat products consumption and the manufacturing GDP. Flat products consumption also demonstrates the long-term relationships between steel-consuming industries, such as automobile, shipbuilding, and fabricated metal product, but causal directions are mixed, depending on variable pairs. These results imply that the reciprocal growth between these industries has contributed to the robust competitiveness of Korean manufacturing. Because Korea has maintained its export-oriented industrial policy based on manufacturing, the steel and steel-consuming industries are expected to play a significant role in economic growth far into the future.     

The use and abuse of scientific studies

In response to Evelyn Pluhar'sWho Can Be Morally Obligated to Be a Vegetarian? in this journal issue, the author has read all of Pluhar's citations for the accuracy of her claims and had these read by an independent nutritionist. Detailed analysis of Pluhar's argument shows that she attempts to make her case by consistent misappropriation of the findings and conclusions of the studies she cites. Pluhar makes sweeping generalizations from scanty data, ignores causal explanations given by scientists, equates hypothesis with fact, draws false cause conclusions from studies, and in one case claims a conclusion opposite of what the scientist published. Such poor reasoning cannot be the basis of an argument for moral vegetarianism. A broader search of the literature and attention to reviews and textbooks in nutrition shows that each of Pluhar's claims is suspect or incorrect. Pluhar has not undermined my central claims: even if animals have certain rights and well-planned vegetarian diets are safe in complex industrialized societies, these diets cannot be so regarded if the presuppositions of high levels of wealth, education, and medical care do not exist; and, women, children, the aged and some ill persons are at greater risk on restrictive vegan diets. Thus, any duty of moral vegetarianism is not categorical but provisional in nature.     

北京市大学生绿色消费行为特征研究

当前资源短缺、环境污染等问题较为严重,从生态、环保的角度出发,人们应该选择绿色、可持续的消费行为。绿色消费作为一种全新的消费方式,正在以一种崭新的道德观、人生观和价值观融入人们的生活。与普通民众相比,大学生具有更高的知识水平和接受新生事物的能力,因此对大学生绿色消费行为特征的研究尤为必要。通过对国内外大学生绿色消费行为特征问题相关研究成果的梳理,探究影响大学生绿色消费行为特征的主要因素,并据此设计问卷对北京市大学生的绿色消费行为特征进行实证调研,通过对调查结果的分析,发现当前大学生在进行绿色消费时存在以下典型特征问题:对绿色产品或者绿色消费概念欠了解、超前消费和过度消费现象突出、具有从众消费和攀比消费心理、社交消费支出逐渐增大等问题。针对存在的特征问题建议大学生从加强自我管理、养成理财习惯、抵制非绿色消费行为、引导绿色消费时尚等方面进行改进。     

Ethics, Science, and Antimicrobial Resistance

The issue of regularly feeding low levels of antibiotics to farm animals in order to increase productivity is often portrayed as a dilemma. On the one hand, such antibiotic use is depicted as a necessary condition for producing cheap and plentiful food, such that were such use to stop, food prices would rise significantly and our ability to feed people in developing nations would decrease. On the other hand, such antibiotic use seems to breed antibiotic resistance into pathogens affecting human health. Resolving this dilemma, it is alleged, will require great amounts of research into risk/benefit assessment. Contrary to this claim, we will argue that society has all the data it needs to make a reasonable ethical decision, which would be curtailing such use. Such curtailment will not harm consumers significantly, will not harm developing nations' evolving agriculture, and could produce hitherto unnoticed benefits, namely restoring the possibility of a more husbandry-based, sustainable agriculture to replace the high-tech agriculture that has hurt animals, the environment, small farms, and sustainability.     

Animal Rights: Autonomy and Redundancy

Even if animal liberation were to be adopted, would rights for animals be redundant – or even deleterious? Such an objection, most prominently voiced by L. W. Sumner and Paul W. Taylor, is misguided, risks an anthropocentric and anthropomorphic conception of autonomy and freedom, overly agent-centered rights conceptions, and an overlooking of the likely harmful consequences of positing rights for humans but not for nonhuman animals. The objection in question also stems from an overly pessimistic construal of autonomy-infringements thought to result from extending rights to animals, and also, of confusions that supposedly may ensue from ascribing animal rights. Whether or not a case for animal liberation and/or animal rights can cogently be made, the redundancy-or-worse objection to animal rights need pose no barrier.     

中国“十四五”绿色消费衡量指标体系构建与战略展望

“十四五”期间,消费领域的绿色转型对推动经济社会整体绿色转型意义重大。本文通过借鉴国内外绿色消费衡量指标的理论研究与实践经验,探索构建了反映消费产品、消费行为、消费结果绿色,同时又涵盖衣、食、住、用、行等当前消费重点领域的绿色消费衡量指标体系。在此基础上,对绿色消费的现实状况以及变化趋势进行了分析,提出了“十四五”中国推动绿色消费的战略展望,为“十四五”时期中国推进绿色消费工作提供宏观决策参考。     

绿色消费的社会治理体系研究

绿色消费,伴随可持续发展战略的产生而逐步体现在居民日常生活中。消费什么主要由消费者自行决定,政府难以强求;是否消费绿色产品,受到收入、受教育程度、追求品质的动机等要素影响,购买消费品时还受认知过程、情绪过程、意志过程制约。绿色消费不仅要满足人体健康和社会需求,还要体现资源节约和环境保护基本国策要求,以实现消费品生产、流通、消费以及包装物回收利用全生命周期的环境影响最小化。政府可以通过政策激励、宣传教育、率先垂范等途径引导公众更多的消费绿色产品。     

Elicitation of willingness to pay for upgradeable products with calibrated auction-conjoint method

Understanding consumer preferences is a key element of new product development and sustainable consumption. Among sustainable products, we consider new products with upgradability properties. Upgradeability helps to prolong the lifespan of a product, satisfying changing consumer preferences and needs. This additional created value must be measured by willingness to pay premiums. This paper uses a method which valorizes each attribute of the product and analyzes the determinants of these premiums. A key advantage of the calibrated auction-conjoint method is the possibility of estimating numerous attributes with a large number of attribute levels. The results support the idea that consumers are willing to pay premiums for upgradeable, sustainable products, although these premiums are rather weak for some durable products in the study.     

日本促进可持续消费经验的启示

日本相对丰富的促进可持续消费经验对我国正在大力推动绿色生活方式的形成有较好的参考价值。本文介绍了日本循环社会法律框架下循环再生利用法和绿色采购促进法对促进可持续消费的作用,以及可持续消费的最新实践活动,并从循环再生利用法律法规建立、深化公共绿色采购评估、发布面向普通消费者产品清单、建立消费者发声通道、提升消费者意识、促进消费者导向管理等方面提出对我国推动绿色消费的启示。     

Residential Water Consumption,Motivation for Conserving Water and the Continuing Tragedy of the Commons

This paper explores the effect of the perception of externalities (PE) on residential water consumption. Externalities occur when individuals make decisions that harm others, without concern for the impact or feeling a need to compensate for the harm. The aim of this study was to investigate whether PE affects people's motivation to conserve water, and, consequently, the practice of residential water consumption. Two hundred eighty Mexican citizens responded to a questionnaire investigating how they perceived that other individuals in their community wasted water. Respondents were also asked about their motives to conserve water, and direct observations of individual water consumption were recorded. Results were processed within a structural equations model, which revealed that motives to conserve water significantly inhibit water consumption. Since the perception of externalities also inhibits conservation motives, the resulting effect of PE on water consumption is positive. This result means that the more people perceive that others waste water, the less their conservation motives, and, therefore, the more their own water consumption.     

A “Practical” Ethic for Animals

Drawing on the features of “practical philosophy” described by Toulmin (1990), a “practical” ethic for animals would be rooted in knowledge of how people affect animals, and would provide guidance on the diverse ethical concerns that arise. Human activities affect animals in four broad ways: (1) keeping animals, for example, on farms and as companions, (2) causing intentional harm to animals, for example through slaughter and hunting, (3) causing direct but unintended harm to animals, for example by cropping practices and vehicle collisions, and (4) harming animals indirectly by disturbing life-sustaining processes and balances of nature, for example by habitat destruction and climate change. The four types of activities raise different ethical concerns including suffering, injury, deprivation, and death (of individuals), decline of populations, disruption of ecological systems containing animals, and extinction of species. They also vary in features relevant to moral evaluation and decision-making; these include the number of animals affected, the duration of the effects, the likelihood of irreversible effects, and the degree to which the effects can be controlled. In some cases human actions can also provide benefits to animals such as shelter and health care. Four mid-level principles are proposed to make a plausible fit to the features of the four types of human activities and to address the major ethical concerns that arise. The principles are: (1) to provide good lives for the animals in our care, (2) to treat suffering with compassion, (3) to be mindful of unseen harm, and (4) to protect the life-sustaining processes and balances of nature. This “practical” approach arguably makes a better fit to the complex, real-life problems of animal ethics than the single foundational principles that have dominated much recent animal ethics philosophy.     

Wilderness: A medium for improving psychological health

Summary In the current push for wildland preservation it is imperative to consider the inherent value of wilderness as a medium for improving psychological health. As Fritz Perls and other Gestalt psychologists have pointed out, we are living in an increasingly complex social structure which is causing us to lose touch with our ‘inner voice’—the voice that Perls claimed could tell us how to maintain organismic health and balance, if only we paid attention to it. He emphasized the need for an individual to become self-aware and self-responsible in order to reach psychological maturity (internal versus external support). However learning and developing self-awareness need not occur in a therapeutic setting alone. The process of personal growth may be greatly expedited by spending time in a wilderness setting. Environmentalists have long known about the healing powers of nature. From Thoreau to Abbey, they have pointed out the unique qualities of wilderness—simplicity and impartiality—which, in contrast to a complex, value-governed society, make it an ideal setting for self-exploration and understanding. People who experience the wilderness can return empowered to act as responsible, aware human beings, in a currently unhealthy, dehumanizing society. Ms. Suttie is a native of Northern California where the natural beauty of rugged coastline and wooded hills impressed upon her the importance of preserving the environment. Ms. Suttie completed her undergraduate degree in Biochemistry-Molecular Biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara (1981) and is presently involved in the master of Arts programme in Confluent Education, also at UCSB. She is studying under the direction of Dr George Brow, a noted Gestalt therapist. She hopes to combine the insights of the Gestalt approach with her particular interest—environmental education. Ms. Suttie has traveled extensively in Europe and the US and spent a year at St. Andrew's University, Scotland while an undergraduate. An avid backpacker, she has hiked the major mountain ranges of the Pacific northwest. Currently a resident of Santa Barbara, California, she finds the nearby San Rafael Wilderness and the coastal ranges ideal as settings for testing out her theories regarding the relationship between health and wilderness experience. Little is to be expected of that day... to which we are not awakened by our Genius, but by the mechanical nudgings of some servitor, are not awakened by our own newly acquired force and aspirations from within, accompanied by the undulations of celestial music, instead of factory bells...     

Animal Rearing as a Contract?

Can animals, and especially cattle, be the subject ofmoral concern? Should we care about their well-being?Two competing ethical theories have addressed suchissues so far. A utilitarian theory which, inBentham's wake, extends moral consideration to everysentient being, and a theory of the rights orinterests of animals which follows Feinberg'sconceptions. This includes various positions rangingfrom the most radical (about animal liberation) tomore moderate ones (concerned with the well-being ofanimals). Notwithstanding their diversity, theseconceptions share some common flaws. First, as anextension of primarily anthropocentric theories (aboututility or rights) they still participate in the flawsof the original setting. Second, extending them tonon-human beings raises the problem of the borderwhich is to be drawn between what can be included inthe purview of moral consideration and what is leftoutside. Third, such theories are not able to distinguishbetween an ethics of wildlife and an ethics ofdomestic life, which too often leads to preposterousstatements. We would like to argue (i) that we should distinguishbetween environmental ethics (concerned withpopulations, species, biotic communities) and animalethics (where animals are taken into consideration individually);(ii) that individualist animal ethics are not relevantfor animal rearing; (iii) that animal rearing is a hierarchicalrelationship which rules are to be found in the fiction of a domesticcontract. Hence, we would like to construct a new conception ofthe ethics of the relation between men and the cattlethey breed based on the idea of a domestic contract.Our main assumption is Mary Midgleys's anthropologicalassumption, according to which human communities,since the Neolithic age, have always included variousanimals, so that relations of sociability have alwaysexisted between human beings and animals within thedomestic community (a mixed community). In order tospecify the hierarchical and non-egalitarian, butinclusive reciprocal obligations and relations insidesuch a community, we will elaborate on the notion ofa ``domestic contract'', an implicitly assumedidea traced back to Lucretius and whichwe will follow up to the physiocrats and Adam Smith.We will show that such an idea relies upon theassumption of communication between cattle farmer andanimals, of shared experience and exchanges betweenthe two parties. We will then show how modern factory,or battery animal farming, can be seen as unilaterallybreaking this domestic contract, forsaking ourduties towards domestic animals.