Fundamental Moral Attitudes to Animals and Their Role in Judgment: An Empirical Model to Describe Fundamental Moral Attitudes to Animals and Their Role in Judgment on the Culling of Healthy Animals During an Animal Disease Epidemic

In this paper, we present and defend the theoretical framework of an empirical model to describe people’s fundamental moral attitudes (FMAs) to animals, the stratification of FMAs in society and the role of FMAs in judgment on the culling of healthy animals in an animal disease epidemic. We used philosophical animal ethics theories to understand the moral basis of FMA convictions. Moreover, these theories provide us with a moral language for communication between animal ethics, FMAs, and public debates. We defend that FMA is a two-layered concept. The first layer consists of deeply felt convictions about animals. The second layer consists of convictions derived from the first layer to serve as arguments in a debate on animal issues. In a debate, the latter convictions are variable, depending on the animal issue in a specific context, time, and place. This variability facilitates finding common ground in an animal issue between actors with opposing convictions.     

The Moral Status of Fish. The Importance and Limitations of a Fundamental Discussion for Practical Ethical Questions in Fish Farming

As the world population is growing and government directives tell us to consume more fatty acids, the demand for fish is increasing. Due to declines in wild fish populations, we have come to rely more and more on aquaculture. Despite rapid expansion of aquaculture, this sector is still in a relatively early developmental stage. This means that this sector can still be steered in a favorable direction, which requires discussion about sustainability. If we want to avoid similar problems to the ones we have experienced with livestock farming, we need to generate knowledge of the biology, profitability, environmental aspects, consumer awareness, and product appreciation of particular fish species. However, the discussion about a sustainable aquaculture also raises the question how we should treat fish. This moral question is regularly addressed as a problem of applied ethics with a focus on tailoring ethical principles to practical questions. In this article we do not deny the importance of the practical accounts, but we start from the fundamental question whether and why fish matter in our moral deliberations, i.e., from the discussion on moral status. We elaborate the distinction between moral considerability and moral significance in order to show both the importance and the limitations of the discussion about moral status for practical problems in aquaculture. We illustrate these points with a case-study about the farming of a specific fish species, the African catfish.     

Ethical Opportunities in Global Agriculture, Fisheries, and Forestry: The Role for FAO

FAO has a unique and essential rolein addressing the ethical problems facinghumanity and in making these problems intoopportunities for practical resolution. A broadrange of ethical issues in agriculture,fisheries, and forestry were identified byanalysis of the literature and by interviewswith FAO staff. Issues include sharing accessto and preserving natural resources,introduction of new technology, conservatismover the use of genetic engineering, ethics inanimal agriculture, access to information, foodsecurity, sustainable rural development,ensuring participation of all people indecision making and in receiving benefits ofagriculture, reducing corruption, andinvolvement of private and public sectors indecision making. Rather than viewing theseissues as problems, they should be viewed asopportunities for debate, learning aboutothers' views, and resolution. The UnitedNations has an important role to play in howdecisions are made in the global ethical debatein food and agriculture. The ethical role ofFAO is to promote global food security,balanced conservation, management andutilization of natural resources, andsustainable rural development. FAO should fullyand publicly assume its ethicalresponsibilities, gathering and sharinginformation on ethics in its areas of mandate,acting as an interactive forum, and providingexpert guidance on policy options and choicesbased on practical ethical analysis.     

A Framework for the Ethical Analysis of Novel Foods: The Ethical Matrix

The paper addresses the issue of how indemocratic societies a procedure might be formulatedto facilitate ethical judgements on modernbiotechnologies used in food production. A frameworkfor rational ethical analysis, the Ethical Matrix, isproposed. The Matrix adapts the principles describedby Beauchamp and Childress for application to medicalissues, to interest groups (e.g., producers,consumers, and the biotic environment) affected bythese technologies. The use of the Matrix isillustrated by applying it to an example of a ``novelfood,' viz., a form of genetically modified maize.     

Ethical Tools to Support Systematic Public Deliberations about the Ethical Aspects of Agricultural Biotechnologies

This special issue of the Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics presents so-called ethical tools that are developed to support systematic public deliberations about the ethical aspects of agricultural biotechnologies. This paper firstly clarifies the intended connotations of the term “ethical tools” and argues that such tools can support liberal democracies to cope with the issues that are raised by the application of genetic modification and other modern biotechnologies in agriculture and food production. The paper secondly characterizes the societal discussion on agricultural biotechnology and defends the thesis that normative perspectives fuel this discussion, so one cannot come to grips with this discussion if one neglects these perspectives. The paper thirdly agrues that no such thing exists as “one” societal debate in which these issues should be discussed. There are several interwined debates, and different actors participate in different discourses. Some practical instruments are necessary in order to include the right issues in these debates. These instruments will be coined as “ethical tools,” since they are practical instruments that can be used (tools) in order to support debates and deliberative structures for a systematic engagement with ethical issues (hence, ethical tools). Finally, the paper clarifies the ethics of these ethical tools and presents the tools as discussed in the remainder of this special issue: 1) tools to include ethical issues in public consulation and involvement; 2) tools to support systematic reflection upon ethical issues in decision-making; and 3) tools to support explicit communication about values in the food chain.     

Ethical and Value-based Aspects of the European Commission's Precautionary Principle

In February 2000, the EuropeanCommission adopted a Communication on theprecautionary principle. This states how theCommission intends to apply the principle andestablishes guidelines for its application. Thedocument is intended to inform discussions oninternational agreements. In particular, itprovides a defense of European Union (EU)precautionary policies in case of tradedisputes, for example, in case the EU isaccused of imposing unfair trade barriers onexports of genetically-modified (GM) productsfrom the United States under the rules of theWorld Trade Organisation. In the communication,the Commission emphasizes the scientificaspects of the precautionary principle, perhapspartly to counter claims from US officials thatthe EU's reluctance to accept GM imports is notbased on science but is politically-motivated.However, a principle is by definition a moralguide to behavior. In other words, it is anethic. The precautionary principle should beviewed as a complement to science, to beinvoked when a lack of scientific evidencemeans that outcomes are uncertain. Anyinterpretation of this principle needs to placeat least as much emphasis on its ethical andvalue-based aspects as on its scientificjustification. The Commission's interpretationrisks undermining the painstaking progress madeamong European Union member states inresponding to public concern about GM crops andfood by adopting increased precaution. Thispaper explores the balance between thescientific and ethical/value-based aspects ofthe precautionary principle as set out in theCommission's communication, to make the casethat it is the ethical and value-based aspectsrather than the scientific aspects of theguidelines that need strengthening.     

Ethical Veganism,Virtue, and Greatness of the Soul

Many moral philosophers have criticized intensive animal farming because it can be harmful to the environment, it causes pain and misery to a large number of animals, and furthermore eating meat and animal-based products can be unhealthful. The issue of industrially farmed animals has become one of the most pressing ethical questions of our time. On the one hand, utilitarians have argued that we should become vegetarians or vegans because the practices of raising animals for food are immoral since they minimize the overall happiness. Deontologists, on the other hand, have argued that the practices of raising animals for food are immoral because animals have certain rights and we have duties toward them. Some virtue ethicists remain unconvinced of deontic and consequentialist arguments against the exploitation of animals and suggest that a virtue-based approach is better equipped to show what is immoral about raising and using animals for food, and what is virtuous about ethical veganism.     

Bioenergy and Land Use: Framing the Ethical Debate

Increasingly, ethical concerns are being raised regarding bioenergy production. However, the ethical issues often do not stand out very clearly. The aim of the present paper is to improve on this situation by analyzing the bioenergy discussion from the perspective of land use. From this perspective, bioenergy production may give rise to ethical problems because it competes with other forms of land use. This may generate ethical problems mainly for two reasons. First, bioenergy production may compete, directly or indirectly, with food production; and as consequence the food security of poor people may be adversely affected (social aspects arguments). Secondly, the production of bioenergy may directly or indirectly lead to deforestation and other changes of land use that have a negative effect on greenhouse gas emissions (environmental arguments). So from this perspective the main challenge raised by bioenergy production is to secure responsible land use. The purpose of the paper is not to advocate, or promote, a specific ethical position on bioenergy, but to structure the main arguments found. The paper falls in two parts. One part addresses social aspects arguments for using agricultural land for bioenergy—where food insecurity, malnourishment, and significant food poverty are the main concerns. The second part scopes environmental implications—notably greenhouse gas emissions impact, as affected by deforestation and other (indirect) land-use changes. Alongside showing some of the current dilemmas presented by wider land-use changes, arguments are analyzed from two ethical angels: a consequentialist and a deontological.     

Uncertainties of Nutrigenomics and Their Ethical Meaning

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.     

Ethical Considerations of the Human–Animal-Relationship Under Conditions of Asymmetry and Ambivalence

Ethical reflection deals not only with the moral standing and handling of animals, it should also include a critical analysis of the underlying relationship. Anthropological, psychological, and sociological aspects of the human–animal-relationship should be taken into account. Two conditions, asymmetry and ambivalence, are taken as the historical and empirical basis for reflections on the human–animal-relationship in late modern societies. These conditions explain the variety of moral practice, apart from paradoxes, and provide a framework to systematize animal ethical problems in a broader field. This allows the development of ideal relationships as moral orientation across anthropocentric or sentientistic ethical theories. These ideal relationships are called the patronage-model, the friendship-model and the partnership-model. The ethical problem of creating transgenic animals is discussed in the light of these ideal relationships.     

青海南部地区大风天气分析和预报

大风天气是青海南部地区频繁发生的重大灾害性天气之一。本文通过普查该区1971—2000年风速大于等于17m／s的大风天气过程,得出大风分布特征,并用天气学方法对24h内本地有区域性大风（相邻三站以上）的42个天气过程进行了环流分型和诊断分析,总结归纳出了产生本地区域性大风的天气学指标,给出了大风预报的一般思路和预报着眼点。     

灾害旅游发展中的伦理冲突与均衡:利益相关者视角

灾害旅游的发展是出于经济动机和社会动机两方面的驱动,但这两方面动机之间存在天然的矛盾.因此,有必要引入伦理学的思想来分析灾害旅游中的伦理均衡问题,尤其是涉及范围较广的利益相关者的均衡问题.从利益相关者的视角出发,探讨了灾害旅游中的伦理均衡实现的动力,即各利益主体"利己"和"利他"的对立统一性.在对灾害旅游中的利益相关者进行界定的基础上,分析了各利益相关者面临的伦理冲突,并对伦理均衡进行了讨论.     

Finfish Aquaculture: Animal Welfare, the Environment, and Ethical Implications

The aim of this review is to assess the ethical implications of finfish aquaculture, regarding fish welfare and environmental aspects. The finfish aquaculture industry has grown substantially the last decades, both as a result of the over-fishing of wild fish populations, and because of the increasing consumer demand for fish meat. As the industry is growing, a significant amount of research on the subject is being conducted, monitoring the effects of aquaculture on the environment and on animal welfare. The areas of concern when it comes to animal welfare have here been divided into four different stages: breeding period; growth period; capturing and handling; and slaughter. Besides these stages, this report includes a chapter on the current evidence of fish sentience, since this issue is still being debated among biologists. However, most biologists are at present acknowledging the probability of fish being sentient creatures. Current aquaculture practices are affecting fish welfare during all four of the cited stages, both on physical and mental levels, as well as on the ability of fish to carry out natural behaviors. The effect fish farming has on the environment is here separated into five different categories: the decline of wild fish populations; waste and chemical discharge; loss of habitat; spreading of diseases; and invasion of exotic organisms. There is evidence of severe negative effects on the environment when looking at these five categories, even when considering the difficulty of studying environmental effects, due to the closely interacting variables. The ethical arguments and scientific evidences here reviewed have not all come to the same conclusions. Nevertheless, the general agreement is that current aquaculture practices are neither meeting the needs of fish nor environment. Thus, the obvious environmental and animal welfare aspects of finfish aquaculture make it hard to ethically defend a fish diet.     

Ethical obligations of veterinarians and animal scientists in animal agriculture

It is patent that society is evolving an ethic for the treatment of animals which goes well beyond the standard prohibitions against cruelty. This new ethic for animals takes the consensus ethic for the treatment of humans in society and extends it,mutatis mutandis, to the treatment of animals. Though this ethic has been applied first to research animals, its extension to agricultural animals is inevitable, and has already begun. This article explores the extent to which veterinary medicine and animal science, the major scientific fields relevant to animal agriculture, can accommodate the emerging ethic.     

Reconstruction of the Ethical Debate on Naturalness in Discussions About Plant-Biotechnology

This paper argues that in modern (agro)biotechnology, (un)naturalness as an argument contributed to a stalemate in public debate about innovative technologies. Naturalness in this is often placed opposite to human disruption. It also often serves as a label that shapes moral acceptance or rejection of agricultural innovative technologies. The cause of this lies in the use of nature as a closed, static reference to naturalness, while in fact “nature” is an open and dynamic concept with many different meanings. We propose an approach for a dynamic framework that permits an integrative use of naturalness in debate, by connecting three sorts of meaning that return regularly in the arguments brought forward in debate; cultural, technological, and ecological. We present these as aspects of nature that are always present in the argument of naturalness. The approach proposes a dynamic relation between these aspects, formed by gradients of naturalness, which in turn are related to ethical concerns. In this way we come to an overview that makes it possible to give individual arguments a relative place and that does justice to the temporality of the concept of nature and the underlying ethical concerns stakeholders have in respect to innovation in agriculture.     

The Ethical Values in the U.S. Agricultural and Food System

Many segments of society have systems of values arising from collective beliefs and motivations. For agriculture, and our food system, increasing production to feed the growing human population clearly is a core value. However, a survey we conducted, together with a previously reported survey, showed that the curricula of most U.S. colleges of agriculture do not offer ethics courses that examine the basis of this core value or include discussion of agriculture’s ethical dilemmas such as misuse of pesticides, not progressing rapidly enough toward sustainability goals, relative lack of involvement in addressing diet-related health issues, and lack of commitment to reducing agriculture’s role as a contributor to global climate change. These surveys provide strong evidence that few students have an opportunity to learn ethical concepts and apply them to issues of importance to the agriculture/food system. We suggest that such issues are both growing societal concerns and serious ethical problems that demand attention if our agricultural/food system is not see its relationship with the public further imperiled. Further, we suggest that there is a need for, indeed an obligation of, the faculty of colleges of agriculture to embrace a thorough analysis and discussion of agriculture’s values and their ethical foundation. We offer our thoughts on why curricula of colleges of agriculture do not provide such opportunities and on the importance of agricultural faculties providing leadership in ethical analysis and discussion.     

Ethical Theory and the Problem of Inconsequentialism: Why Environmental Ethicists Should be Virtue-Oriented Ethicists

Many environmental problems are longitudinal collective action problems. They arise from the cumulative unintended effects of a vast amount of seemingly insignificant decisions and actions by individuals who are unknown to each other and distant from each other. Such problems are likely to be effectively addressed only by an enormous number of individuals each making a nearly insignificant contribution to resolving them. However, when a person’s making such a contribution appears to require sacrifice or costs, the problem of inconsequentialism arises: given that a person’s contribution, although needed (albeit not necessary), is nearly inconsequential to addressing the problem and may require some cost from the standpoint of the person’s own life, why should the person make the effort, particularly when it is uncertain (or even unlikely) whether others will do so? In this article I argue that justifications for making the effort to respond to longitudinal collective action environmental problems are, on the whole, particularly well supported by virtue-oriented normative theories, on which character traits are evaluated as virtues and vices consequentially or teleologically and actions are evaluated in terms of virtues and vices. If ethical theories are to be assessed on their theoretical and practical adequacy, and if providing a compelling response to the problem of inconsequentialism is an instance of such adequacy, then this is a reason for preferring virtue-oriented ethical theory over non-virtue-oriented ethical theories, such as Kantian, act utilitarian, and global utilitarian theories.     

秦皇岛市环境保护及相关产业基本情况调查与分析

根据秦皇岛市2004年全市环保及相关产业调查的基础数据，从秦皇岛市环保及相关产业基础现状、结构分析、发展趋势、主要问题及原因分析、对策与建议等五个方面进行了全面的分析，对今后秦皇岛市环保产业的发展进行了探讨，并提出了本市环保产业发展的重点及对策。