Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics PDF Download

Author: David M. Kaplan
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789400718531
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 1939

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Book Description
This Encyclopedia offers a definitive source on issues pertaining to the full range of topics in the important new area of food and agricultural ethics. It includes summaries of historical approaches, current scholarship, social movements, and new trends from the standpoint of the ethical notions that have shaped them. It combines detailed analyses of specific topics such as the role of antibiotics in animal production, the Green Revolution, and alternative methods of organic farming, with longer entries that summarize general areas of scholarship and explore ways that they are related. Renewed debate, discussion and inquiry into food and agricultural topics have become a hallmark of the turn toward more sustainable policies and lifestyles in the 21st century. Attention has turned to the goals and ethical rationale behind production, distribution and consumption of food, as well as to non-food uses of cultivated biomass and the products of animal husbandry. These wide-ranging debates encompass questions in human nutrition, animal rights and the environmental impacts of aquaculture and agricultural production. Each of these and related topics is both technically complex and involves an – often implicit – ethical dimension. Other topics include methods for integrating ethics into scientific and technical research programs or development projects, the role of intensive agriculture and biotechnology in addressing persistent world hunger and the role of crops, forests and engineered organisms in making a transition to renewable, carbon-neutral sources of energy. The Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics proves an indispensible reference point for future research and writing on topics in agriculture and food ethics for decades to come.

Author: Paul Thompson
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN: 9780813828060
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
Presents a collection of essays written over a period of 15 years by agricultural ethicist Paul B. Thompson. The essays address the practical application of ethics to agriculture in a world faced with issues of increased yield, threatened environment, and the disappearance of the family farm.

Author: M. Korthals
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1402029934
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
This book is an extensive, original and systematic treatment of many important philosophical and ethical aspects of food (consumption and production). May we eat just anything? Can we do everything with animals, even genetic modification? If not, how can we regulate those processes so that they lead to optimum animal welfare while at the same time producing optimum taste? The production of food also causes environmental pollution – does the fight against hunger have priority over the care of the environment? The care of the environment, animal welfare, and the quality of food should be in a certain harmony, but that is far from granted and hardly easy to achieve. These factors are often in conflict with each other, and a balance will thus need to be searched for. Other factors to take into consideration are the issue of global famine, the care for a farming class that is able to keep its head above water in a decent way, and a fair trade system that does not throw up unnecessary barriers for newcomers or small market participants and that promotes good nutrition. Famine continues to be a widespread phenomenon that violates human rights, causing nearly a billion people to suffer from hunger or malnutrition. At the same time, deliberate hunger, abundance, and obesity are prevalent in the Western world. Both issues refer to the social and cultural aspects of food. Scientific and technological developments like genetic modification and functional food also play an increasingly important role; almost every bite that we take is determined by scientific developments. An extra difficulty is that scientific information is often contradictory, or that it relies on statistical probabilities that are difficult to translate into everyday certitudes. All of these factors deserve attention, but it is the mix that is most important. In the land of food, ‘either or’ does not exist, only ‘both and’. The adequate measure of ‘both and’ serves as the starting point for this philosophical reflection. Before Dinner is a must-read for all people interested in contemporary ethical issues of food, such as university students and researchers of food, agricultural and life sciences, as well as policymakers in these fields, such as members of professional organisations focusing on food and agriculture (f.e., EURSAFE (European Society for Agriculture and Food Ethics), the Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society (USA), and European Federation of Biotechnology).

Author: Harvey S. James, Jr.
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400762747
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
This edited volume presents ethical and economic analyses of agrifood competition. By systematically examining fairness and openness in agricultural markets, it seeks to answer the question of whether there is adequate competition in the agrifood industry and whether the system is fair to all participants. It outlines ethical and economic principles important for understanding agrifood competition, presents arguments for and against consolidation, globalization and the integration of agrifood industries, and looks at the implications of globalization on the nature of competition in specific agricultural contexts.

Author: Paul B. Thompson
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1402057911
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
This revised edition updates Thompson’s trail-blazing study of ethical and philosophical issues raised by biotechnology. The 1997 book was the first by a philosopher to address food and agricultural biotechnology, discussing ethical issues associated with risk assessment, labelling, animal transformation, patents, and impact on traditional farming communities. The new edition addresses the debates of the intervening decade, including cloning, the Precautionary Principle, and the biotechnology debate between the United States and Europe.

Author: Robert L. Zimdahl
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030489353
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
I write because I am concerned that I and my agricultural colleagues have avoided addressing the moral dimension of the environmental and social problems we have contributed to. I hope for an exchange of ideas about agriculture's moral dilemmas. I encourage my readers to engage in a collective conversation about the dilemmas and avoid remaining in what Merton calls "the collective arrogance and despair of his own herd." If those engaged in agriculture continue to ignore and fail to realize our common difficulties they will be addressed and resolved by societal pressure and political action, which may not yield the resolution we favor. The book's goal is not to resolve the moral dilemmas raised. It is to raise them and encourage thought and discussion. It will ask but not answer why nearly all involved in agriculture have not addressed the moral concerns voiced by the general public. The agricultural enterprise is committed to the benefits and future success of the present, very productive, chemical, capital, and energy intensive system, which is, in the minds of many, not sustainable. The internal justification invokes the moral claim that they feed the world's population. The question remains whether or not the prevailing moral justification of feeding the world is adequate given all the issues modern, developed country agriculture faces: pesticides in soil, water, and food, cruelty to animals, Biotech/GMO's, corporate agriculture, pollution by animal factory waste, exploitation of and cruelty to migrant labor.

Author: Paul B. Thompson
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199391696
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
Paul B. Thompson covers diet and health issues, livestock welfare, world hunger, food justice, environmental ethics, Green Revolution technology and GMOs in this concise but comprehensive study. He shows how food can be a nexus for integrating larger social issues in social inequality, scientific reductionism, and the eclipse of morality.

Author: Paul B. Thompson
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813125871
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 339

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Book Description
As industry and technology proliferate in modern society, sustainability has jumped to the forefront of contemporary political and environmental discussions. The balance between progress and the earth's ability to provide for its inhabitants grows increasingly precarious as we attempt to achieve sustainable development. In The Agrarian Vision: Sustainability and Environmental Ethics, Paul B. Thompson articulates a new agrarian philosophy, emphasizing the vital role of agrarianism in modern agricultural practices. Thompson, a highly regarded voice in environmental philosophy, unites concepts of agrarian philosophy, political theory, and environmental ethics to illustrate the importance of creating and maintaining environmentally conscious communities. Thompson describes the evolution of agrarian values in America, following the path blazed by Thomas Jefferson, John Steinbeck, and Wendell Berry. Providing a pragmatic approach to ecological responsibility and commitment, The Agrarian Vision is a significant, compelling argument for the practice of a reconfigured and expanded agrarianism in our efforts to support modern industrialized culture while also preserving the natural world.

Author: Christian Coff
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1402085249
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
The theme of this book evolved from the idea of linking three concepts around food: traceability, ethics and informed choice. We believe that the current devel- ment and implementation of traceability in the agri-food sector offers an interesting way not only of handling food safety but also of addressing and communicating ethical issues arising from current food production practices. Practices in the agri-food sector worry food consumers (as we all are, since we need to eat and drink to stay alive). But how can consumers act upon their concerns? Paradoxically, although consumers are bombarded with information on food – from the media, the food industry, food authorities, NGOs and interest groups – details about how foods are actually produced is often hard to find. Much of the infor- tion available is superficial, conflicting or partial, and it is hard for consumers seeking to mak e informed food choices to know which information to trust. The consumers we interviewed for this project felt that information about food products was withheld and manipulated. Traceability, which provides a record of the history and journey of a given food, and which is increasingly used in the food sector for legal and commercial reasons, has the potential to communicate a more authentic picture of how food is produced.

Author: Paul B. Thompson
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319926039
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
This book brings together agricultural ethics scholars from the US, Japan and Taiwan to discuss crucial issues in agricultural ethics and sustainability ethics in comparative context. Agricultural ethics and sustainability ethics are wide-ranging and closely linked to environmental ethics, bioethics, virtue ethics, animal welfare, soil conservation, not to mention rural traditions and lifestyles. Six of the chapters cover historical traditions and values in Europe, the US and East Asia. Four of the chapters cover the role of virtue ethics in the analysis of agrarian and environmental ethics, agricultural biotechnology, food ethics, and alternative agriculture, respectively. Finally, two of the chapters cover field efforts of agricultural ethics involving preserving agricultural heritage and building consensus for sustainable farming, respectively. Although the papers are divided into three groups, their contents are interconnected and mutually informative.