Ethical Issues in Agriculture

The way we regulate food and agricultural systems is inherently of ethical concern. Thus, we are dealing with issues relevant to moral philosophy. Agricultural ethics is an emerging discipline which is principally concerned with topics involving public policy. Agriculture – ethical approaches contrasts the traditional concept of moral philosophy and applied ethics. When we try to face specific ethical challenges in complex societies and comprised systems for example agriculture, the traditional concept of moral theory fails to bring forward adequate solutions to the identified problem. Therefore, ethical designs are necessary which take the problem’s specific characteristics and its given normative implications into consideration (applied ethics). Basic features of agriculture are compared to other types of industrial activity. Furthermore, the normative concept of sustainable agriculture is examined. Under the topic animal well-fare and livestock husbandry special attention is paid to aspects of ethics which are associated with livestock husbandry. The ongoing debate about bio-patenting in the context of agriculture and concentrates on possible consequences, such as social ethics, infringed rights of disadvantaged, as well as moral concepts such as autonomy, social justice and equality is outlined. Agricultural research is often initiated to resolve practical problems but it can raise ethical questions as well. Especially the productionist paradigm is critically investigated in Section 6 of this chapter. A closer look at transgenic maize shows that contextual thinking can change the perspective on ethical problems in this field.