There is no element in the debate that is uncontested. Some of the most amazing tools of the past fifty years have appeared in the sphere of medical biotechnology, including antibiotics, diagnostic methods, and genetic manipulation. The tension between these two ways of stating the most basic norms of decision making has been endemic to some of the most protracted ethical debates of the last 200 years. The widely discussed risk of allergenicity associated with GMO's is an instance of this problem. Moral Prejudices: Essays on Ethics, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 10. Because other papers in the Industry Canada initiative will address environmental and food safety risk, as well as intellectual property, this paper does not include any technical, legal or regulatory discussion of these issues. Nevertheless, there are some ethical issues that can be associated with food safety. 56. 50. Citizens of pluralistic societies are seldom placed in the position of articulating personal values explicitly or of defending them publicly. This sort of reasoning has led many to demand labels for GMOs, a response that will be discussed in more detail in section 4.2 below. First, new agricultural technology had its greatest effect on rural communities in industrial societies during the 20th century and especially after World War II. 16. 2000. Is it unnatural to genetically engineer plants? These estimates are frequently treated as a "cost" of pesticide use, which may be judged ethically acceptable when offset by economic benefits. Jonas argued that technological ethics must integrate science-based attempts to understand the systematic and temporally distant effects of technology with ethical concepts attuned to the fact that many of the people who will be affected by technology will not be known to those who plan and execute a technological practice. Shattuck, R. 1997. Readers of this paper who follow the debate into the professional literature of genetics will see ample evidence of these two approaches. Given this orientation, one would expect that products such as transgenic salmon, which could affect wild salmon populations, would be among the most contentious applications of biotechnology from the perspective of ecocentric environmental ethics. Vogt, D. U. While these limitations must be acknowledged, one must also bear in mind the fact that the viewpoint of anyone, including a member of the lay public, will sharpen and change as a result of participating in discussions that approximate the ideal of discourse ethics. 25. We may interpret this as practical ethical discourse. Rheinberger. When impacts borne by future generations, by society as a whole, by non-human animals or even by inanimate entities such as natural ecosystems are thrown into the mix, the philosophical and methodological problems of placing a value on predicted outcomes becomes both complex and contentious. Regarding biotechnology, FAO assists its Member countries and their institutions by: Also, FAO hosts the Secretariats of a number of intergovernmental bodies and treaties that deal with some biotechnology-related issues, including the Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (CGRFA), the International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC) and the Joint FAO/WHO Codex Alimentarius Commission. Even this short statement suggests that there are many ethical issues that can be raised in connection with risk analysis, and most of them arise to some degree in applying this general framework to food and agricultural biotechnology. 83-106. If so, it would be ethically wrong to prohibit GMOs without some sort of evidence that they pose a hazard to human health. They are used for many different purposes, such as the genetic improvement of plants and animals to increase their yields or efficiency; characterization and conservation of genetic resources for food and agriculture; plant and animal disease diagnosis; vaccine development; and production of fermented foods. I have persisted in using the term 'utilitarian' for two reasons. A Short History of Food Ethics. 1998. Special Arguments Pertaining to the Use of rDNA Technology. 2000. [2] The situation is arguably quite different in the rest of the world. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 193-208. 4 The term 'actors' will be used to indicate individuals, corporations, government agencies and non-profit, non-governmental organizations including public interest groups, universities and scientific societies. 78. One way to characterize this type of thinking is to say the rights of the few outweigh less vital interests of the many. 32. 9 The essays collected in Mies and Shiva, 1993 and Shiva and Moser, 1995 are characteristic of this line of criticism. Throughout human history, it has often been the case that a small minority, sometimes a single individual, seizes on a vital difference and opposes a strong majority point of view. Indeed, it is possible to argue on these grounds that a food system that did not allow those who wanted to eat GMO foods to act on this preference would be as problematic from an ethics perspective as one that denies the choice of GMO free. Graham, J. D., Green, L.C. Providing them with access to high-quality, updated, balanced, science-based information. 33. On this interpretation, the "precautionary approach" is a search for the appropriate response to the uncertainty and indeterminacy that pervades science-based characterizations of risk, rather than a well defined position or principle. One should not equate a response to ethical issues and a response to public concerns. The Central Theme of American Agricultural History, Agriculture and Human Values 1(2): 6-8. Nelkin and Lindee (1995) note a general cultural tendency to interpret genes as bearers of the traditional notions of essence and purpose that would achieve moral significance in some teleological conceptions of nature. 1999. Yet in directing the brunt of its criticism at the planning and conduct of publicly funded agricultural research, the authors of this report made claims with a substantially different ethical importance.