Frans Brom

Animal welfare policy presents complex ethical challenges, requiring the careful balancing of diverse perspectives on issues such as animal housing, transport, and slaughter. As a policy domain shaped by societal pluralism, it demands reasoned debate and informed decision-making. Ethicists contribute to these discussions in different ways, assuming distinct professional roles in public policy-making. Building on Roger Pielke’s _The Honest Broker_ (The honest broker: Making sense of science in policy and politics, Cambridge University Press, 2007), four roles for ethicists are developed: _The Pure Philosopher_, who develops ethical theory without direct policy engagement; _The Ethics Advocate_, who aligns with a specific position based on a foundational ethical theory; _The Ethics Facilitator_, who clarifies ethical disagreements to enable reasoned debate; and _The Engaged Philosopher_, who reframes discussions to expand policy options. Ethical advising in public policy depends on a democratic public ethos, where debates remain reasonable and open to reflection. This ethos is increasingly threatened by populism, which portrays politics as an antagonistic struggle rather than a deliberative process. In such a polarized context, ethicists face the risk of having their work instrumentalized in divisive narratives, potentially undermining meaningful engagement. The case of ritual slaughter highlights these challenges, demonstrating how ethics advice can become entangled in contentious debates. To uphold democratic pluralism, ethicists must ensure that their contributions to policy-making foster an open, inclusive, and reflective deliberative process.

The many well-publicized food scandals in recent years have resulted in a general state of vulnerable trust. As a result, building consumer trust has become an important goal in agri-food policy. In their efforts to protect trust in the agricultural and food sector, governments and industries have tended to consider the problem of trust as merely a matter of informing consumers on risks. In this article, we argue that the food sector better addresses the problem of trust from the perspective of the trustworthiness of the food sector itself. This broad idea for changing the focus of trust is the assumption that if you want to be trusted, you should be trustworthy. To provide a clear understanding of what being trustworthy means within the food sector, we elaborate on both the concept of trust and of responsibility. In this way we show that policy focused on enhancing transparency and providing information to consumers is crucial, but not sufficient for dealing with the problem of consumer trust in the current agri-food context.

The combination of breeding for increased production and the intensification of housing conditions have resulted in increased occurrence of behavioral, physiological, and immunological disorders. These disorders affect health and welfare of production animals negatively. For future livestock systems, it is important to consider how to manage and breed production animals. In this paper, we will focus on selective breeding of laying hens. Selective breeding should not only be defined in terms of production, but should also include traits related to animal health and welfare. For this we like to introduce the concept of robustness. The concept of robustness includes individual traits of an animal that are relevant for health and welfare. Improving robustness by selective breeding will increase (or restore) the ability of animals to interact successfully with the environment and thereby to make them more able to adapt to an appropriate husbandry system. Application of robustness into a breeding goal will result in animals with improved health and welfare without affecting their integrity. Therefore, in order to be ethically acceptable, selective breeding in animal production should accept robustness as a breeding goal.

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.

Nowadays many debates are going on that relate to the agricultural and food sector. It looks as if present technological and organizational developments within the agricultural and food sector are badly geared to societal needs and expectations. In this article we briefly present a toolkit for moral communication within the food chain. This toolkit is developed as part of a European research project. Next, we discuss what such a toolkit can bring about, given the characteristics of the present day agricultural and food sector and its wider context. We defend that the toolkit can be seen as one of the mechanisms that can help enterprises in the agricultural and food sector to be accountable. It should, however, be complemented with other mechanisms, first, to empower the wider public and, second, to stimulate a dialogue, on a more equal footing, between public authorities, citizens, and economic actors.

European animal disease policy seems to find its justification in a “harm to other” principle. Limiting the freedom of animal keepers—e.g., by culling their animals—is justified by the aim to prevent harm, i.e., the spreading of the disease. The picture, however, is more complicated. Both during the control of outbreaks and in the prevention of notifiable, animal diseases the government is confronted with conflicting claims of stakeholders who anticipate running a risk to be harmed by each other, and who ask for government intervention. In this paper, we first argue that in a policy that aims to prevent animal diseases, the focus shifts from limiting “harm” to weighing conflicting claims with respect to “risks of harm.” Therefore, we claim that the harm principle is no longer a sufficient justification for governmental intervention in animal disease prevention. A policy that has to deal with and distribute conflicting risks of harm needs additional value assumptions that guide this process of assessment and distribution. We show that currently, policies are based on assumptions that are mainly economic considerations. In order to show the limitations of these considerations, we use the interests and position of keepers of backyard animals as an example. Based on the problems they faced during and after the recent outbreaks, we defend the thesis that in order to develop a sustainable animal disease policy other than economic assumptions need to be taken into account.

Food trade is of economic importance for both developed and developing countries. Food, however, is a special commodity. Firstly, the lack of food -- hunger, under-nourishment, and starvation -- is one of the world's pressing moral problems. But food is not only special because it is necessary for our survival; food is also special because it is strongly related to our social and cultural identity. Two recent transatlantic trade conflicts over food -- over the use of artificial growth hormones in beef production and over the use of biotechnology in food production -- show that food is a specific commodity. In these trade-conflicts, the obligations flowing from free-trade treaties collide with the cultural and social meanings of food. Current international trade agreements neglect this point and force countries to fight their case in the field of food safety science. This causes a bias in the discussion. Europe's resistance towards artificial growth hormones and GM-food is not strictly science based; it is also culture based. For a fair resolution of trade-conflicts, this needs to be accommodated in international trade legislation. With the help of the notion of public reason I defend that precaution with regard to scientific uncertainty, and the possibility for compulsory labelling with regard to sensitive non-nutritional properties of foodstuffs, need to be incorporated in international food trade regulations.

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.

In this article, we sketch a new approach to law and ethics. The traditional paradigm, exemplified in the debate on liberal moralism, becomes increasingly inadequate. Its basic assumptions are that there are clear moral norms of positive or critical morality, and that making statutory norms is an effective method to have citizens conform to those norms. However, for many ethical issues that are on the legislative agenda, e.g. with respect to bioethics and anti-discrimination law, the moral norms are controversial, vague or still evolving. Moreover, law proves not to be a very effective instrument. Therefore, we need a new paradigm, both for descriptive and for normative analysis. This interactive paradigm, as a normative position, can be summarised in two theses. The process of legislation on ethical issues should be structured as a process of interaction between the legislature and society or relevant sectors of society, so that the development of new moral norms and the development of new legal norms may reinforce each other. And legislation on ethical issues should be designed in such a way that it is an effective form of communication which, moreover, facilitates an ongoing moral debate and an ongoing reflection on such issues, because this is the best method to ensure that the practice remains oriented to the ideals and values the law tries to realise.

Results of studies that cast doubt on the safety of genetically modified crops have been published since the first GM crop approval for commercial release. These ‘alarming studies’ challenge the dominant view about the adequacy of current risk assessment practice for genetically modified organisms. Subsequent debates follow a similar and recurring pattern, in which those involved cannot agree on the significance of the results and the attached consequences. The standard response from the government—a reassessment by scientific advisory bodies—seems insufficient to bring the debate to a satisfactory closure. The recurrence of the same debate every time an alarming study is published shows that science alone cannot solve the problem. We believe that further analysis is needed to investigate if and how we can prevent this repetitive cycle that creates frustration amongst all stakeholders. In this paper, we analyse the dynamics behind discussions which occur following alarming studies. We will use a selection of representative alarming GMO case studies to underpin our claim that it is likely that there will be a permanent difference in view of opinion that cannot be solved with more data or new facts. The current strategy of more research is a pitfall that is unlikely to solve this issue. Instead, the focus of the GM crop discussion should shift towards managing permanent different viewpoints and providing a platform for a broader conversation on agriculture and food production

The leading question of this article is whether it is acceptable, from a moral point of view, to take wild animals that are ill out of their natural habitat and temporarily bring them under human control with the purpose of curing them. To this end the so-called 'seal debate' was examined. In the Netherlands, seals that are lost or ill are rescued and taken into shelters, where they are cured and afterwards reintroduced into their natural environment. Recently, this practice has been criticised because it is thought to interfere with the wildness of the animals and population. In this research, the moral assumptions behind the arguments of both the proponents and opponents of sheltering have been analysed within a morally pluralistic framework. It is concluded that sheltering on too large a scale would be contrary to the efforts of the last few decades to maintain an independent or wild seal population, which means that a certain amount of caution is called for. However, in the current situation there is no decisive reason to completely prohibit shelters either. Good arguments can even be given in favour of sheltering. It also becomes clear that the acceptability of sheltering wild animals depends on the specific circumstances in which an animal is encountered.

Synthetic biology aims at designing biological systems, at building ‘living machines’. The emergence of synthetic biology has reignited the cycle of public debate. The old biotechnology debate is being reiterated and the controversies are deepened. The societal debate follows the technological hype cycle. A new technology with a high visibility and high expectations also raises high controversies. For synthetic biology, this hype is currently near its peak and the first signs of disillusionment are getting visible. In policy development, on the other hand, synthetic biology is in the early stages. Governments examine the need for adaptations to existing regulatory frameworks. There is a gap between the visibility of the technological developments and policy formulation. This gap is crucial for technology assessment: while the hype in public attention is over, essential policy steps are taken. In order to close this gap, technology assessment needs to facilitate the societal–ethical debate when media attention, and thus the visibility of the technological developments, declines