scholarly journals Animal Business: an Ethical Exploration of Corporate Responsibility Towards Animals

Food Ethics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Monique Janssens

AbstractThe aim of this paper is to take normative aspects of animal welfare in corporate practice from a blind spot into the spotlight, and thus connect the fields of business ethics and animal ethics. Using insights from business ethics and animal ethics, it argues that companies have a strong responsibility towards animals. Its rationale is that animals have a moral status, that moral actors have the moral obligation to take the interests of animals into account and thus, that as moral actors, companies should take the interests of animals into account, more specifically their current and future welfare. Based on this corporate responsibility, categories of corporate impact on animals in terms of welfare and longevity are offered, including normative implications for each of them. The article concludes with managerial implications for several business sectors, including the most animal-consuming and animal-welfare-threatening industry: the food sector. Welfare issues are discussed, including the issue of killing for food production.

Author(s):  
Paul B. Thompson

AbstractThe ethics of food production should include philosophical discussion of the condition or welfare of livestock, including for animals being raised in high volume, concentrated production systems (e.g. factory farms). Philosophers should aid producers and scientists in specifying conditions for improved welfare in these systems. An adequately non-ideal approach to this problem should recognize both the economic rationale for these systems as well as the way that they constrain opportunities for improving animal welfare. Recent philosophical work on animal ethics has been dominated by authors who not only neglect this imperative, but also defeat it by drawing on oversimplified and rhetorically overstated descriptions of the conditions in which factory farmed animals actually live. This feature of philosophical animal ethics reflects a form of structural narcissism in which adopting a morally correct attitude defeats actions that could actually improve the welfare of livestock in factory farms to a considerable degree.


Agriculture ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 156
Author(s):  
Simona Tarra ◽  
Giampiero Mazzocchi ◽  
Davide Marino

The restriction measures linked to the COVID-19 shock suddenly highlighted the vulnerability of most socioeconomic systems, including the food sector. In a context in which the limitation to the movement of people and goods has put the longer and more structured supply chains in serious difficulty, many experiences and initiatives have emerged as viable alternatives. The aim of the research was to understand if and how the Solidarity Purchasing Groups (SPG) of Rome have contributed to the resilience of the food system of the metropolitan city during the lockdown. The research was based on the results of a questionnaire administered to the SPGs of Rome during the first period of the pandemic (April–July 2020), enriched by some in-depth interviews carried out by the authors. What emerged was that, despite the limited extent in terms of products conveyed within the whole food system, the SPGs represented an important food supply channel during the lockdown period, for two main reasons: a greater flexibility and agility in moving and in handling goods and the possibility of remunerating local farms, contributing to the resilience of the local agri-food fabric. The analysis of the results confirms the strong vitality of such Food Movements in Rome and, at the same time, allows for the identification of a series of interventions that the institutions could adopt to favor the spread of a food environment more compatible with more sustainable and fairer forms of food production and distribution.


2019 ◽  
pp. 1-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amelia R. Cornish ◽  
Brayden Ashton ◽  
David Raubenheimer ◽  
Paul D. McGreevy

AbstractConsumers are increasingly concerned about nonhuman animal welfare in food production and, as their awareness continues to rise, demand for welfare-friendly products is growing. The current study explores the Australian market for welfare-friendly food of animal origin by outlining and clarifying how consumers’ welfare concerns affect their purchasing decisions. It reports the findings of an Australian face-to-face survey of consumers’ knowledge of and attitudes to farm animal welfare and their reported purchasing of welfare-friendly animal-derived products. A novel aspect of this survey was its effort to establish consumers’ understanding of welfare-friendly labels, their motivation to purchase welfare-friendly products, and the barriers to doing so. The survey was deployed in four shopping districts in New South Wales, Australia, in 2016. Data were collected from 135 respondents, and the results are discussed below.


Author(s):  
Kevin Morgan ◽  
Terry Marsden ◽  
Jonathan Murdoch

With its rolling hills, small farms, diverse products, and high-quality foodstuffs, Tuscany easily conjures up a world of diversification and localization. In fact, so many of the region’s products are seen as world class—notably its wines, olive oils, cheeses, and processed meats—that it is tempting to see this region as the prime example of an Interpersonal World (in Salais and Storper’s terms). Yet, Tuscany’s perceived success in this world of food is a recent phenomenon. Until the 1990s the region was thought to be rather ‘backward’ in character, mainly due to its inability to adopt conventional industrial approaches to food production and processing. While some effort was made to shift Tuscany on to a more industrialized development path during the 1960s and 1970s, by the early 1990s this was widely regarded as having failed. Out of this failure, however, came the search for a new development model, one that could work with, rather than against, the region’s core assets—notably, its localized variety in foodstuffs and environmental features. Thus, a distinctively Tuscan approach to the agri-food sector is explicitly identified in the recent Rural Development Plan (RDP) drawn up by the Tuscan regional government. The document states that the strategy elaborated in the plan is aiming at ‘strengthening the ‘‘Tuscan model’’ of agricultural and rural development’. The plan goes on to identify key characteristics of the model, including the presence of small and mediumsized farms, the existence of quality products, the diversification of agricultural production, the provision of adequate marketing networks, and the enhancement of the environment and the agricultural landscape (Regione Toscana, 2000). It is tempting to imagine that the consolidation of a diversified and localized world of food production in Tuscany owes much to the implementation of this model by governmental authorities in concert with other actors in the food sector. However, it will be argued below that the emergence of a new world of food in Tuscany owes as much to happenstance as it does to the conscious agency of differing institutions and organizations.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 4820 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aleksandar Grubor ◽  
Nikola Milicevic ◽  
Nenad Djokic

The bioeconomy has been introduced as a potential answer to some of the issues that modern mankind is confronted with: Climate change, industrial restructuring, food security, health, and energy security. In its goal to establish sustainable green growth, the bioeconomy relies heavily on the agriculture and food sector, whereas a special place belongs to organic food. Increasing organic food consumption depends on understanding organic food consumers. Research of their profile, both worldwide and in Serbia, has failed to find their common characteristics. In this paper, results of research with the first application of a logit model in defining domestic organic food consumers are presented. The results showed they were urban, highly educated, and with higher income. The greatest obstacle for increasing their future consumption of organic food was its insufficient availability. The paper provides managerial implications as well.


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