Abstract
Policies to govern and regulate animal biotechnology are plagued by ethical problems in four areas: food safety, animal welfare, environmental impact, and social consequences. Although the problems of animal welfare and animal rights are probably of most interest to the readers of this book, the interaction between each of these four areas has a significant effect on the way welfare and animal rights policies are negotiated and administered. Each of these regulatory areas is typically controlled by distinct divisions of government, and each raises somewhat distinct ethical concerns. I will argue that consensus solutions are available for three of the four problem areas. Only social consequences appear to involve philosophical differences that pose insurmountable obstacles to political compromise. Yet the lack of consensus on social consequences precludes social progress in the three areas where policy solutions appear possible.
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Thompson, P.B. (1998). Biotechnology policy: four ethical problems and three political solutions. In: Holland, A., Johnson, A. (eds) Animal Biotechnology and Ethics. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-5783-8_17
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-5783-8_17
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