Animals, Food and Ethics 10th March, 2014. Animals, Food and Ethics

How are farm animals treated, kept, and grown nowadays? Do you know how they are being treated? Should we know more about it?

Which one is the true picture? How do most farm animals live? Does it MATTER to us?

Milton Friedman: Increase Profit “In a free-enterprise, private-property system, a corporate executive is an employee of the owners of the business. He has direct responsibility to his employers. That responsibility is to conduct the business in accordance with their desires, which generally will be to make as much money as possible while conforming to their basic rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom.” “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits” (1970)

Do animals have the right to a certain quality of life? Why? Or, would it be wrong for us to treat the animals in a certain way? What may make the farmers’ actions wrong?

Stakeholders Who are the stakeholders? Should it include animals too? Why? Shareholders Customers Creditors Employees Suppliers Local community The State The Environment Future Generations

Justice Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is to systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed if they are unjust. John Rawls

Values Instrumental Values Intrinsic Values How do we know if something is worthwhile for us for its own sake? Knowledge, music, philosophy, love, etc.

Food Industry Richard Lobb of the National Chicken Council says, “In a way, we’re not producing chickens, we’re producing food.” What does this statement mean? Do you agree or disagree with it? How might this perspective affect the way that chickens are raised?

Externalities In economics, an externality is the cost or benefit that affects a party who did not choose to incur that cost or benefit. If external costs exist, such as pollution, the producer may choose to produce more of the product than would be produced if the producer were required to pay all associated environmental costs. Thus, it is said that, for goods with externalities, unregulated market prices do not reflect the full social costs or benefit of the transaction. (Wikipedia)

Rights, Duty, Wrongness and Charity Wrong: Punishable in some ways Duty: That it will be wrong if someone does not perform the action. Rights: That society can (use force to) coerce the person to perform the action. Charity: That society may praise the person if he does it; and he may not be blamed if he fails to do it.

Biological Similarity Does it tell us anything?