In “Do Animals have an Interest in Liberty?” Alasdair Cochrane brings some much needed attention to the ethics of animal confinement (2009a). Of particular significance is the question of whether confinement in itself is bad for nonhuman animal (hereafter, animal) well-being. If confinement conditions cause animals to suffer or frustrate their preferences it is safe to assume that liberty or freedom (following Cochrane, I use the terms interchangeably) would be instrumentally good for them. But, what about seemingly benign conditions of (...) confinement in which animals are not suffering or having their preferences frustrated? Is confinement in such cases bad for their well-being? In other words, do animals have an .. (shrink)

Concerns have been voiced about the ethical implications of patenting practices in the field of biotechnology. Some of these have also been incorporated into regulation, such as the European Commission Directive 98/44 on the legal protection of biotechnological inventions. However, the incorporation of ethically based restrictions into patent legislation has not had the effect of satisfying all concerns. In this article, we will systematically compare the richness of ethical concerns surrounding biotech patenting, with the limited scope of ethical concerns actually (...) addressed in the patent system. As sources of our analyses we will use literature and document studies and a survey with important stakeholders and experts related to Norwegian patenting in the aquacultural biotechnology sector. We will structure the analyses with an ethical matrix, developed for this purpose. Showing the misalignment of the discussions within and outside the patent system, we suggest that an important reason for the ethical controversy still surrounding patenting is that ethical questions keep being framed in a narrow way within the system. Until a richer set of ethical considerations is addressed head-on within the patent system, the patent system will continue to evoke academic and interest group criticism, potentially contributing to a legitimacy crisis of the whole system. (shrink)

In this paper we analyse how risk factors in highly industrialised agriculture are connected to animal neglect. With Danish agriculture as a case study, we use two types of data. First, we use register data from Statistics Denmark to map how risk factors such as farmers’ financial and social troubles are connected to convictions of neglect. Second, we analyse narratives where interviewed farmers, involved in cases of neglect, describe how they themselves experienced the incidents. We find that while livestock farmers (...) in general have a low risk of animal neglect problems, a small percentage of them face severe financial difficulties, divorce and psychiatric problems, which are connected to an increased risk of being convicted for the neglect of farm animals. The narratives bring forward themes of pressure related to financial trouble, technological break down, family problems, stress and a growing concern among the farmers towards the governmental control in farm animal production. We discuss how these factors can be used to identify and help farmers with a high risk of being convicted of livestock neglect. (shrink)