Abstract

In the next few years, biotechnology will continue to develop a wide variety of functional foods, foods whose benefits go well beyond basic nutrition. Minors are a major potential market for bioengineered foods that are promoted not as sustaining health but rather as supporting desired lifestyles through the enhancement of physical, athletic, intellectual, or social performance. The experience of other industries suggests that such biomarketing is likely to create a variety of highly public ethical controversies. After a discussion of some of these potential issues, suggestions on how companies and industries can work with marketing ethicists and child advocates to limitnegative impacts on children and youth are presented. That discussion includes a preliminarily analysis of some of the considerations that should be involved in the initial development of a model of biomarketing ethics and in the use of that model to prevent ethical abuses.