Some scholars and activists argue that, under certain circumstances, the flesh of non-human animals not intentionally killed for food—such as roadkill, animals killed during crop harvesting, and leftovers from other people’s meat-based meals—should be used as food for humans or other animals, since doing so may reduce reliance on farmed animal flesh. A prominent justification is the “waste argument,” according to which allowing such flesh to go to waste is morally wrong and may therefore generate a duty to use it. This paper develops three objections to that argument. Existing concepts of food waste do not identify relevant cases with sufficient precision, risk generating implausibly expansive duties, and fail to explain why every instance of food waste should be regarded as morally wrong. I then adopt an ameliorative approach to develop a relational and context-sensitive concept of food waste, according to which dead animals’ flesh counts as waste when it could replace farmed animal flesh without supporting further animal suffering or violating other relevant norms. Although this revised account remains dependent on contextual and other normative commitments, it provides a more defensible basis for the waste argument.
Contemporary animal ethics often treats general priority for humans as difficult to justify. Familiar defenses appeal either to superior capacities or to bare species membership—both of which face powerful objections. This paper defends an alternative: a limited, prima facie form of human priority grounded in reasonable partiality toward members of the human community. On this view, humanity is not merely a biological category but an ethically significant community structured by shared vulnerability, solidarity, and special responsibility. This relational account avoids the problem of marginal cases without relying on capacity hierarchies, and it resists the charge of discrimination by distinguishing legitimate partiality from unjust discrimination. The framework also yields practical implications: it supports qualified human priority under genuine necessity, generates stronger and partly remedial duties toward animals made dependent within human practices, and cautions against large-scale intervention in wild animal suffering. Not all forms of human priority are discriminatory. A defensible human priority must be limited and relationally structured, and it must satisfy four constraints: necessity, proportionality, least harm, and remedial responsibility.
The Ethical Matrix offers a structured framework for ethical deliberation by mapping stakeholders against prima facie ethical principles. This approach is compatible with quantitative analysis, where the matrix is converted into two numerically scored matrices. However, when numerous stakeholders are involved, numerical representations can obscure stakeholder–principle intersections and may encourage misleading aggregation of incommensurable ethical values. Herein, we introduce a post-processing framework (Ethicalc) that preserves the granularity of the scores within the data but complements Ethical Matrix deliberation by improving its visualization. The approach scales impact by importance using the Hadamard product and applies a hyperbolic tangent transformation governed by a deliberation tuning parameter, c, which progressively surfaces additional ethical tensions as its value increases. This enables a gradual increase in the depth of ethical deliberation and yields a characteristic visual heatmap of the ethical dilemma. We first employed the framework on the classical rbST dairy-farming case using illustrative scores are used, and then to a contemporary case study on introducing genetically modified mosquitoes into the wild, for which importance and impact scores were empirically elicited from 20 bioethics-trained participants. This framework is accompanied by a standalone application (Ethicalc) that presents all analytical layers, including qualitative interest statements, raw scores, and color-coded matrices, within a single interface.
In this interdisciplinary work bringing together ethologists, physiologists, linguists, and an animal studies scholar, we explored what the linguistic choices of biologists in their scientific writings reveal about their relationship with laboratory animals and their scientific discipline. We engaged in a reflexive conversation on the epistemology and ethics of experimental research conducted on and about animals. The writing style of this article is an experiment in applying the conclusions of our analysis to the way we write, by using the proposed agentive writing style as much as possible. Linguists: through qualitative and quantitative analyses of three peer-reviewed articles on pigs, ducks, and quails, we examined how word choices, nominalisation, gerunds, and passive constructions tend to erase both the agency of animals and the responsibility of experimenters. These linguistic mechanisms contribute to a representation of experimental actions as impersonal events detached from intentional human agency or animal subjectivity. Biologists: in the discussion, we highlight that academic writing norms—standardisation, objectivity, and the dominance of English—reinforce this erasure by discouraging emotional or ethical expression and by encouraging uniform linguistic mimicry. Animal studies scholar: it may also be a psychological strategy to reduce cognitive dissonance arising from your empathy for animals and the harm inherent to experimentation you inflict on them. Collectively: we argue that writing differently, in a way that recognises animals as sentient subjects and researchers as moral agents, could foster methodological and epistemological changes. This reflection echoes the animal turn in the humanities and social sciences.
Animal ethics is a big part of food ethics, as our diets on a global level consist increasingly of animals. Even though the increasing demand for animal food products is especially strong in developing countries, most of the ethical theorizing on animal ethics focuses on western practices. This paper examines moral theorizing on animal vs environmental ethics in the Chinese context. It pays special attention to the concept of “wildness” as a possible bridge between animal and environmental ethics and highlights how this notion becomes ambiguous in practice. We show that the ethical concepts and dilemmas of classical animal ethics are applicable to the novel case of China as well, but that is important to consider specific cultural and policy practices. Furthermore, we use the political context of Chinese wildlife regulation to show the difficulties of the application of the notion of wildness in practice.
This paper examines the ethics of wastewater governance in the Philippines through the lenses of epistemic justice and integral ecology. Urban wastewater management is linked to food production and environmental fairness, yet these links receive little attention in agricultural ethics research. Drawing on case studies from the Philippines and other countries, the paper explores how wastewater governance decisions affect farming communities, food availability, and human dignity. Three analytical contributions are developed. First, the paper argues that localized wastewater-to-agriculture systems can serve as ethical infrastructure for food justice, but only when they are governed to protect the communities they serve. Second, it shows that epistemic justice and shared knowledge-building between technical experts and farming communities are necessary conditions for ethical governance. Third, it establishes that food safety and food justice are inseparable. The paper also examines phosphorus recovery from wastewater as a matter of fairness to future generations, and closes with a research agenda grounded in the paper's normative framework.
According to the neo-Schumpeterian mission-oriented innovation policy framework, innovation efforts are to be aligned with public values. This implies that innovation policy should ensure that the direction of innovation is aligned with non-economic values and goals. Through conceptual analyses of value and sustainability theories and Schumpeterian conceptions of value that undergird the mission-oriented policy approach, this article uses the case of seaweed innovation in Norway to discuss the role of values and value change in public-private innovation efforts in a context of mission-oriented innovation. In this case, innovation involves giving determinate meaning to concepts such as “sustainability”. Acts of giving meaning to values reside neither fully in top-down direction setting nor bottom-up experimentation. The theory of mission-oriented innovation needs to take into account how innovation can be aligned with values that are subject to change.
Alternative protein (AP) has been heralded as a sustainable, healthy, and ethical food option. While the market expanded significantly across Euro-American countries from the 2010s, the dynamics of Asian markets—where meat alternatives have long been embedded in culinary traditions—remain underexplored. This article examines the AP sector in Japan, a market shaped by distinct socio-cultural and politico-economic conditions, and investigates the values surrounding AP products. We analysed companies with products available to general consumers and conducted discourse analysis of their publicly available materials to identify the values embodied in these products. The findings reveal that both established food companies and startups are active in Japan's AP market, with products tending toward prepared, deli-style foods. Notably, environmental and animal welfare values featured less prominently in Japanese AP discourse compared to Euro-American counterparts. The article also examines diverging aesthetic frameworks. In the US, alternative meat authenticity is constructed through sensory resemblance to "real meat"—aroma, texture, and colour. Japanese aesthetics, by contrast, draw on the traditional concept of "mitate"—a sensibility rooted not merely in imitation, but in finding value in the unexpected juxtaposition of the similar and the different. This is exemplified in traditional Buddhist cuisine, where plant-based proteins are crafted to evoke fish and meat through deliberate culinary technique rather than straightforward replication. The article explores how this distinct aesthetic tradition may influence—or holds potential to reshape—the contemporary alternative meat market in Japan.
Dominant development paradigms remain largely anthropocentric, positioning the natural environment as a passive resource rather than an active participant in development. This study analyses Indigenous environmental ethics as a decolonial framework for reconfiguring human-environment relations. Drawing on insights from Birchenough Bridge and Honde Valley in Zimbabwe, the study employs a collaborative Indigenous research methodology involving purposive and relational sampling, engaging 29 participants in Birchenough Bridge and nine in Honde Valley. Data were generated through walking discussions, storytelling, environmental observations, site visits, and co-analysis. The findings show that the environment functions as a moral agent shaping human behaviour through relational reciprocity, ecological restraint, and community governance practices. Environmental elements such as rivers, trees, soils, and seasons informed ethical conduct, risk awareness, and livelihood decisions. At the same time, the erosion of these ethics through commercialisation, religious shifts, and environmental exploitation reveals tensions between Indigenous moral systems and contemporary development pressures. The study further demonstrates how Indigenous environmental ethics contribute to advancing the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly those related to environmental justice and sustainability. It also highlights implications for eco-social policy, calling for frameworks that recognise the environment as a co-participant in development processes.
Animal ethicists disagree as to whether animals have an interest in liberty, or control over their own lives. In one perspective, most nonhuman animals have no such interest, as they are not autonomous persons who frame, revise, and pursue their own conception of the good. If true, there is nothing wrong with their confinement, ownership, or use so long as this does not result in suffering or death. After first explaining this view, I will show that it is unconvincing. Drawing on the ethological literature, I suggest instead that the free exercise of agency, or self-willed action, is important to animal well-being, thus grounding a strong interest in liberty—one that, whether instrumental or intrinsic, is fundamental and pervasive. Finally, I argue that respecting animal liberty requires more than releasing them from the most obvious forms of captivity, but requires significant social transformation on at least three levels: the interpersonal, the infrastructural, and the institutional.
The European Union’s energy transition, which targets climate neutrality by 2050, is reshaping landscapes through the rapid expansion of infrastructure for renewable energy. While this transformation’s ecological and technical aspects have been extensively studied, its aesthetic considerations remain undervalued, and are often dismissed as merely subjective. This article argues that aesthetic experiences constitute part of nature’s eudaimonic intrinsic value, and thus carry ethical weight. It examines three approaches to evaluating aesthetic impacts: (1) Landscape Character Assessment (LCA), (2) atmospheric aesthetics, and (3) landscapes as material horizons of meaning. The analysis highlights the limitations of methods that objectify aesthetic experiences, such as LCA, and shows that a synthesis of atmospheric and horizon-of-meaning approaches is especially promising, as it connects embodied, sensory perception with the cultural, historical, and collective dimensions of landscapes’ value. Aesthetic arguments, when properly theorized, can inform democratic deliberations on landscape change, counter accusations of subjectivity, and guide the design of renewable energy projects as integral elements of their surroundings rather than alien impositions. The study concludes that incorporating aesthetic reasoning into sustainable energy transitions strengthens their normative foundations by fostering emotional attachment, cultural integration, and environmentally virtuous dispositions.
Environmental management continues to be shaped by a longstanding epistemological divide between anthropocentric and ecocentric worldviews, a divide that manifests not only in human–nature relations but, more critically, in human–human ideological conflict. While existing theories in environmental ethics, political ecology, and social–ecological systems attempt to reconcile these perspectives, they largely foreground the human–environment binary and pay insufficient attention to conflicts arising from competing value systems among stakeholders themselves. This article introduces the Dialogical Environmental Worldview Integration Model (DEWIM), a conceptual framework designed to bridge these divergent logics by emphasising dialogical, relational, and ethical mediation between worldviews. DEWIM argues that sustainability challenges particularly in contexts involving Indigenous custodians and state or industry actors emerge not simply from differing ontological orientations toward nature but from unresolved ideological negotiations between groups who prioritise different moral, cultural, and utilitarian claims. Through its emphasis on dialogical ethics, epistemic reflexivity, and relational accountability, DEWIM offers a novel lens for rethinking governance, environmental education, and conservation practice. The framework is especially relevant for contexts such as peatland management in Pahang and community-based forest governance in Southeast Asia, where human–human ideological tensions shape ecological outcomes as significantly as biophysical factors. By repositioning ethical negotiation at the centre of environmental decision-making, DEWIM provides a transformative pathway for more just, inclusive, and culturally attuned sustainability practice.
Agricultural engineering occupies a distinctive position among engineering disciplines because it directly intervenes in living systems, ecological processes, and food production infrastructures. Such interventions generate ethical challenges that cannot be adequately addressed through models of engineering focused solely on technical efficiency, regulatory compliance, or economic optimization. This article develops a conceptual framework for understanding agricultural engineering as a responsibility-oriented professional practice structured by the interaction of three dimensions: work, measurement, and stewardship of living systems. Drawing on environmental ethics, philosophy of technology, and engineering ethics, the analysis argues that responsibility in agricultural engineering is enacted primarily through situated professional work requiring practical judgment under conditions of ecological variability and uncertainty. Measurement and metrology are interpreted not merely as technical instruments but as normative structures that establish operational limits and enable accountable intervention. Stewardship is proposed as the orienting ethical horizon linking technical practice to long-term ecological sustainability and social responsibility. By articulating these interrelated dimensions, the article contributes to current debates on responsible innovation, professional judgment, and the governance of socio-technical systems engaged with life processes. The proposed framework clarifies how responsibility can remain operational in contemporary agricultural engineering despite increasing automation, digitalization, and institutional complexity, and offers a basis for future work in engineering education, professional ethics, and sustainability-oriented technological development.
Ethics, derived from the Greek concept of ethos, provides a foundation for evaluating how human practices align with collective ideals. Agriculture, as one of humanity’s most fundamental endeavors, requires ethical scrutiny across dimensions of human welfare, animal rights, environmental protection, and social justice. Within this context, weed management represents a critical yet often overlooked domain where ecological pressures, technological innovation, and social inequities converge. This article offers a critical analysis of the ethical landscape of weed management, arguing for an integrated framework to navigate its complexities. To ensure a comprehensive evidence base, we conducted a systematic literature search in accordance with PRISMA 2020 guidelines, identifying 78 relevant studies from an initial pool of 434 records. Drawing on insights from environmental ethics, agroecology, and science-and-technology studies, we critically examine how herbicide dependence, digital agriculture, biological control, and herbicide-resistant technologies reshape relationships among farmers, communities, and ecosystems. Our analysis identifies deep-seated governance gaps and structural power imbalances that impede equitable sustainability transitions. We contend that prevailing efficiency-focused paradigms are ethically insufficient and must be replaced with approaches centered on justice and stewardship. The paper concludes by outlining a conceptual framework and policy pathways grounded in participatory governance, precautionary regulation, and ethical data governance, arguing that a reimagined, ethically informed approach to weed management is essential for the Anthropocene, defined here as a condition of human-driven ecological transformation that expands ethical responsibility.
This study explores animal research professionals’ attitudes toward the 3R principles (i.e., 3R: replacement, reduction, and refinement of the use of animals in research) using an experimental ethics approach. A thought experiment involving a superior extraterrestrial alien species conducting research on humans according to 3R was presented to 13 Swiss-based animal research professionals (i.e., researchers using animals, veterinarians, animal welfare officers, 3R coordinators, animal science trainers, and members of animal experimentation commissions) during qualitative semi-structured interviews. Participants were asked to reflect on whether the aliens’ research is justified, as well as on the extent to which 3R is the right framework for it. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. Participants revealed a spectrum of attitudes, ranging from ambivalent acceptance to outright rejection of “3R for humans”. Key themes included concerns about legitimacy, consent, and power asymmetry, as well as anthropocentric and speciesist attitudes. These findings support previously identified concerns about the limitations of 3R and show that professionals also recognize these challenges when reflecting on the issue using a role-reversal thought experiment. This underscores the ongoing need to advance ethical frameworks in animal research, expanding beyond 3R to incorporate broader moral considerations. Ultimately, our findings suggest that empirical animal ethics, and in particular thought experiments of this kind, offers a promising route to fostering ethical reflection and reform.
Black soldier fly larvae (BSFL) bioconversion has been commercially established for over a decade as an efficient method for transforming organic waste into protein and high-quality organic fertiliser. Despite widespread adoption, emerging ethical and ecological challenges remain largely overlooked in both research and policy frameworks. This review critically examines these challenges, focusing on insect welfare within intensive farming systems, societal acceptance of maggot-based products, and ecological impacts on soil health and biodiversity. The underlying hypothesis is that current commercial BSFL practices insufficiently integrate ethical and ecological considerations, creating urgent questions about responsible deployment. Previously underexplored ethical complexities include welfare thresholds, operational stressors, and trade-offs between productivity and humane rearing. Pressing areas for future research include longitudinal societal perception studies, integrative welfare metrics, and regulatory frameworks that reconcile economic realities with ethical and ecological standards. These findings provide actionable guidance for stakeholders, policymakers, and researchers to advance BSFL-based waste management systems that balance commercial efficiency with ethical stewardship and environmental sustainability.
The global food system is facing a profound ethical crisis characterized by the coexistence of hunger and waste, the depletion of resources, loss of biodiversity, and the systemic exploitation of animals. This study argues that the dominant anthropocentric and technocratic approaches in the field of food ethics are inadequate in resolving these structural problems and, in some cases, even reproduce them. The central thesis of the research is that an ecosocialist ethical framework, which fundamentally integrates ecological integrity, social justice, and democratic control, can offer a coherent, transformative, and long-term response to the current food crises. To this end, the article first presents a conceptual critique of human-centered food rights and food security paradigms, revealing how these approaches conceal the fundamental contradictions of the profit-driven industrial-capitalist food regime and legitimize market logic. It then develops a constructive ecosocialist food ethics model based on three fundamental normative criteria: ecological integrity, opposition to commodification, and the defense of the commons, alongside democratic control and food sovereignty. The applicability and analytical power of this theoretical framework are subjected to an in-depth critical analysis through the examples of the global peasant movement La Via Campesina and Güneşköy, a local ecovillage initiative from Turkey. The case studies meticulously examine how these movements implement eco-socialist ethical principles in concrete practices, as well as the internal contradictions, external challenges, and potential limitations (e.g., gender dynamics, risk of eco-elitism) they encounter. Ultimately, the study argues that true success in food ethics is only possible through structural transformation, i.e., the simultaneous and sustainable achievement of ecological integrity, social justice, animal welfare, and cultural appropriateness, rather than merely increasing production quantities or meeting minimum safety conditions. This article aims to make a unique and critical contribution to the field by bringing ecosocialist theory into contemporary food ethics debates.
The felling of the Sycamore Gap tree resulted in a passionate public response, which offers a window into public attitudes of care about the natural environment. The response, however, was inconsistent with other recent tree-loss events, in terms of both magnitude and strength of feeling. To better understand this inconsistency and its consequences, an analysis of public responses to the Sycamore Gap event, and other comparative tree-loss events, has been performed. This reveals that the expressions particularly convey moral sentiments concerning the instrumental and aesthetic value of the tree, with little recognition of intrinsic value. Following an environmental care ethics approach, I argue that these responses don’t reflect an authentic care about nature but instead a desire to care about nature. The absence of an appropriate appreciation of the non-anthropocentric identity of nature results in an epistemically-constrained ethical response, reduced individual agency, and thus limited environmental responsiveness.
Most ethicists defending cellular agriculture draw upon consequentialism or deontology. There has been no thoroughgoing virtue-ethical defence. In this paper, I explore three sets of reasons that the virtue ethicist could draw upon to suggest that virtuous individuals would support a cultivated meat industry. First, compassion and honesty might speak in favour of cultivated meat as well as (or even instead of) vegetarianism. Second, understandingness and hospitableness might speak in favour of supporting cultivated meat for others. Third, openness and grace might speak against being a picky eater, and consequently, on balance, in favour of a diet containing cultivated meat.
Internationally, there are inconsistencies between national, state and territory Codes, Acts and Regulations on the definition of animal and animal use for scientific purposes, particularly for non-invasive animal studies. Non-invasive animal studies of free-living animals use opportunistic methods such as observation of animals, their physical signs and/or collection of discarded tissues. This contrasts with invasive studies which typically involve some form of deliberate disturbance, capture, sampling and/or application of identification. Investigator expectations concerning animal use are influenced by perceptions about the level of impact on the welfare of any animals involved. Confusion and frustration can result when it is difficult to clearly differentiate between invasive and non-invasive methods, and which non-invasive methods can be denoted as scientific use of animals. Nevertheless, scientific uses are more strictly regulated than equally or more impactful activities such as hunting, fishing, wildlife management practices and citizen science. If the species and procedures included in an animal study meet the definition of animal use for scientific purposes, the study must be approved, monitored and reviewed by an ethics committee. This paper discusses definitions of animal and animal use, welfare impacts of non-invasive animal studies, ways to improve ethics processes and the benefits of obtaining animal ethics review.
