Cellular agriculture, a novel food technology for growing meat in bioreactors from a cell sample without the need to slaughter farmed animals, has generated a range of ethical puzzles and debates which often proceed by comparing the present state of the meat industry with the potential futures brought about by this technology. This paper starts from the assumption that ethical deliberation around meat cannot avoid taking into account the spatial dimensions of its production: being attentive to this dimension can cast new light on ethical issues (§ 1). On this basis, it approaches cultivated meat (CM) debates from the vantage point of how spaces are discussed and imagined. Such a perspective reveals that a particular site has been overlooked: the slaughterhouse (§ 2). Far from being incidental, the absence of slaughterhouses is the result of a historical process of concealment (§ 3.1), a process that runs so deep that, even when evaluating a technology that promises precisely to deliver meat without slaughter, the spaces of slaughter are rarely addressed. As a result of this absence, ethical debates over CM futures proceed through an incomplete map of future scenarios (§ 3.2). The paper concludes by highlighting how bringing slaughterhouses back in as fundamental objects of inquiry reorients the ethical evaluation of CM, thereby opening up future avenues for research (§ 4).
Advances in plant biology have fueled claims that plants engage in communication via chemical and electrical signaling, prompting calls to reconsider their moral status (Baluška Mancuso, 2007; Trewavas, 2005). This paper tests whether such non-discursive communication can function as a gradual criterion of moral inclusion within discourse ethics, where communication plays a foundational justificatory role. Using plants as a methodologically ideal limiting case—isolating signaling from confounding factors like sentience—the analysis reconstructs Habermas’ framework and critically examines proposals to extend it via communicative gradients (Ott, 2015). While rudimentary plant signaling initially appears prima facie relevant for weak moral patienthood, systematic testing reveals three key limitations: it converges with biocentrism’s weak interests without independent discriminatory power; discourse ethics’ anthropocentric core (reciprocity, reflexivity) renders level-1 information transfer normatively inert; and this challenges the continuity between communication levels and moral standing. These findings refine discourse ethics’ boundary conditions, validate plants as a sharp test for inclusion criteria, and caution against overinterpreting plant “social networks” in conservation policy. Contrary to intuitive plausibility, non-discursive communication reproduces environmental ethics’ ambiguities rather than resolving them. The paper advances biocentric debates by clarifying communicative criteria’s scope and implications.
The present study examines the Mulai Forest (Mulai Habi) in Assam, India, as an example of a transition from indigenous environmental ethics to community-based, transformative grassroots activism. While much of the environmentalism we see today comes from an academic tradition—Leopold’s land ethic, Naess’ deep ecology, etc.—this paper highlights a parallel movement grounded in “lived experiences.” In particular, this study highlights Jadav Payeng, the “Forest Man of India,” who felt an “internal urge” to pursue his cause through hands-on involvement, creating a long-term sustainable environment and using indigenous farming methods to rehabilitate approximately 550 hectares of barren Brahmaputra sandbanks. Using the indigenous worldview of the Mising tribe as a framework, founded on a deep-seated spiritual reverence for nature and a holistically integrated consciousness of the world, this paper demonstrates that Payeng’s dedication can be understood as “ethics in action” or “environmentalism in practice". By bridging “armchair environmentalism” and “bio-cultural restoration,” he has established an outstanding model for global conservation over the past three decades, showing that building sustainable futures comes from merging cultural wisdom with committed individual action. This paper tells the story of a man-made forest, showing how individuals can drive positive environmental change through cultural knowledge and personal commitment.
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.
