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How was that chicken raised? Ethics and deliberating conscientiously about animal welfare standards
How was that chicken raised? Ethics and deliberating conscientiously about animal welfare standards
Whose or which animal welfare standards should be framing and guiding deliberations and practices so that they actually contribute to higher level of animal welfare? Animal welfare standards should first and foremost produce positive outcomes for the health and welfare of farm animals. However, the development and implementation of these standards do not always meet this mark. Global trade and commercial factors and the lack of governance structures and local science can result in less than desirable outcomes for animals. Farmers must contend with governmental regulations that are legally binding and a variety of private standards ranging from assurance and certification schemes and programs, voluntary codes of practice and standards of excellence from advocacy organizations. The plethora of standards can lead to ‘psychic numbing’ and the moral psychology of denial among both farmers and consumers and can impede the discharge of good animal husbandry practices. Here, I explore the promise and shortcomings of employing wide reflective equilibrium (WRE, Daniels, 1996)) to address these conditions. WRE can help to produce coherence among conflicting sets of beliefs and values held by a moral agent or groups of moral agents, such as farmers and consumers who must consider “wicked problems,” i.e., problems what are seemingly intractable in nature and which breed error, ignorance, confusion, transference of responsibility and learned helplessness. The development and implementation of animal welfare standards produce “wicked problems” that are complicated by social, economic and environmental constraints, empirical deficits and political struggle among different stakeholders in the food system. Implications of WRE for personal morality and public policy will be discussed.
Keywords: animal welfare, bioethics, ethics and deliberation