Use of competing conceptions of risk in animal agriculture.

This study considers a theory of risk as a means of coping with risk and uncertainty that have become a growing reality for animal agriculture. Microbial contaminations of food, waste management, animal products in the human diet, and transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSE) incorporate different conceptions of risk and require different approaches to handling the uncertainty involved. A dichotomous schema is suggested to assist understanding risk that may be adapted to recognizing and handling risk. The polar aspects of the proposal are the probabilistic approach at one end and the contextual understanding at the other. Probabilist conceptions of risk presume that risk is determined by probability and consequence. Contextual conceptions presume that management, law, regulation, media, and public perceptions, as well as the severity of the consequence, will figure prominently in decision making in the face of uncertainty. Relative emphasis on probabilistic characteristics shapes distinct understandings of risk that can be plotted between the poles. We are proposing that these conceptualizations need not be issues only for debate but also for recognition of the probabilistic or contextual nature of the risk. Specific actions and policy may be constructed on the basis of the conceptualization. The bovine spongiform encephalopathy/new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease complex is examined philosophically and methodologically as a contextual challenge to animal agriculture and associated industries. As such, the TSE serve as a case study of effective application of risk theory to risks in animal agriculture.

Interests and values in the Recommended Dietary Allowances and nutritional guidelines for Americans.

Evidence is provided showing that interests, values and belief systems have affected the development of Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDAs) and nutrition guidelines for Americans in the past and can be expected to do so in the future. The conflicts of the 1980s relative to the nutritional guidelines for Americans and the RDAs illustrate the tension among values that can parallel a conflict of interests. In the conflicts of the 1980s, we saw an apparent conflict between those policies that attempt to optimize outcomes for a large class of affected parties and those policies that attempt to establish constraints on actions which appear to threaten individual autonomy and freedom of choice. The former approach derives from utilitarian, consequential moral philosophy which evaluates policies by evaluating costs and harms, and weighing them against benefits to all parties. The latter has its strongest advocates in contemporary libertarianism which takes individual freedom to be the bottom line. Ethical vegetarianism, a belief system which would limit RDAs and guidelines to those that can be translated to vegan and other vegetarian diets, has been a more recent entry into the discussions. Such human value issues suggest that a set of RDAs or of nutrition guidelines is analogous to and may be considered to be an ethic. An ethic is a theory reached via the method of reflective equilibrium that is a coherent ordered triple set of beliefs: a set of considered moral judgments, a set of moral principles, and a set of relevant scientific background theories. The reasoning, however, can become circular and unsound when the considered moral judgments, moral principles and relevant background are not independent sources of information. If they are mixed or, for example, an intuition is mistaken for a scientific conclusion, the reasoning can be flawed.

Construction of science for animal agriculture.

Current animal science research is dominated by disciplinary studies that are experimentally controlled and statistically analyzed. Research in animal science is also placed predominantly within a hierarchy of biological sciences ranging through molecular mechanisms, cells, organ systems, organisms, life systems, ecosystems, and human systems. In the main, disciplinary and applied animal investigations differ from each other only in that they are conducted within different biological work boundaries. Both are largely reductionist and often fragmentary. Animal science, however, has two sets of constituents, the scientific community and external interests, and both are legitimate. External interests will judge the research according to how well it contributes to a hierarchy of functional and practical knowledge instead of the biological. The functional hierarchy of inquiry ranges through validation of ideas; actions; tactics of management; strategies and systems of production; agrospheres including land and water resources, landscapes, human capital, and community; and the anthrosphere including consumers, food product chains, and global markets. More interconnection of the biological and biophysical research with functional knowledge is needed but may be limited by insufficient theoretical development of the new contributing disciplines such as molecular biology, system science, and those represented by the functional hierarchy, and recruitment of specialized scientists who often lack practical experience in agriculture and the food system. Multiple opportunities for intervention of animal agriculture exist, and multiple disciplines including the new biological and functional disciplines will be needed to provide what will be perceived to be the full scope of animal science research.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)