A Science-Informed Ethics for Agricultural Biotechnology

This overview of ethical issues in plant breeding and agricultural biotechnology puts emphasis on the scientific consensus as the basis for ethical studies and discussions. An introduction is given to major ethical issues in plant breeding, including the selection of socially important breeding goals such as environmental and nutritional improvements, the measures needed to ensure that sufficient priority is given to such breeding goals, potential risks and how they should be weighed against benefits, the interpretation of the precautionary principle, intellectual property rights, and the construction of a labelling system for biotechnological products. Some of the common arguments against agricultural biotechnology are also discussed, among them arguments referring to negative effects of yield increases, the dominance of big companies, and the alleged unnaturalness of biotechnology.