Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

Teaching animal bioethics. The first item of discussion led by Gary Varner centered on teaching ethical issues. Varner noted that his website was available for use to those teaching ethics courses. He added that the point of ethics exercises: to tease out what people arent always able to articulate, to recognize differences among rights-based views, utilitarian views and decision-making and to sensitize students to systematic reasoning in ethics. The group also discussed what individuals are doing in their ethics classes and commonly faced problems and challenges. Common challenges included defensiveness of production-oriented students when challenged (Males), mixed response of students using Rollins Animal Welfare text (Pajor) and low ratings of many ethics courses (Stricklin). Other concerns included problems with evaluation forms that may contribute to low ratings, questions about whether restructuring of animal sciences curricula is needed to better support ethical thinking and concerns about potentially radicalizing some students. The group agreed that having more animal production-based case studies would be very useful for facilitating teaching ethics in the animal sciences. Thompson suggested Animals & the Agrarian Ideal as well as Pigs, Profits and Rural Communities, and The Udder-All Dairy case as references.

Writing a case. Varner discussed the basics of writing a case. Major considerations are length, whether the case is hypothetical or real, and the goal of the case (is it for students to learn facts, to learn about moral values, their own values, evaluate arguments?). The procedure should be painfully clear. Varner suggested that his ethics-engineering procedure might be made available to the group. Varner then reviewed a few case studies with the group, including Emily the student taken from the New Life Science Ethics text and the Case of the Blind Hens. Cherney questioned whether students should be required to take ethics courses. Varner suggested that ethics across the curriculum would be ideal.

Society/Meeting Organization/Participation by Members Last Year.

 Mary Beck and Chris Cuomo participating in last years ASAS symposium. This meeting, organized by Keith Schillo and Janice Swanson, was very well attended.

 The Animal Ethics session at The Pacific Coast Sociology Meeting in April 2003 organized by Gary Tiedeman (OSU), with presentations given by Thompson, Swanson and Croney.

 AFHVS/ASFS symposium in Austin, TX on Agricultural ethics and the future of food, organized by Harry Kunkel with Pajor and Stricklin as speakers. Though not as well attended as hoped, we did develop a short list of possible collaborators in the social sciences

 Symposium on bio-ethical considerations in animal production at the annual Poultry Science Association meeting in July 2003 coordinated by Rich Reynnells, with speakers including Reynnells, Davis, and Cherney.

WCC-204 Web Page Posted. The Web page for WCC 204 is posted. There was some discussion about what possible uses the web could be used for, in addition to a resource for those interested in animal bioethics.

Advanced Bioethics Course. The group discussed the need for an advanced bioethics course, a followup to the institute run by Gary Comstock. A proposal may be submitted to FLAD, NSF and/or USDA.

Proposal to Turn WCC-204 into a Regional Project. The committee discussed whether or not WCC 204 should evolve into a regional project. After deciding in the affirmative, Paul Thompson was charged with leadership on writing the proposal to turn WCC 204 into a regional project. Other contributors are Reynnells and Cherney. The timeline for writing the proposal is January-February for the Western section.

Challenge Grant. Thompson suggested writing a challenge grant to get support for a regional project. Challenge grant ideas include modules (on-line) for teaching animal ethics. This would include templates for an ethical approach to situations. It was suggested that 3 to 10 collaborators might put together a module-based book or course that would help instructors teach courses in animal bioethics. Stage 1 of this project would begin with developing modules and having each instructor use them as he/she sees fit. Volunteers to work on developing modules included Pajor, Stricklin, Thompson, Cherney and Croney. Others will be solicited via e-mail. Cherney will take leadership on coordinating the challenge grant. The time frame for this activity is prior to Christmas break.

This project was formed in October 200 with the objectives of creating a forum in which animal scientists and non-animal scientists (philosophers, social scientists, etc.) may work together to examine and discuss contentious social issues, provide a means of encouraging the development of and coordinating the activities of research projects dealing with bioethics of the animal sciences, develop mechanisms of outreach that would allow animal scientists to interact with consumers and our critics who may question our science and / or production methods, and provide the means for ongoing critical analysis of the animal science profession in the context of its ability to address moral and socio-political issues with the hoped for outcome to be increased credible dialog between science and non-scientist community about contentious social issues, increased cooperative research between Animal Scientists, social scientists and philosophers, and development of new methods of publishing Animal Science information in forms that are both easily accessible by society and easily understandable to the greater public.

Outputs:

1. Organized symposium for 2002 American Society of Animal Science Annual Meetings- Contemporary and Emerging Issues: Critical Perspective of Animal Agriculture, July 20-25, 2002.
2. Organized session at the 2003 Pacific Sociological Meeting -Animal Ethics: Issues and Applications, Pasadena, California, April 3-6, 2003.
The following papers were at this session:
Swanson, Janice C. Fast Food, Freedom, and Animal Welfare: A Scientists Perspective.
Croney, Candace, Open Minds? Obstacles to Teaching and Applying Ethics in Animal Agriculture.
Thompson, Paul B., Getting Pragmatic about Farm Animal Welfare: Philosophical Pragmatism and the Problematization of Livestock Production.
3. Organized session at the Joint Meeting of the Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society and the Association for the Study of Food and Society., Austin, TX, June 12-15, 2003.
The following papers were presented at this meeting:
Pajor, Ed, Historical Perspectives of Animal Welfare Research
Lay, Don, Animal Welfare Research Currently Being Done
Stricklin, Ray, What Animal Scientists Need Most from AFHVS Researchers
4. Organized symposium for Annual Poultry Science Association Meeting -Bio-Ethical Considerations in Animal Production, Madison, WI, July 6-9, 2003.
5. A web site designed to assist those interested in learning more about animal bioethics was put on the web. The address is http/www.ansci.cornell.edu/wcc204/.
6. A half-day workshop was held to advance the committees understanding of the issues involved in the teaching of animal bioethics.

Project Impacts:

This committee has helped to focus discussions of animal bioethics at national meetings including the American Dairy Science Association/American Society of Animal Sciences Joint Meeting, the Poultry Science Association meeting, the Pacific Sociological Meeting, and the Joint Meeting of the Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society and the Association for the Study of Food and Society. This results in a broader audience understanding the issue of animal bioethics.

Beck, M.M. and J.C. Swanson. 2002. Value-added Agriculture: Inclusion of race and gender in the professional formula. J. Anim. Sci. 80(Suppl. 1):144. (Abstr.)

Reynells, R.D. 2003. Introduction. Poultry Science Association 92nd Annual Meeting Abstracts, Poscal 82 (Suppl. 1):56.