Agrifood nanotechnology: is this anything?

Paul B. Thompson

Agrifood nanotechnology: is this anything?

In: Ethical futures: bioscience and food horizons

Author:

Paul B. Thompson

Paul B. Thompson W.K. Kellogg Professor of Agricultural, Food and Community Ethics, Department of Philosophy, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA; thomp649@msu.edu

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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 34–37

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.3920/9789086866731_005

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When does a new technology pose novel philosophical questions? The social and ethical implications of technology that exploit nanoscale properties of materials have been the focus of extraordinary attention. In both Europe and the United States, large commitments of public funds for the development of basic scientific capabilities have been accompanied by unprecedented levels of funding for research on the social and ethical questions that might arise in connection with nanotechnology. Two reasons for this commitment to social and ethical research were cited in debates before the U.S. Congress prior to creation of the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI). First, the Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues initiative of the Human Genome Project was cited as a success for having identified and provided a forum for debate over key issues that might have otherwise gone unrecognized. Second, agricultural biotechnology was described as a failure for having omitted attention to these issues. Congress was sufficiently persuaded by these arguments to direct U.S. agencies supporting nanotechnology work to have a social and ethical component. At the same time, some have questioned whether this attention to social and ethical issues is warranted by truly new aspects of nanotechnology, and have suggested that the elevated level of research on social and ethical issues is itself a function of ‘hype’ and the unprecedented amounts of research funding that have become available. This paper focuses on one sector in which nanotechnology is being applied: agricultural and food technology (henceforth ‘agrifood’). The agrifood sector is not the ‘hot’ area for nanotechnology. Exciting and philosophically controversial examples exist in medical diagnostics and in the potential for human enhancement. However, there are applications of nanotechnology in the agrifood sector, and these examples provide an interesting case study because there have already been several reports by civil society organizations that highlight agrifood applications in calling for regulation, moratoria and public opposition to nanotechnology.

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Ethical futures: bioscience and food horizons

E-Book ISBN:: 9789086866731

Publisher:: Wageningen Academic

Print Publication Date:: 30 Oct 2009

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- Life Sciences

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Agrifood nanotechnology: is this anything?

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Ethical futures: bioscience and food horizons

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