Moral status of the African catfish

B. Bovenkerk; F. Meijboom

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Moral status of the African catfish

In: Global food security: ethical and legal challenges

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B. Bovenkerk

B. Bovenkerk b.bovenkerk@uu.nl

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F. Meijboom

F. Meijboom
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 389–394

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.3920/9789086867103_063

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The demand for fish is increasing world-wide, partly due to government directives to increase the intake of fatty acids by consuming more fish. However, we are experiencing global declines of wild fish populations and increasingly rely on farmed fish. Sustainable aquaculture, to comply with growing needs and biodiversity conservation, requires in-depth knowledge of biology, profitability, environmental aspects, consumer awareness and product appreciation. In aquaculture, function-based views of welfare (can fish cope with farming conditions?) prevail, disregarding feelings- and nature-based (allowing of natural behaviour) views. Our interdisciplinary research shows that these views are not necessarily mutually exclusive. The group consists of physiologists and ethicists who focus particularly on the African catfish, which due to its formidable growth and sturdiness is a favourite species in aquaculture. While the physiologists examine ways of reducing aggression and stress, the ethicists address societal and ethical questions surrounding sustainable aquaculture. The societal focus on improving welfare suggests that fish are part of our moral community and should receive moral consideration for their own sake. However, from a moral point of view we can ask what properties confer moral consideration and what it means to speak of moral status of animals. In this presentation we focus both on the question of why fish would have moral status as on the meta-ethical questions surrounding the concept of moral status. Ethicists with different theoretical backgrounds justify moral considerability of animals on different grounds; however, their focus on specific morally relevant properties pre-empts the question of what it means to be morally considerable and how exactly moral duties relate to the properties that animal ethicists deem morally relevant. We aim to show the relevance of explicating the conceptual assumptions that underlie the discussions on moral status and address the question whether we can justify moral status from a theory-independent perspective.

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Global food security: ethical and legal challenges

E-Book ISBN:: 9789086867103

Publisher:: Wageningen Academic

Print Publication Date:: 30 Oct 2010

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- Life Sciences

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Moral status of the African catfish

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Global food security: ethical and legal challenges

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