Ethics of Controlling Environmental Innovation

Increasing food supplies are necessary to sustain growing populations around the world and their appetites for great food, quality products, and continuous availability.

A great deal of expensive research is invested in developing technologies to deliver productive agriculture. Horticultural efforts to breed hybrid crops are seen as far back as history can observe, and there have been efforts to domesticate improved animals, as well. Gene splitting was a 1990s technology to improve the health and productivity of farm crops. With the 21st century have come genetically modified foods (GMF) through the use of nanotechnology to cause changes at the genetic and even molecular levels. These are very expensive technologies, and many new products have been patented and otherwise protected as proprietary products of intellectual property.

Drive out to the country during growing season, and you will see signs identifying that the crop has been grown with a protected seed that cannot be used to produce retained seed for planting in the next growing season.

In terms of this week’s TCOs, what ethical issues are raised by this legal process of patent protection, and how do we see the primary schools of ethics used in these proprietary measures? What, in this deontological week and in our learning to date, informs our understanding of this situation, and what should be done about it?

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