農業倫理・環境倫理・生命倫理 : 農業倫理学の論点は何か

It is the aim of the paper is to make the major issues of agricultural ethics clear by comparing them with the ones of environmental ethics and bioethics. The main topics in this paper are following. 1. The major issues of the debate over agricultural ethics are (1) agricultural threats to public health and safety; (2) government responsibility for controlling agricultural resource depletion; (3) agricultural contributions to ecological disturbance; (4) government responsibility for preserving the family farm; (5) problems with factory farming and animal husbandry; and (6) monopolistic control of food production by agribusiness industries (Schrader=Frechette [1992] : pp.30-31). 2. The most important thoughts in environmental ethics are "the rights of nature", "intergenerational ethics" and "environmental justice". When we make an issue of agricultural ethics, we need to consider these thoughts. 3. Agriculture is fundamental to bioethics if bioethics is the ethics of "biosciences". The problems of "agricultural bioethics" arise from the (prospective) application of modern biotechnologies. So we also need to discuss about the issues of agricultural ethics from bioethical point of view