BIOETHICS IN ANIMAL BIOTECHNOLOGY Biotechnology isn’t something new – selective breeding to create more useful varieties of animals and plants is a form of biotechnology that human beings have used for thousands of years

BIOETHICS IN ANIMAL BIOTECHNOLOGY
Biotechnology isn’t something new – selective breeding to create more useful varieties of animals and plants is a form of biotechnology that human beings have used for thousands of years.
Biotechnology includes any use of science or technology to alter the characteristics of a particular breed or animal.
Biotechnology can be good or bad for animals – and it may also produce an answer to the ethical problems of experimenting on animals.
Biotechnology can be good for animals. Selective breeding and genetic engineering can benefit animals in many ways:
• Improving resistance to disease
• Breeding to remove characteristics that cause injury
• eg selecting cattle without horns
But biotechnology can also be bad for animals – the good effects for the breeder can offset by painful side-effects for the animals:
• Modern pigs have been bred to grow extra fast – some breeds now grow too fast for their hearts, causing discomfort when animals are too active
• Broiler chickens are bred to grow fast – some now grow too fast for their legs
It’s been suggested that genetic engineering may solve all the ethical problems of laboratory experiments on animals. The goal is to create a genetically engineered mammal that lacks sentience, but is otherwise identical to normal experimental animals.
Such an animal could not suffer whatever was done to it, so there should be no ethical difficulty in performing experiments on it.
Ethical problems:
• This argument seems convincing, but do you feel comfortable about it?
• Is there any ethical objection to creating genetically engineered human beings without sentience, and experimenting on them?
• Profitability is one of the major drivers of both selective breeding and genetic engineering.
• If animal welfare is not to be compromised, research must be restricted by a counter-balancing ethical principle that prevents altering animals in a way that was bad for the animal.