Descripción y flujograma de procesos operativos

Franz-Theo Gottwald

In 1985 Karl Ludwig Schweisfurth, a business man who had spent years actively working in the food sector, established the Schweisfurth Foundation. He had played an essential part in industrializing and globalizing the meat production sector in Europe. For decades he had been instrumental in turning the fulfillment of basic con-sumer needs into a way of maximizing profits through automation, specialization, and concentration.

Beginning in the 1980s, he became ever more aware of the fact that although meeting food requirements through industrial solutions – like those that meet other basic needs like clothing, secure housing, or a promising future for generations to come – function on a highly technological level, they do so in a rather uncivilized fashion. Two observations in particular strengthened his notion that the conven-tional, industrial manufacturing processes for goods and commodities meant to satisfy basic needs, had reached their apex worldwide. On the one hand, it appeared that in his field of work, technical and economic frameworks for animal husbandry had been optimized in such a way that no additional cost reduction was possible.

Examination and analysis of industrial food production proved that depleted soils, polluted rivers and streams, and insufficient feed supplies for animals went hand in hand with immeasurable pain inflicted on the animals during transport and slaugh-ter. On the other hand, it had become obvious as early as the middle of the 1980s that working conditions in all branches of conventional industry had become ever more devoid of meaning, which led to feelings of alienation, and workers calling in sick in ever increasing numbers.

These insights into the final stages of large-scale industrialization led to the establishment of the Schweisfurth Foundation as a Think-and-Do-Tank for a new ecological culture of agriculture.

F.-T. Gottwald (B⁾

CEO Schweisfurth Foundation, Munich, Germany e-mail: [email protected]

205 F.-T. Gottwald et al. (eds.), Food Ethics, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-5765-8_13,

CSpringer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010

Since its inception, the Schweisfurth Foundation has organized and funded more than 1,300 projects in the fields of science as well as research and development of:

• Wholesome and natural foods;

• Organic and environmentally friendly methods of agriculture and natural and species-proper animal husbandry;

• Environmentally friendly energy supply;

• Environmentally friendly refuse disposal;

• Environmentally friendly building practices which produce livable housing;

• Working conditions tailored to humane standards.

The Foundation has continually supported continuing and adult education and training. Another aim has always been support of cultural endeavors, expressed in creative and gentle stewardship of present-day conditions and an awareness of future needs. The Schweisfurth Foundation has also regarded art as a way of raising consciousness for a creative and gentle way of dealing with the world at large.

Starting at the beginning of the twenty-first century, it became obvious that ques-tions of agriculture and food ethics have taken on an ever-increasing urgency. The problems of worldwide hunger and scarcity of water are becoming more and more pressing issues, while dependency on oil in food production has been driving up production prices to dizzying heights.

Internationally and parallel to these economically and ecologically disastrous developments, the young discipline of Food Ethics has grown in an impressive way, which is best illustrated by the number of discussions about concepts and actual problems. Nevertheless, the Foundation is convinced that discussions will have to be fostered along the whole food chain: Obesity, traceability, agro-food biotechnology, dairy industry, transgenic plants, novel food, biofuels, world trade system, etc. For years NGOs have been lamenting politicians’ lack of interest in the establishment of ethical tools that would alter these factors. There are reasons enough to make Food Ethics an important issue at universities and in schools in ethics, political science, economics and other faculties and departments.

This is the reason why the Schweisfurth Foundation decided to invest in orga-nizing a Food Ethics Platform in Germany to bring together brilliant minds from the international food ethics discourse community with German scholars. Besides annual meetings, a series of publications is planned. The first one will be the book at hand, presenting international discussions and current information about general and concrete questions concerning food ethics. This book can be used as an inter-disciplinary textbook for students and teachers and all those interested in raising consciousness for international and global perspectives of topics concerning food ethics.

In the coming years, the Schweisfurth Foundation will deal with the ethical dimension of technology applications in agriculture and food processing. In addi-tion to biotechnology and nanotechnology, satellite-based precision agriculture will be one of its future topics.

Further, the food ethics platform will include the following:

• Contributions to the development and implementation of ethics management systems in food retailing.

• Setting standards for employee assessment of in-house company policies con-cerning ethics; these will primarily focus on large retail businesses.

• Development of communications rationales and future-oriented standards for customer assessment of external company policies in food retail businesses.

Additional plans include the following topics or tasks:

• Competitiveness and ethics in food retailing;

• Sustainable business practices;

• Business social compliance in food retailing;

• Ethics issues arising between international trade and public policies;

• Ethics issues of national and regional policies;

• Plant and animal ethics;

• Fair trade;

• Corporate social responsibility in food retailing;

• Ethical assessment of new technologies in agriculture and food processing;

• Stakeholder management in food retailing.

The platform serves as a basis for academic activities in these fields and areas of research, while also building bridges to activists in society and the economy who work toward the maintenance of corporate activities without endangering economic and social systems. It helps in the deliberation of values relevant to polit-ical and entrepreneurial responsibility with regard to food safety, the environment, and the rights of future generations. It investigates the requirements for societal responsibility as practiced by those food retail operations, which exceed standards set by law. Corporate Citizenship, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Corporate Sustainability as well as corporate contributions toward sustainable development in agriculture and food production are viewed from the paradigm of sustainable development ethics and transmitted to the appropriate panels made up of society stakeholders.

The Food Ethics platform collaborates with EurSafe (www.eursafe.org), the Center for Gastrosophy of the University of Paris-Lodron at Salzburg, Austria (www.uni-salzburg.at), and the Rhein-Neckar Forum of the Culinary Arts (www.kulinaristik.net) in Germany. It also works with the World Future Council (www.worldfuturecouncil.org) and the Global Marshall Plan Initiative (www.globalmarshallplan.org) to enhance the momentum of public attention con-cerning the urgency of food sovereignty and food justice.

In conclusion I would like to thank my co-editors Hans Werner Ingensiep and Marc Meinhardt for their longstanding and fruitful cooperation and Ms. Susan Safren, Senior Editor at Springer Publisher. I would also like to extend my grati-tude to the Board-of-Trustees of the Schweisfurth Foundation for their unwavering support.

A

Note: the letters ‘f’ and ‘t’ following locators refer to figures and tables respectively.

“Adequate food,” 4, 119–120, 124, 128, 130–132, 135

Agrarian romanticism, 11

Agreement on Agriculture (AoA), 121,129, 132, 134, 187

Agricultural biotechnology, 52–53, 65–66 Agricultural trade and human right to food,

119–134

adequate food access, CESCR view, 119–120

case study

case study in Ghana, see Ghana, rice trading/right to food

case study in Honduras, natural/

manmade disasters, see Honduras, rice trading/right to food

case study in Indonesia, see Indonesia, rice trading/right to food

food crisis

reaction of the World Bank to, 133 WTO Agreement on Agriculture, role,

134

General Declaration of Human Rights/ICESCR, 119 rice trade liberalization, a threat to

producers

biggest exporting countries, 120–121

increased rice imports, impact/challenges, 121

policy reasons to boost import surges, 121

rice, main source of calories/income for peasants, 120

right to food in times of globalization, 119–120

States’ obligations CESCR’s statement, 120

ETO, proposed by EED/FIAN, 120 extraterritorial violations, 120 strategies to realize right to food, 120 Agricultural trade in the world market,

185–202

F.-T. Gottwald et al. (eds.), Food Ethics, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-5765-8,

C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010

209

Agro-food biotechnology (cont.)

AMPU, see Anand Milk Producers Union (AMPU)

Anand Milk Producers Union (AMPU), 192 Animal biotechnology, 105 AoA, see Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) Applied ethics, 49 Autonomy, 12–13, 18, 22–24, 69, 102

B prevention of misuse of standards, 141 Biodiversity-based agriculture, 188

dignit´e de la creature, Richter’s view, 103

‘dignity’ used by Declaration of Animal Rights (UNESCO), controversy, 101–102

human dignity, debate on, 102

“IgNobel Peace Prize 2008,” citizens of Switzerland, 101