TWN Info Service on Biosafety
23 May 2023
Third World Network
www.twn.my
Dear Friends and Colleagues
Genetically Modified Animals: Ethics, Welfare and Privatization
Currently, very few GM animals are marketed and sales remain very low. For production animals, the undesirable effects have accumulated. Indeed, sold as ethical improvements or to produce more meat with fewer resources, these changes are detrimental to animal welfare, the animals’ physical integrity, health and their ancestral relationships with humans.
The ethical question also arises in relation to the commodification of animals in the service of human health. Animals are genetically modified to test treatments while others serve as factories for drugs and organs.
Beyond ethics and animal welfare, genetic modifications accelerate the privatization of living organisms, the concentration of capital, and the loss of autonomy of breeders. These GMO animals are attempts to perpetuate an agro-industrial system and are part of the paradigmatic continuity of factory farming, and reductive medicine and ecology.
A collection of articles by Inf’OGM explores the above issues and is available here: https://www.infogm.org/vente-au-numero-le-journal-no170?lang=fr – individual articles (in French and English) can be accessed by clicking on the links therein.
With best wishes,
Third World Network