GenØk scientists Fern Wickson, Rosa Binimelis and Amaranta Herrero  have published a new policy brief in Food Ethics!

There is a growing demand to incorporate social, economic and ethical considerations into biotechnology governance. However, there is currently little guidance available for understanding what this means or how it should be done. A framework of care-based ethics and politics can capture many of the concerns maintaining a persistent sociopolitical conflict over biotechnologies and provide a novel way to incorporate such considerations into regulatory assessment and policy making.

This policy brief provides an overview of these defining features, illustrates how they can appear in a real world example and provides a list of guiding questions for assessing these features and advancing a politics of care in the governance of biotechnology. A care-based approach to ethics and politics has six key defining features.

These include:
…1) a relational worldview
…2) an emphasis on the importance of context
…3) a recognition of the significance of dependence
…4) an analysis of power, including a particular concern for those most vulnerable
…5) a granting of weight to the significance of affect
…6) an acknowledgment of an important role for narrative

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Use this link if you want to read the entire policy brief

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Wickson, F., Preston, C., Binimelis, R., Herrero, A. Hartley, S., Wynberg, R., and Wynne, B. (2017). “Addressing socio-economic and ethical considerations in biotechnology 

governance: The potential of a new politics of care” Food Ethics. DOI 10.1007/s41055-017-0014-4
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