CFP: Professionals in Food Chains: Ethics, Roles and Responsibilities

EurSAFE 2018 is a forum for discussion of ethical issues around food, including production, consumption, marketing, policy and health. The future perspective and the utopian tradition as a driving force and inspiration for changes in society are central to the congress. However, general contributions to agricultural, animal and food ethics are also welcome.

The EurSafe 2018 Congress in Vienna will focus on the role of professionals and professions in the food chain. Within the public debate surrounding food it is often argued that the key to meeting current challenges is changing consumer behaviour. Professionals and practitioners like farmers, retailers, veterinarians, or researchers are only in the limelight when the media report on so called “food scandals”. To better understand and get to grips with current and future problems in the food chain, it is essential that we pay greater attention to the role and position of professionals. Different expectations and interests lead to challenging and complex situations for all parties trying to understand the nature of the problems. Additionally, participating players act in different areas of responsibility and are subject to professional values and constructions of virtues, as well as expectations about their expertise. Therefore, the prominent questions are: What are the main ethical challenges for the professionals in the food chain? Who within this complex field holds responsibility for emerging issues? What does it mean for the food-related professions to work in a field of immense social tension? Which virtues are necessary to do a proper job? 

The EurSafe Congress 2018 welcomes submissions from a broad range of disciplines, including philosophy, agricultural science, law, economics, and sociology. The topics of the Congress will range from fundamental issues in ethics to veterinary medicine, from transparency in the food chain to animal welfare.  We welcome papers that use case studies to expose problem areas and suggest guidelines on how to deal with them.

Congress topics include:

•Professional Roles and Responsibility: General Issues 

•Sustainable Food Chains

•Novel Approaches in Food Production Systems

•Food Politics: Policy and Legislation

•Media, Transparency, and Trust

•Ethics of Consumption

•Veterinary Ethics

•Teaching and Research Ethics

•Aquaculture and agriculture ethics 

•Food, plant and animal ethics

You are welcome to submit abstracts for oral or poster presentations via the conference web-site until 11th September 2017: http://www.vetmeduni.ac.at/eursafe2018/. 

Contributions on the topics above as well as general topics on food ethics, aquaculture ethics, agriculture ethics and animal ethics are welcome. All accepted contributions will be published as a short academic paper in a peer reviewed book published by Wageningen Academic Publishers.

Important dates

May 2017Call for abstracts

11 Sept 2017Deadline for submission of abstracts

11 Oct 2017Notification of decision on abstracts to authors

8 Jan 2018Deadline for submissions of full papers

8 Feb 2018Notification of acceptance of full papers to authors

1 March 2018Final submission of full papers

15 March 2018Deadline for early bird registration

Please refer to the congress website for updated information and further details.

http://www.vetmeduni.ac.at/eursafe2018/