Ethics in the Organic Movement - Re-Thinking Organic Food and Farming in a Changing World - page 14

discussions in this volume: (1) the principles provide an ethical orientation, to
follow them is a question of individual choice (e.g., Steiner 1892 ; Piaget 1965 );
(2) the principles are worthless since they are not a binding part of a regulation and
certification system.
With the continuing growth of the movement that leads to increasing anonymity
among the partners along the agrofood chain, and thus the potential for a loss of
mutual commitment, voluntary ethical acting might be one of the key challenges
of the contemporary organic movement. Thus, it becomes critical to bring to the
foreground a discussion of the ethics in the IFOAM Principles.

2.2 The Ethical Foundation of the IFOAM Principles

This section identifies and discusses the embodied worldviews and normative ethics
of the IFOAM Principles in order to help gain fresh insights into current challenges
confronting, and issues raised by organic worldwide.

2.2.1 Worldviews and IFOAM Principles

We believe that it is useful to identify and discuss five different worldviews
reflected by the Principles (Table 2.2 ). These worldviews are commonly not explicit
or acknowledged by most actors in their different modes of organic practice.
Nevertheless, we suggest that these worldviews, or elements of them, are embodied
in most of the issues and controversies surrounding organic. Most actors hold a
“core” worldview, but commonly draw upon elements of others to “round out” the
grounds upon which they see the world, and more specifically think about organic.
Making these worldviews explicit could help to: (1) improve the conversations and
debates about organic; and, (2) help bring an explicit articulation of values back into
the center of organic discourse.

2.2.1.1 The Anthropocentric View

It is no exaggeration to state that this worldview makes up the core of what we all
think and believe. It is, by definition, human-centered, but covers a wide range of
instrumentalist interpretations of the ways in which nature is subordinate to human
interests and needs (Kirchhoff 2011 ). In this worldview, humans are “above” nature
and are not accountable to “nature” or ecosystems for their actions. Here, nature
does not have intrinsic value, and humans hold a privileged position in comparison
to other species that have no more than instrumental importance (Daly et al. 1995 ).
Anthropocentrism underlies most utilitarian and instrumentalist perspectives on,
as well as mainstream economic approaches to, organic (Peet 1996 ). With this
view, being or practicing organic is a pragmatic matter of simply following sets