Precision livestock farming (PLF) is the management of livestock using the principles and technology of process engineering. Key to PLF is the dense monitoring of variegated parameters, including animal growth, output of produce (e.g. milk, eggs), diseases, animal behaviour, and the physical environment (e.g. thermal micro-environment, ammonia emissions). While its proponents consider PLF a win-win strategy that combines production efficiency with sustainability goals and animal welfare, critics emphasise, inter alia, the potential interruption of human-animal relationships. This paper discusses the notion that the objectification of animals by PLF influences the developmental pathways of conventional industrial farming. We conduct a conceptual analysis of objectification by comparing discussions in feminist ethics and animal ethics. We find that in animal ethics, objectification includes deontological arguments regarding instrumentalisation, de-animalisation, alienation, commodification and quantification of animals. The focus on socio-political context and relationality connects these debates to central ideas in care ethics. We adopt a care ethics perspective to assess the implications of the objectification of animals in livestock farming. The basic claim is that sensory knowledge symbolised by the farmers' unity of hand, head and heart would make it harder to objectify animals than abstract and instrumental reasoning where the pursuit of knowledge is intertwined with the pursuit of control, as in mainstream PLF. Despite of what can be considered as a good caring relationship between farmers and animals that is mediated by PLF, people involved in conventional industrial farming still seem to become further detached from farmers and animals, because the PLF system itself is objectifying. PLF redefines the notion of care, in terms of data transparency, standardisation of methods for analysis, real-time collection and processing of data, remote control, and the use of digital platforms. This creates new expectations and requires a redistribution of responsibilities within a wider scope of relations in the value chain.

Pedigree dog breeding has been the subject of public debate due to health problems caused by breeding for extreme looks and the narrow genepool of many breeds. Our research aims to provide insights in order to further the animal-ethical, political and society-wide discussion regarding the future of pedigree dog breeding in the Netherlands. Guided by the question 'How far are we allowed to interfere in the genetic make-up of dogs, through breeding and genetic modification?', we carried out a multi-method case-driven research, reviewing literature as well as identifying the perceptions of pedigree dog breeding of a variety of parties in the Netherlands. We examined what moral arguments and concepts different stakeholders, including breeders, veterinarians and animal protection societies, put forward when considering this question. While welfare arguments were often used as a final justification, we also frequently encountered arguments beyond welfare in practice, in particular the arguments that certain adaptations were unnatural, that they instrumentalised animals, or that they amounted to playing God. We argue that the way these arguments are employed points to a virtue ethical approach, foregrounding the virtue of temperance, as a balance between extreme positions was sought by our respondents in a variety of ways. Moreover, we argue against a rejection of unnaturalness arguments based on the naturalistic fallacy, as philosophers tend to do. We point out that unnaturalness arguments are related to people's worldviews, including views on the proper human-animal relationship. We argue that such arguments, which we label 'life-ethical', should be the subject of more public discussion and should not be relegated to the private sphere.

Suppose "chicken" eggs could be produced by quasi-chickens--genetically engineered humps of living chicken-flesh that do nothing but lay eggs. Would there be anything amiss with that? Animal ethicists invoke the notion of animal integrity in order to give intellectual content to the intuition that there would be. On inspection, 'integrity' isn't everything its proponents want it to be. Yet there's enough in it to make reasoned argument possible.

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During the last decade, the concept of One Health has become the international standard for zoonotic disease control. This call for transdisciplinary collaboration between professionals in human, animal and environmental health has produced several successes in zoonotic disease control, surveillance and research. Despite the lack of a clear definition, a shared agenda or institutional governance, One Health has proven to be a fruitful idea. Due to its ambiguity, the One Health concept functions as a boundary object: by leaving room for interpretation to fit different purposes, it facilitates cooperation. In many cases, this results in the promotion of health of humans, animals and the environment. However, there are also situations in which this mutual benefit of a One Health approach is not that evident, for instance, when healthy animals are culled to protect public health. Although such a strategy could well be part of a One Health approach, it is hard to understand how this contributes to the health of concerning animals. Consequently, these practices often lead to public debate. This raises questions on how we should understand the One Health concept in zoonotic disease control. Is it really about equally improving the health of humans, animals and the environment and is this even possible? Or is it ultimately just public health that counts? In cases of conflict between different values, the lack of a universal definition of the One Health concept contributes to this complexity. Although boundary objects have many positive aspects, in the context of One Health and zoonotic disease control, this conception seems to conceal underlying normative differences. To address moral dilemmas related to a One Health approach in zoonotic disease control, it is important to reflect on moral status and the meaning of health for humans, animals and the environment.