Attitudes towards Genome Editing in Farmed Animals – a Cross-Cultural Study

Abstract

Animal agriculture faces increasing moral and societal scrutiny. The GEroNIMO project aims to address challenges such as sustainability, welfare, and genetic diversity through genomic innovations. The ongoing debate about genome editing is mostly driven by experts from few disciplines with an emphasis on technical and science-based arguments resembling consequentialist reasoning without making systematic comparisons. To increase the range of arguments and stakeholders, we conducted eight focus groups (n = 70) in Germany, the Netherlands, France, and Slovenia, representing rural and urban groups. Furthermore, we discussed alternative or complementary technologies to genome editing such as cultivated meat to both allow for systematic comparisons and to scrutinise the extent to which attitudes towards specific food technologies rely on general attitudes towards food technology. Guided by Critical Applied Ethics and Moral Foundation Theory, we identified underlying moral intuitions of the participants without uncritically adopting their arguments. Across all groups, benefits for animal welfare, fairness and transparency in economic motives, and trust in institutions emerged as key conditions for responsible use of genome editing in animal agriculture. While these concerns were broadly shared, participants from the Netherlands and Germany expressed relatively more openness towards technological food innovation, compared to those from France and Slovenia, within the scope of this qualitative study. Our findings highlight the need to understand the cultural and intuitive dimensions of moral reasoning for effective public engagement and responsible development of emerging food and breeding technologies. In particular, concerns rooted in feelings of disgust deserve deeper scrutiny rather than being addressed with harm-based arguments, which fail to address the moral roots of disgust.