Anne Barnhill | Johns Hopkins University (original) (raw)

Papers by Anne Barnhill

Social Science Research Network, 2015

Currently proposed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) include a timely call to significantly re... more Currently proposed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) include a timely call to significantly reduce the burden of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). Existing policy guidance highlights cost-effective interventions for NCDs, but focusing just on cost-effectiveness risks exacerbating socioeconomic and health inequalities rather than reducing them. In implementing the SDGs, targets and interventions that benefit the worst off should be prioritized. The United Nations should develop practical guidance to assist policy makers at the country level with incorporating equity considerations.

PLOS Medicine, Sep 8, 2015

Agriculture and Human Values, Feb 15, 2021

Humans, animals, and the environment face a universal crisis: antimicrobial resistance (AR). Addr... more Humans, animals, and the environment face a universal crisis: antimicrobial resistance (AR). Addressing AR and its multi-disciplinary causes across many sectors including in human and veterinary medicine remains underdeveloped. One barrier to AR efforts is an inconsistent process to incorporate the plenitude of stakeholders about what AR is and how to stifle its development and spread—especially stakeholders from the animal agriculture sector, one of the largest purchasers of antimicrobial drugs. In 2019, The Wellcome Trust released Reframing Resistance: How to communicate about antimicrobial resistance effectively (Reframing Resistance), which proposed the need to establish a consistent and harmonized messaging effort that describes the AR crisis and its global implications for health and wellbeing across all stakeholders. Yet, Reframing Resistance does not specifically engage the animal agriculture community. This study investigates the gap between two principles recommended by Reframing Resistance and animal agriculture stakeholders. For this analysis, the research group conducted 31 semi-structured interviews with a diverse group of United States animal agriculture stakeholders. Participants reported attitudes, beliefs, and practices about a variety of issues, including how they defined AR and what entities the AR crisis impacts most. Exploration of Reframing Resistance’s Principle 2, “explain the fundamentals succinctly” and Principle 3, “emphasis that this is universal issue; it can affect anyone, including you” reveals disagreement in both the fundamentals of AR and consensus of “who” the AR crisis impacts. Principle 2 may do better to acknowledge that animal agriculture stakeholders espouse a complex array of perspectives that cannot be summed up in a single perspective or principle. As a primary tool to combat AR, behavior change must be accomplished first through outreach to stakeholder groups and understanding their perspectives.

Food Ethics

Who gets to decide what it means to live a healthy lifestyle, and how important a healthy lifesty... more Who gets to decide what it means to live a healthy lifestyle, and how important a healthy lifestyle is to a good life? As more governments make preventing obesity and diet-related illness a priority, it has become more important to consider the ethics and acceptability of their efforts. When it comes to laws and policies that promote healthy eating—such as special taxes on sugary drinks or programs to encourage consumption of fruits and vegetables—critics argue that these policies are paternalistic, and that they limit individual autonomy over food choices. In our book Healthy Eating Policy and Political Philosophy: A Public Reason Approach (Barnhill and Bonotti 2022), we argue that both paternalistic justifications for healthy eating efforts and anti-paternalistic arguments against them can be grounded in perfectionist views that overly prioritize some values over others. We therefore propose a more inclusive, public reason approach to healthy eating policy that will be appealing t...

Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics

This paper describes the results of a multi-country survey of governance approaches for the use o... more This paper describes the results of a multi-country survey of governance approaches for the use of digital contact tracing (DCT) in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue that the countries in our survey represent two distinct models of DCT governance, both of which are flawed. The “data protection model” emphasizes privacy protections at the expense of public health benefit, while the “emergency response model” sacrifices transparency and accountability, prompting concerns about excessive governance surveillance. The ethical and effective use of DCT in the future requires a new governance approach that is better suited to this novel use of mobile phone data to promote public health.”

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to evolve, taking its toll on people’s lives around the world,... more As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to evolve, taking its toll on people’s lives around the world, vaccine passports remain a contentious topic of debate in most liberal democracies. While a small literature on vaccine passports has sprung up over the past few years that considers their ethical pros and cons, in this paper we focus on the question of when vaccine passports are politically legitimate. Specifically, we put forward a ‘public reason ethics framework’ for resolving ethical disputes and use the case of vaccine passports to demonstrate how it works. The framework walks users through a structured analysis of a vaccine passport proposal to determine whether the proposal can be publicly justified and is therefore legitimate. Use of this framework may also help policymakers to design more effective vaccine passports, by incorporating structured input from the public, and thereby better taking the public’s interests and values into account. In short, a public reason ethics frame...

The Philosophers' Magazine

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The Lancet Planetary Health

Background Slowing climate change is crucial to the future wellbeing of human societies and the g... more Background Slowing climate change is crucial to the future wellbeing of human societies and the greater environment. Current beef production systems in the USA are a major source of negative environmental impacts and raise various animal welfare concerns. Nevertheless, beef production provides a food source high in protein and many nutrients as well as providing employment and income to millions of people. Cattle farming also contributes to individual and community identities and regional food cultures. Novel plant-based meat alternatives have been promoted as technologies that could transform the food system by reducing negative environmental, animal welfare, and health effects of meat production and consumption. Recent studies have conducted static analyses of shifts in diets globally and in the USA, but have not considered how the whole food system would respond to these changes, nor the ethical implications of these responses. We aimed to better explore these dynamics within the US food system and contribute a multiple perspective ethical assessment of plant-based alternatives to beef. Methods In this national modelling analysis, we explored multiple ethical perspectives and the implications of the adoption of plant-based alternatives to beef in the USA. We developed USAGE-Food, a modified version of USAGE (a detailed computable general equilibrium model of the US economy), by improving the representation of sector interactions and dependencies, and consumer behaviour to better reflect resource use across the food system and the substitutability of foods within households. We further extended USAGE, by linking estimates of the environmental footprint of US agriculture, to estimate how changes across the agriculture sector could alter the environmental impact of primary food production across the whole sector, not only the beef sector. Using USAGE-Food, we simulated four beef replacement scenarios against a baseline of current beef demand in the USA: BEEF10, in which beef expenditure is replaced by other foods and three scenarios wherein 10%, 30%, or 60% of beef expenditure is replaced by plant-based alternatives. Findings The adoption of plant-based beef alternatives is likely to reduce the carbon footprint of US food production by 2•5-13•5%, by reducing the number of animals needed for beef production by 2-12 million. Impacts on other dimensions are more ambiguous, as the agricultural workforce and natural resources, such as water and cropland, are reallocated across the food system. The shifting allocation of resources should lead to a more efficient food system, but could facilitate the expansion of other animal value chains (eg, pork and poultry) and increased exports of agricultural products. In aggregate, these changes across the food system would have a small, potentially positive, impact on national gross domestic product. However, they would lead to substantial disruptions within the agricultural economy, with the cattle and beef processing sectors decreasing by 7-45%, challenging the livelihoods of the more than 1•5 million people currently employed in beef value chains (primary production and animal processing) in the USA. Interpretation Economic modelling suggests that the adoption of plant-based beef alternatives can contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the food system. Relocation of resources across the food system, simulated by our dynamic modelling approach, might mitigate gains across other environmental dimensions (ie, water or chemical use) and might facilitate the growth of other animal value chains. Although economic consequences at the country level are small, there would be concentrated losses within the beef value chain. Reduced carbon footprint and increased resource use efficiency of the food system are reasons for policy makers to encourage the continued development of these technologies. Despite this positive outcome, policy makers should recognise the ethical assessment of these transitions will be complex, and should remain vigilant to negative outcomes and be prepared to target policies to minimise the worst effects.

Food Ethics

This paper argues that individuals in many high-income countries typically have moral reasons to ... more This paper argues that individuals in many high-income countries typically have moral reasons to limit their beef consumption and consume plant-based protein instead, given the negative effects of beef production and consumption. Beef production is a significant source of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental impacts, high levels of beef consumption are associated with health risks, and some cattle production systems raise animal welfare concerns. These negative effects matter, from a variety of moral perspectives, and give us collective moral reasons to reduce beef production and consumption. But, as some ethicists have argued, we cannot draw a straight line from the ethics of production to the ethics of consumption: even if a production system is morally impermissible, this does not mean that any given individual has moral reasons to stop consuming the products of that system, given how miniscule one individual's contributions are. This paper considers how to connect those dots. We consider three distinct lines of argument in support of the conclusion that individuals have moral reasons to limit their beef consumption and shift to plant-based protein, and we consider objections to each argument. This argument applies to individuals in high beef-consuming and high greenhouse gas-emitting high-income countries, though we make this argument with a specific focus on the United States.

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice

Food Ethics

Even though the phenomenon of gentrification is ever-growing in contemporary urban contexts, espe... more Even though the phenomenon of gentrification is ever-growing in contemporary urban contexts, especially in high income countries, it has been mostly overlooked by normative political theorists and philosophers. In this paper we examine the normative dimensions of gentrification through the lens of food. By drawing on Huber and Wolkenstein’s (Huber and Wolkenstein, Politics, Philosophy & Economics 17:378–397, 2018) work, we use food as an example to illustrate the multiple ways in which life plans can be located and to argue that both existing residents and newcomers have an interest in occupancy rights. More specifically, while newcomers have an interest in moving freely to new neighbourhoods in order to purse their preferred life plans, they also have an interest in being able to continue to pursue those life plans once they have acquired them, and this requires occupancy rights and the implementation of measures aimed at regulating and slowing down gentrification. Moreover, when r...

Ethics & International Affairs, 2021

As part of the roundtable, “Ethics and the Future of the Global Food System,” this essay discusse... more As part of the roundtable, “Ethics and the Future of the Global Food System,” this essay discusses some of the major challenges we will face in feeding the world in 2050. A first challenge is nutritional: 690 million people (9 percent of the world's population) are currently undernourished, while 2.1 billion adults (28 percent of the population) are overweight or obese. The current global food system is insufficient in ensuring that the nutritious foods that make up healthy diets are available and accessible for the world's population. Moreover, by 2050, as the global population increases, food demand will increase by 50–60 percent. A fundamental challenge is meeting this demand while not wreaking irreversible havoc on natural resources, the environment, and planetary systems. A body of scientific research has coalesced around the need to reduce food loss and waste, adopt environmentally sustainable production practices, and shift toward plant-dominant diets. Other long-stan...

Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 2022

We propose that marketing of unhealthy foods and beverages to Black and Latino consumers results ... more We propose that marketing of unhealthy foods and beverages to Black and Latino consumers results from the intersection of a business model in which profits come primarily from marketing an unhealthy mix of products, standard targeted marketing strategies, and societal forces of structural racism, and contributes to health disparities.

Journal of Medical Ethics, 2020

The pandemic of SARS-CoV-2 has led to unprecedented changes to society, causing unique problems t... more The pandemic of SARS-CoV-2 has led to unprecedented changes to society, causing unique problems that call for extraordinary solutions. We consider one such extraordinary proposal: ‘safer infection sites’ that would offer individuals the opportunity to be intentionally infected with SARS-CoV-2, isolate, and receive medical care until they are no longer infectious. Safer infection could have value for various groups of workers and students. Health professionals place themselves at risk of infection daily and extend this risk to their family members and community. Similarly, other essential workers who face workplace exposure must continue their work, even if have high-risk household members and live in fear of infecting. When schools are kept closed because of the fear that they will be sites of significant transmission, children and their families are harmed in multiple ways and college students who are living on campus, whether or not they are attending classes in person, are contri...

Public Health Ethics, 2017

Journal of medical ethics, 2018

References to the 'natural' are common in public health messaging about breastfeeding. Fo... more References to the 'natural' are common in public health messaging about breastfeeding. For example, the WHO writes that 'Breast milk is the natural first food for babies' and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has a breastfeeding promotion campaign called 'It's only natural', which champions breastfeeding as the natural way to feed a baby. This paper critically examines the use of 'natural' language in breastfeeding promotion by public health and medical bodies. A pragmatic concern with selling breastfeeding as 'natural' is that this may reinforce the already widespread perspective that natural options are presumptively healthier, safer and better, a view that works at cross-purposes to public health and medicine in other contexts. An additional concern is that given the history of breastfeeding in the USA, 'natural' evokes specific and controversial conceptions of gender and motherhood.

IJFAB: International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics, 2015

Policies to promote breast-feeding often engender substantial controversy. While clearly involvin... more Policies to promote breast-feeding often engender substantial controversy. While clearly involving disagreement over the appropriate limits to government authority, this controversy also reflects a related disagreement over whether infant-feeding practices are a public health matter or a private choice. Infant feeding practices are both a personal choice warranting some deference by the state yet also a legitimate target of public health intervention. Evaluating the ethics of breast-feeding policy thus requires navigating this complex duality, a duality mirrored by healthy eating policies that aim to increase consumption of healthier foods and decrease consumption of less-healthy foods. Examining the analogies and disanalogies with healthy eating policies can illuminate important ethical complexities of breast-feeding policy.

Pediatrics, 2016

Medical and public health organizations recommend that mothers exclusively breastfeed for at leas... more Medical and public health organizations recommend that mothers exclusively breastfeed for at least 6 months. This recommendation is based on evidence of health benefits for mothers and babies, as well as developmental benefits for babies. A spate of recent work challenges the extent of these benefits, and ethical criticism of breastfeeding promotion as stigmatizing is also growing. 1 Building on this critical work, we are concerned about breastfeeding promotion that praises breastfeeding as the "natural" way to feed infants. This messaging plays into a powerful perspective that "natural" approaches to health are better, a view examined in a recent report by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. 2 Promoting breastfeeding as "natural" may be ethically problematic, and, even more troublingly, it may bolster this belief that "natural" approaches are presumptively healthier. This may ultimately challenge public health's aims in other contexts, particularly childhood vaccination. The measles outbreak of 2014-2015 sparked intense, condemnatory discussion of vaccine refusal. This public discussion often emphasized that some in the antivaccine camp believe that vaccines cause autism or contain harmful levels of toxins and impurities. Beneath the concern of many Americans over vaccine safety, a specific and not necessarily illogical worldview is discernable: a rejection of the manufactured, the synthetic and the "unnatural, " and an embrace of the "natural" as healthier and intrinsically better. Vaccines are often seen as "unnatural, " and boosting immunity "naturally" is viewed by some as the healthier and better approach. Online forums and blogs devoted to natural living offer countless examples of this perspective, and the recent book Vaccine Nation by Elena Conis documents the evolution of this worldview in detail. 3 Studies have shown that parents who resist vaccination tend to inhabit networks of like-minded individuals with similar beliefs. 4 These pockets of antivaccination sentiment tend to overlap with reliance on and interest in complementary and alternative medicine, 5 skepticism of institutional authority, 6 and a strong commitment and interest in health knowledge, autonomy, and healthy living practices. 7 The idea of the "natural" evokes a sense of purity, goodness, and harmlessness. Meanwhile, synthetic substances, products, and technologies mass produced by industry (notably, vaccines) are seen

PLoS medicine, 2015

Harald Schmidt and Anne Barnhill highlight the need to ensure equity in the proposed Sustainable ... more Harald Schmidt and Anne Barnhill highlight the need to ensure equity in the proposed Sustainable Development Goals.

Social Science Research Network, 2015

PLOS Medicine, Sep 8, 2015

Agriculture and Human Values, Feb 15, 2021

Food Ethics

Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice

The Philosophers' Magazine

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The Lancet Planetary Health

Food Ethics

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice

Food Ethics

Ethics & International Affairs, 2021

Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 2022

Journal of Medical Ethics, 2020

Public Health Ethics, 2017

Journal of medical ethics, 2018

IJFAB: International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics, 2015

Pediatrics, 2016

PLoS medicine, 2015

The handbook is a partial survey of multiple areas of food ethics: conventional agriculture and a... more The handbook is a partial survey of multiple areas of food ethics: conventional agriculture and alternatives to it; animals; consumption ethics; food justice; food workers; food politics and policy; gender, body image, and healthy eating; and, food, culture and identity. Food ethics, as an academic pursuit, is vast, incorporating work from philosophy as well as anthropology, economics, environmental sciences and other natural sciences, geography, law, and sociology. This Handbook provides a sample of recent philosophical work in food ethics. This philosophical work addresses ethical issues with agricultural production, the structure of the global food system, the ethics of personal food consumption, the ethics of food policy, and cultural understandings of food and eating, among other issues. The work in this Handbook draws on multiple literatures within philosophy, including practical ethics, normative ethics, and political philosophy, as well as drawing on non-philosophical work. Part I considers ethical issues concerning the industrial model of farming that dominates in developed countries, looking most closely at industrial crop farming and its environmental effects. Part II concerns the ethics of animal agriculture. Part III concerns the ethics of consumption: is it morally permissible to consume various products? Part IV concerns justice—including racial, social, and economic justice—in the food system. Part V discusses some ethical and legal issues with specific kinds of food policies, including healthy eating policies, food labeling, and agricultural guest worker programs. Part VI includes four essays taking a critical eye to our public discourse about, and personal experiences of, dieting, healthy eating, and obesity prevention. Lastly, the essays in Part VII concern the personal, social, and moral significance of food.

Food, Ethics, and Society: An Introductory Text with Readings presents seventy-three readings tha... more Food, Ethics, and Society: An Introductory Text with Readings presents seventy-three readings that address real-world ethical issues at the forefront of the food ethics debate. Topics covered include hunger, food justice, consumer ethics, food and identity, food and religion, raising plants and animals, food workers, overconsumption, obesity, and paternalism. The selections are enhanced by chapter and reading introductions, study questions, and suggestions for further reading. Ideal for both introductory and interdisciplinary courses, Food, Ethics, and Society explains basic philosophical concepts for new students and forges new ground on several ethical debates.