The complexity of bioethics as a challenge to legislation

Agriculture represents an extremely useful arena in which to explore the complex nature of the dialectical relationships between biology and ethics that bioethics connotes. From a systemic perspective, agriculture is a purposeful human activity which, by its very nature, influences, just as it is influenced by, its surroundings. The moral responsibility of agriculturists lies in the manner by which they deal with the reciprocal influences between agricultural practices and the socio-economic, cultural and bio-physical environments in which they operate. The issues to be explored in this paper, take as their context, the ethical defensibilities of strategies and practices for agricultural developments which aim to be at once, as socially desirable as they are ecologically compatible, as aesthetically agreeable as they are economically viable, and as culturally suitable as they are technically feasible.