Significant Breaches Research Articles

Animal welfare consequences in England and Wales of the 2001 epidemic of foot and mouth disease.

The ethical issues surrounding slaughter as a means of control of a disease epidemic are discussed and the use of this method as at least one component of the eradication of foot and mouth disease (FMD) is justified. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals received numerous complaints of suffering at slaughter during the FMD epidemic in the United Kingdom in 2001 but none led to prosecution because of lack of evidence. Movement restrictions imposed as part of the disease control strategy caused major welfare problems on farms which were unaffected by disease. These issues are detailed. Significant breaches of transport regulations appear to have occurred.

Trust, Distrust and Two Paradoxes of Democracy

The measure of trust that people vest in their fellow citizens or institutions depends on three factors: the `reflected trustworthiness' of the target as estimated by themselves in a more or less rational manner, the attitude of `basic trustfulness' deriving from socialization, and the `culture of trust' pervading their society and normatively encouraging the trusting orientation. The author presents a model of a structural context conducive for the emergence of the culture of trust, and then argues that democratic organization contributes to trust-generating conditions, such as normative certainty, transparency, stability, and accountability. This influence is found to be doubly paradoxical. First, democracy breeds the culture of trust by institutionalizing distrust at many levels of democratic organization. And second, the strongest influence of democracy on the culture of trust may be expected when the institutionalized distrust remains a resource used sparingly and only when there appear significant breaches of trust.