ABSTRACT
‘How natural is a dairy cow?’ Participants in the seminar kept repeating this question after it was put forward from the audience during one of the first lectures. This seemingly odd question touches some of the central issues. (1) What is ‘nature’ or ‘natural’? We are in need of a workable definition of these central terms. (2) Does it matter morally whether something is ‘natural’ or not? We need to know whether the label ‘natural’ can ever be of moral relevance and – if so – when. Most of the contributors were in one way or the other confronted with these questions. They had to take a stance. Rarely, however, did any of the contributors attempt to answer these questions in an explicit way. In the present paper an explicit attempt is made to deal with these issues.
