One Health: How Interdependence Enriches Veterinary Ethics Education

Animals (Basel). 2019 Dec 19;10(1):13. doi: 10.3390/ani10010013.

Abstract

What does One Health imply for veterinary ethics education? In order to answer this question, we will first have to establish what One Health itself involves. The meaning and scope of One Health, however, cannot be established without reference to its values-whose health matters? Veterinary ethics education is well equipped to facilitate such an open-ended inquiry into multispecies health. One Health also widens the scope of veterinary ethics by making salient, among other fields, environmental ethics, global health justice, and non-Western approaches to ethics. Finally, One Health requires students to engage with interdependence. Discussing three levels of interdependence, we argue that veterinary ethics stands to benefit from a more contemplative pedagogy.

Keywords: mindfulness; moral agency; one health; pedagogy; veterinary education interdependence; veterinary ethics; veterinary medicine.