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S. S. SUMNER, Dept. of Food Science & Technology, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State Univ., 22-A FST Bldg., Mail Code 0418, Blacksburg, VA 24061-0418 Are all university professors considered the same when it comes to ethics? Are some university professors held to a higher standard? Do you think ethics only apply to your research program? Extension educators are constantly faced with these questions. A primary goal of all Extension educators is to disseminate technology information to their specific clientele. Sometimes the information is from your own research laboratory, and other times you are disseminating information from a colleague. What if the information you provide has an economic impact on a food company? Does this increase your ethical liability? In Extension, one can have the same ethical considerations as lawyers; the client/extension privilege carries the same ethical considerations as the client/attorney privilege. Extension educators provide technical assistance to a variety of clients. They are expected to keep information confidential and not share trade secrets, formulations, and processing procedures. Ethical questions also arise when an extension educator discovers safety problems. What happens when you find a pathogenic organism in a food product or discover an unsafe processing procedure? One cornerstone of Extension is the shared nature of materials developed. The goal of Extension is to develop materials regionally and then have them adopted nationally. However, is it ethical to take this information for your program and not credit the original author? The answers to these questions to be presented are based on interviews with university lawyers, Extension personnel, and food lawyers.
Session 7, Food science education: A question of ethics
2005 IFT Annual Meeting, July 15-20 - New Orleans, Louisiana |