Some breeding technology applications are claimed to improve animal welfare: this includes potential applications of genomics and genome editing to improve animals’ resistance to environmental stress, to genetically alter features which in current practice are changed invasively (e.g. by dehorning), or to reduce animals’ capacity for suffering. Such applications challenge how breeding technologies are evaluated, which paradigmatically proceeds from a welfare perspective. Whether animal welfare will indeed improve may be unanswerable until proposed applications have been developed and tested sufficiently and until agreement is reached on how to conceptualize animal welfare. Moreover, even if breeding technologies do improve animal welfare, they might be objected to on other ethical grounds. Ethical perspectives on earlier animal biotechnologies are relevant for today’s breeding technologies and their proposed applications, but may need reinterpretation. The current paper applies the concept of telos, which previously figured mainly in debates on classical genetic engineering, to genomic selection and genome editing aimed at improving animal welfare. It critiques current (Rollin’s and Hauskeller’s) accounts of telos and offers an alternative conceptualization that applies to recently proposed applications of breeding technologies. This account rejects both removing the desire to pursue characteristic activities and altering animal bodies in ways that compromise their ability to perform such activities, but conditionally allows increasing robustness against environmental stress. Our account of telos enriches ethical debate on these breeding technology applications by insisting on the connection between the good life, an animal’s constitution, and its activities, thus countering reductive conceptions of welfare.

据称某些育种技术的应用可改善动物的福利：这包括基因组学和基因组编辑的潜在应用，可提高动物对环境压力的抵抗力，遗传改变目前在实践中通过侵入性方式改变的特征（例如通过脱角）或减少动物数量承受痛苦的能力。这样的应用挑战了如何评估育种技术，这从福利的角度来看是范式化的。在拟议的应用程序得到充分开发和测试之前，以及在就如何将动物福利概念化方面达成协议之前，动物福利是否确实会改善尚无定论。此外，即使育种技术确实改善了动物福利，也可能出于其他道德理由而反对它们。有关早期动物生物技术的伦理观点与当今的育种技术及其拟议的应用有关，但可能需要重新解释。本论文采用了telos以前主要是在有关经典基因工程的辩论中想到的，目的是进行基因组选择和基因组编辑，目的是改善动物的福利。它批评了当前的（罗林的和Hauskeller的）占终极目的，并提供了适用于养殖技术的最近提出申请的替代概念。这种说法既拒绝消除追求特色活动的愿望，又拒绝以损害动物进行此类活动的能力的方式改变动物尸体，但有条件地允许其增强抵抗环境压力的能力。我们的telos帐户 通过坚持美好的生活，动物的体质及其活动之间的联系，从而丰富了有关这些育种技术应用的伦理辩论，从而抵制了简化的福利概念。