Major changes in the fields of food and agriculture in recent years, including accelerating technological development, changes in the resource base, and economic and market developments, have brought to the fore a variety of ethical questions of relevance to food security and sustainable rural development.

Ethics is by its nature crosscutting and multidimensional, and FAO has therefore designated "Ethics in Food and Agriculture" as a Priority Area for Interdisciplinary Action, and established an internal Committee on Ethics in Food and Agriculture to guide the Organization's actions in this regard.

The Director-General has also established, under Article VI.4 of the FAO Constitution, an independent Panel of Eminent Experts on Ethics in Food and Agriculture, to advise him on pressing issues of ethics in food and agriculture.

A new publication series, the FAO Ethics Series, has been launched, with the aim of making widely available information on major issues on ethical questions of relevance to the work of the Organization.

We hope that the Panel's deliberations and the publications in the FAO Ethics Series will help focus a wide-ranging global debate on ethical issues in food and agriculture, and enrich the deliberations, within FAO and in the wider community.