Paul B. Thompson (philosopher)

Paul B. Thompson is a philosopher currently teaching at Michigan State University, where he holds the W.K. Kellogg Chair in Agricultural Food and Community Ethics. Thompson was born in 1951 in Springfield, Missouri. He earned his B.A. at Emory University before going on to earn a Ph.D. in philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He formerly taught at Texas A&M University and Purdue University before joining MSU, where he now teaches and does research on ethical and philosophical questions dealing with agriculture and food and especially the development of agricultural techno-science.
He is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board for "Public Philosophy Journal".
Contributions to philosophy.
Thompson has served on national and international committees on agricultural biotechnology such as the International Advisory Panel for the PEGASUS Project on Animal Biotechnology, the Advisory Committee on Biotechnology for the Board of Agriculture and Natural Resources (part of the National Research Council based in Washington D.C.), The Scientific Advisory Committee for the Mansholt Graduate School at Wageningen University and Research Institute, and was the Chair of the Council on Agricultural Science and Technology's Working Group on Ethics and Animal Agricultural Biotechnology from 2006 to 2010. Thompson also contributed to the National Research Council report entitled "The Environmental Effects of Transgenic Plants." He is a past President of the Society for Philosophy and Technology and the Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society.