Do unto others -- Don't pester the pigeons -- Try it, you'll like it -- Be science fair -- Chicken out -- Save the whales -- Be good to bugs -- Fur is un-fur-giveable -- Don't pass the product tests -- Horsing around -- It's raining cats and dogs -- "Companimals" are priceless -- Pen pals for animals -- Watch out for animals -- Dump wasteful habits -- Free the fishes -- Art impact -- Help turtles out of trouble -- (...) Stick it to 'em! -- Call for compassion -- Check out the entertainment -- Dress to a 't' -- Sing for the animals -- Be an elefriend--get the elefacts -- Write on! -- Born free, bored stiff -- Saying goodbye to uninvited guests -- Talk to the animals -- Get your class into the act -- Hooray for holidays! -- Dressing cool to be kind -- Pig out! -- Take care of hot dogs -- Oh, deer! -- Give a well-come gift -- Critter chatter -- Pack a lunch with punch -- Be a bookworm -- Reflecting on dissecting -- Step up on your soapbox -- Lost and found -- It's your turn to set the table -- School's out -- Develop a good roadside manner -- Add a little spice to their lives -- Make sure fair is fair -- Get poetic -- Join the club -- Hang in there -- One last thing you can do to help the animals. (shrink)

Discusses the use and abuse of animals by mankind and the rights of animals to better conditions wherever possible.

Discusses a variety of ways mankind is cruel to animals.

Animal welfare scientific literature has accumulated rapidly in recent years, but bias may exist which influences understanding of progress in the field. We conducted a survey of articles related to animal welfare or well being from an electronic database. From 8,541 articles on this topic, we randomly selected 115 articles for detailed review in four funding categories: government; charity and/or scientific association; industry; and educational organization. Ninety articles were evaluated after unsuitable articles were rejected. The (...) welfare states of animals in new treatments, conventional treatments or control groups with no treatment were classified as high, medium or low according to one or more. More articles were published in which the welfare of animals in new treatments was better than that of animals in the conventional or no treatment groups, demonstrating a positive result bias. Failure to publish studies with negative or inconclusive results may lead to other scientists unnecessarily repeating the research. The authors’ assessments of the welfare state of the groups were similarly rated high, medium or low, and it was found that new treatments were rated lower if the research was funded by industry, and higher when funded by charities, with government funding agencies intermediate. These differences were not evident in the Five Freedoms assessment, demonstrating an authors’ assessment bias that appeared to support the funding agencies’ interests. North American funded publications rated the welfare of animals in New treatments higher and those in a Conventional or No Treatment lower, compared with European-funded publications. It is concluded that preliminary evidence was provided of several forms of publication bias in animal welfare science. (shrink)

Animal welfare scientific literature has accumulated rapidly in recent years, but bias may exist which influences understanding of progress in the field. We conducted a survey of articles related to animal welfare or well being from an electronic database. From 8,541 articles on this topic, we randomly selected 115 articles for detailed review in four funding categories: government; charity and/or scientific association; industry; and educational organization. Ninety articles were evaluated after unsuitable articles were rejected. The (...) welfare states of animals in new treatments, conventional treatments or control groups with no treatment were classified as high, medium or low according to one or more. More articles were published in which the welfare of animals in new treatments was better than that of animals in the conventional or no treatment groups, demonstrating a positive result bias. Failure to publish studies with negative or inconclusive results may lead to other scientists unnecessarily repeating the research. The authors’ assessments of the welfare state of the groups were similarly rated high, medium or low, and it was found that new treatments were rated lower if the research was funded by industry, and higher when funded by charities, with government funding agencies intermediate. These differences were not evident in the Five Freedoms assessment, demonstrating an authors’ assessment bias that appeared to support the funding agencies’ interests. North American funded publications rated the welfare of animals in New treatments higher and those in a Conventional or No Treatment lower, compared with European-funded publications. It is concluded that preliminary evidence was provided of several forms of publication bias in animal welfare science. (shrink)

In recent years, animal welfare has become an important element of sustainable production that has evolved along with the transformation of animal production systems. Consumer attitudes towards farm animal welfare are changing around the world, especially at emerging markets of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Survey-based research on consumer attitudes towards farm animal welfare has increased. However, the geographical coverage of studies on consumer attitudes and perceptions about farm animal welfare has (...) mostly been limited to Europe, and North America. Until now, Latin American consumers’ attitudes towards animal welfare have not been well studied. Despite the fact that Mexico, Chile and Brazil belong to the same region, there are marked differences between these countries in terms of their economical and geographical characteristics among other factors. Those differences potentially have an impact on consumer attitudes towards animal welfare and livestock production systems in general. Given the evidence from the literature review, it seems advisable that Latin American producers and food industry who engage in animal welfare-enhancing practices should clearly label their products with information on the type of husbandry system to reach those consumers who want to make an informed choice. Therefore, there are some aspects that need to be studied and cannot be worked separately in order to promote and understand consumer attitudes towards dairy and beef systems, such as geography, economic development, and politics. (shrink)

When, if ever, is it better to spend money to improve pig welfare over chicken welfare? Which species of fish is worst off in commercial aquaculture operations? When, if ever, would humans benefit less from a policy than animals stand to lose? The answers to these questions involve making interspecies welfare comparisons—assessments of how well or poorly the members of one species are faring compared to the members of another species. It’s important to answer these questions, as (...) governments, NGOs, and private actors regularly make decisions that assume particular views about them. However, there is no accepted method for making interspecies welfare comparisons; welfare assessment tools are designed to make comparisons within species, not across them. This volume addresses this crucial gap in the literature: it proposes a methodology for making such comparisons, it puts that methodology into practice, and then reports some tentative, proof-of-concept results. This book reports the results of a collaborative, 20-month, interdisciplinary project on making interspecies welfare comparisons. It includes contributions from philosophers, neuroscientists, comparative psychologists, animal welfare scientists, and many others. Unlike many edited volumes, this book is the product of a joint enterprise with a specific, shared goal: to develop a way to make principled comparisons between courses of action that affect different kinds of animals. This book reflects the contributors’ collective view about one way to achieve that goal. (shrink)

The results of two independent empirical studies with Flemish citizens were combined to address the problem of a short fall of information provision about higher welfare products. The research objectives were (1) to improve our understanding of how citizens conceptualize farm animal welfare, (2) to analyze the variety in the claimed personal relevance of animal welfare in the food purchasing decision process, and (3) to find out people’s needs in relation to product information about (...) class='Hi'>animal welfare and the extent to which the current information caters to these needs. The first study consisted of a survey conducted in three consecutive years (2000–2002, n = 521) and was complemented with more recent qualitative data from four focus group discussions (2006, n = 29). Citizens’ conceptualization of farm animal welfare matched reasonably well with those in the scientific literature, although it is clearly influenced by a lower level of practical experience and a higher weight of empathy. In general, respondents indicated that animal welfare was an important product attribute, although it was less important than primary product attributes such as quality, health, and safety. Moral issues, rather than a perception of higher quality, were the main influence on preferences for higher welfare products. At present, higher standards of animal welfare are mostly guaranteed within more general quality assurance schemes. Yet people’s decisions to not choose higher welfare products seems to be related to the perceptual disconnection between eating animal food products and the living producing animals. Respondents generally thought better information provision was required and the present level of provision was strongly criticized. In combination, the findings of both studies help inform the discussion about how citizens can be informed about animal welfare and the preferred content, source, and medium of such information. The paper also provides insights into citizens’ semantic interpretation of the concept of animal welfare (what wordings they use) and the range of relevance that animal welfare has for different groups that, in turn is useful in identifying which segments can be targeted. This can contribute to a more effective valorization of animal welfare as a product attribute. (shrink)

The results of two independent empirical studies with Flemish citizens were combined to address the problem of a short fall of information provision about higher welfare products. The research objectives were (1) to improve our understanding of how citizens conceptualize farm animal welfare, (2) to analyze the variety in the claimed personal relevance of animal welfare in the food purchasing decision process, and (3) to find out people’s needs in relation to product information about (...) class='Hi'>animal welfare and the extent to which the current information caters to these needs. The first study consisted of a survey conducted in three consecutive years (2000–2002, n = 521) and was complemented with more recent qualitative data from four focus group discussions (2006, n = 29). Citizens’ conceptualization of farm animal welfare matched reasonably well with those in the scientific literature, although it is clearly influenced by a lower level of practical experience and a higher weight of empathy. In general, respondents indicated that animal welfare was an important product attribute, although it was less important than primary product attributes such as quality, health, and safety. Moral issues, rather than a perception of higher quality, were the main influence on preferences for higher welfare products. At present, higher standards of animal welfare are mostly guaranteed within more general quality assurance schemes. Yet people’s decisions to not choose higher welfare products seems to be related to the perceptual disconnection between eating animal food products and the living producing animals. Respondents generally thought better information provision was required and the present level of provision was strongly criticized. In combination, the findings of both studies help inform the discussion about how citizens can be informed about animal welfare and the preferred content, source, and medium of such information. The paper also provides insights into citizens’ semantic interpretation of the concept of animal welfare (what wordings they use) and the range of relevance that animal welfare has for different groups that, in turn is useful in identifying which segments can be targeted. This can contribute to a more effective valorization of animal welfare as a product attribute. (shrink)

Although human well-being is a topic of much contemporary philosophical discussion, there has been comparatively little theoretical discussion in philosophy of (nonhuman) animal well-being. Animal welfare science is a well-established scientific discipline that studies animal well-being from an empirical standpoint. This article examines parts of this literature that may be relevant to philosophical treatments of animal well-being and to other philosophical issues. First, I explain the dominant conceptions of well-being in animal welfare (...) science and survey some debates in that literature surrounding these competing conceptions. Second, I explain the empirical methods used to measure animal well-being. Third, I argue for the philosophical relevance of the research in animal welfare science and outline some philosophical issues concerning animal welfare and its science that I claim are worthy of attention by philosophers. (shrink)

There is an increasing body of literature proposing to include animal welfare in the United Nations Sustainable Development Agenda. The main argument is the potential positive effect that improving the welfare of animals could have over the health and welfare of humans. However, recent literature suggests that the welfare interests of animals should also be considered. Based on these premises, an analysis of the practical implications of including animal welfare in the (...) United Nations Sustainable Development Goals is granted. The aim of this study is to address this by applying the case of animals in the agriculture and aquaculture systems. Animal farming inherently affects the welfare of a substantial number of sentient animals while, the welfare of farmed animals has been connected to human wellbeing and several environmental issues. The study highlights the feasibility of incorporating the welfare of farmed animals into a future version of the SDGs. It does so by developing a model based on a set of human-focused (anthropocentric) and animal-focused (sentientistic) targets for each of the 17 goals. It has been argued that expanding the scope of the SDGs from anthropocentrism to sentientism creates a synergy between human and animal welfare and, on top of that, is progress towards sustainability. (shrink)

One of the most challenging questions surrounding subjective animal welfare is whether these states are measurable: that is, is subjective welfare an appropriately quantifiable target for scientific enquiry and ethical and deliberative calculation? The availability of several different types of measurement scale raises important questions regarding whether subjective experience has the right properties to be meaningfully represented on the types of scale required for different applications. This methodological question has so far received scant attention in the (...) class='Hi'>animal welfare literature. In this paper, I address this omission by examining the types of measurement scale we can reasonably expect to apply to animal welfare measurements, and which we will actually need for our applications. I argue that our different applications will require variously ordinal, interval, and ratio scales, and that we have sufficient reason to believe that subjective welfare is a target with the appropriate characteristics to justify the practice of representing it using each of these types of scales. (shrink)

This is the Second Edition of a well-received book that reflects a fresh, integrated coverage of the concepts and scientific measurement of stress and welfare of animals including humans. This book explains the basic biological principles of coping with many forms of adversity. The major part of this work is devoted to explaining scientifically usable concepts in stress and welfare. A wide range of welfare indicators are highlighted in detail with examples being drawn from man and other (...) species. The necessity for combining information from disciplines is emphasized with a one-health, one-welfare approach. This information forms the basis for a synthesis of new ideas. Among the issues covered are: - How brain and body systems regulate using feelings, physiological responses, behaviour and responses to pathology - Limits to adaptation - Assessing positive and negative welfare during both short-term and long-term situations - Ethical problems and suggested solutions A proper assessment of animal welfare is essential to take informed decisions about what is morally acceptable in terms of practice and in the development of a more effective legislation. This work encapsulates a very wide body of literature on scientific aspects of animal welfare and will thus prove a valuable asset for animal welfare scientists, psychologists, students and teachers of all forms of biology, behaviour, medicine, veterinary medicine and animal usage. (shrink)

The cornerstone of any system of livestock production is the stockpeople responsible for the welfare and productivity of the animals they work with. Nevertheless, it has been suggested that the industrialization of livestock production is breaking down the traditional relationship between stockpeople and their animals. Commercial livestock production creates a situation of structurally induced ambivalence for those working in these contexts. Besides, the scientific literature on stockpeople is limited, dispersed and specially focused on animals. Whereby, a review of (...) current knowledge about the compatibilities, contradictions, and unresolved ethical dilemmas faced by stockpeople in their daily work and their implications on farm animals’ welfare was carried out. The topics reviewed included: Attitudes and personality; Empathy towards animals; Workplace well-being; One-health issues; and Sustainability challenges. Understanding the stockpeople emotional relationship with animals, gender, ethnicity, occupational roles, educational backgrounds, culture, and generational differences can be valuable for technicians, advisors, scientists, consultants, and owners when developing training for sustainability programs. (shrink)

Animal welfare involves societal and human values, ethical concerns and moral considerations since it incorporates the belief of what is right or what is wrong in animal treatment and care. This paper aims to ascertain whether the different dimensions of individual attitudes toward animal welfare in food choices may be characterized by general human values, as identified by Schwartz. For this purpose, an EU-wide survey was carried out, covering almost 2500 nationally representative individuals from five (...) European countries. Compared with the previous literature this study shows a twofold novelty: it develops a general framework to link individual enduring beliefs and attitudes toward animal welfare attributes in food choices; the framework is analyzed within a broad-based cross-country study. Our empirical results prove that human values related to self-transcendence are strongly associated to overall animal welfare attitudes and especially to those explicitly related to food choices, while values related to the spheres of self-enhancement and conservatism are significantly associated to less sensitive attitudes to animal welfare. Moreover, our results appear to indicate that a determinant of animal welfarism in food choices is potentially associated to individual concerns regarding food safety issues. (shrink)

This review presents first ever literature survey on historical development of farm animal welfare indicators and assessment in the Danube region. This area, encompassing European Eastern countries and the Balkans, is to a large extent heterogeneous in terms of culture and language. However, international publications were disproportionally small compared to the amount of research institutions and animal welfare activities present in the region. Therefore, the authors aimed at investigating the published literature, focusing on country (...) level and on native languages. Data were collected for the 1980–2015 period referring to scientific papers published in international and national journals, papers and abstracts in proceedings of the international and national conferences, reviews, monographs, short communications, Ph.D., Master and Graduation theses. Welfare assessment of all farm animal species was observed including fish. Over 180 papers were in line with the preselected index. Data collected showed that publishing dynamics grew rapidly towards the last decade. Most of the studies were focused on animal welfare indicators such as stress, injuries and mutilations, behaviour, body condition and management practices. Cattle, chickens, pigs and sheep were the predominant species investigated. The study revealed that experts from the region were greatly involved in the studies of animal welfare indicators and assessment, contributing to development of the currently most widely used animal welfare assessment protocols, thus having an important role in animal welfare research and protection. (shrink)

This paper presents a novel perspective on an evolving policy area. The UK’s withdrawal from the EU has led to the creation of a new Agriculture Act and proposals for significant changes to the way farming subsidies are structured in England. Underpinned by a ‘public money for public goods’ approach, where public goods are those outputs from the farm system which are not rewarded by markets, yet which provide benefits to many members of society. New schemes include the Animal (...) Health and Welfare Pathway, where certain aspects of farm animal health and welfare (FAHW) will be subsidised through government support, raising a much-debated issue in the literature regarding the representation of FAHW as a public good. For policy to be responsive to societal demands and accountable to citizens, understanding public attitudes and preferences towards FAHW as a public good, and how the public might prioritise this in relation to a wider suite of environmental public goods from farming, is important. An online survey of 521 members of the UK public was conducted and analysed with descriptive statistics and ordered logistic regression. Findings reveal low awareness of the changing agricultural policy context, but strong support for public money being used to provide public goods, particularly for FAHW. Findings also indicate a need for more effective public communication of farming and FAHW issues from farming stakeholders to ensure public policy in this domain is responsive and accountable to its citizens. Further work is needed to inform future debates and engagement surrounding FAHW, including through which combination of funding mechanisms (public or private) it is provided. (shrink)

This is an extensively re-written second edition of a well regarded and much cited text on the issue of animal protection. It remains the only text to combine an examination of the philosophy and politics of the issue. Its central argument is that the philosophical debate is central to an understanding and evaluation of the substantive issues involving animals and the nature of the movement for change. The book has been thoroughly revised to include major theoretical and empirical developments. (...) Specifically, the "second generation" of animal ethics literature is examined in detail, and attention is paid to the campaigns and public controversy over the export of live animals and the use of animals in research, the impact of genetic engineering on the welfare of animals and the latest developments in the controversy over hunting. (shrink)

While historiography is dominated by attempts that try to standardize and de-individualize the behavior of animals, history proves to be littered with records of the exceptional lives of unusual animals. This book introduces animal biography as an approach to the re-framing of animals as both objects of knowledge as well as subjects of individual lives. Taking an interdisciplinary perspective and bringing together scholars from, among others, literary, historical and cultural studies, the texts collected in this volume seek to refine (...) animal biography as a research method and framework to studying, capturing, representing and acknowledging animal others as individuals. From Heini Hediger's biting monitor, Hachikō and Murr to celluloid ape Caesar and the mourning of Topsy's gruesome death, the authors discuss how animal biographies are discovered and explored through connections with humans that can be traced in archives, ethological fieldwork and novels, and probe the means of constructing animal biographies from taxidermy to film, literature and social media. Thus, they invite deeper conversations with socio-political and cultural contexts that allow animal biographies to provide narratives that reach beyond individual life stories, while experimenting with particular forms of animal biographies that might trigger animal activism and concerns for animal well-being, spur historical interest and enrich the literary imagination. (shrink)

Nonhuman animal studies scholars have extensively investigated attitudes on animal welfare in general and farm animal welfare in particular. Thus far, this research has focused mainly on public opinion, but there has been minimal research seeking to explain the influences on actual policymakers when they vote on farm animal welfare legislation. This paper contributes to this literature by quantitatively analyzing 216 state legislators’ votes on two farm animal welfare bills. It (...) hypothesizes that the representatives’ personal and representational connections with agriculture best explain their votes on these farm animal protection bills. This research also includes three control variables: each legislator’s gender, race/ethnicity, and political party. Logistic regression revealed that the legislators’ personal and representational connections with agriculture are significant, but political party is the strongest independent variable explaining state legislators’ farm animal welfare votes. An interaction model revealed mixed evidence that political party moderates the influence of agriculture. (shrink)

Situated at the intersection of animal studies and literary theory, this book explores the remarkable and subtly pervasive web of animal imagery, metaphors, and concepts in the work of the Jewish-Italian writer, chemist, and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi. Relatively unexamined by scholars, the complex and extensive animal imagery Levi employed in his literary works offers new insights into the aesthetical and ethical function of testimony, as well as an original perspective on contemporary debates surrounding human-animal relationships (...) and posthumanism. The three main sections that compose the book mirror Levi’s approach to non-human animals and animality: from an unquestionable bio-ethical origin ; through an investigation of the relationships between writing, technology, and animality ; to a creative intellectual project in which literary animals both counterbalance the inevitable suffering of all creatures, and suggest a transformative image of interspecific community. (shrink)

Animals and Social Work represents a pioneering contribution to the literature of social work ethics and moral philosophy. It advances cogent and detailed arguments for the inclusion of animals within social work's moral framework, arguments that have profound theoretical and practical implications for the discipline and its practitioners.

Background: Nonhuman animals are regularly enhanced genomically with CRISPR and other gene editing tools as scientists aim at better models for biomedical research, more tractable agricultural animals, or animals that are otherwise well suited to a defined purpose. This study investigated how genome editors and policymakers perceived ethical or policy benefits and drawbacks for animal enhancement and how perceived benefits and drawbacks are alike, or differ from, those for human genome editing. Methods: We identified scientists through relevant literature (...) searches as well as conference presentations. Policymakers were identified through rosters of genome editing oversight groups (e.g., International Commission on the Clinical Use of Human Germline Genome Editing, World Health Organization) or efforts aimed at influencing policy (e.g., deliberative democracy groups). Interviews covered participants’ views on ethical differences between interventions affecting somatic or germline cells and distinctions between using gene editing for disease treatment, prevention, and enhancement purposes. Results: Of the 92 participants interviewed, 81 were genome editing scientists, and 33 were policymakers, with 22 interviewees being both scientists and policymakers. Multiple areas were identified in which the ethical implications of genomic enhancements for nonhuman animals differ from those for human animals including with respect to experiential welfare; germline edits; environmental sustainability; and justice. Conclusions: Overall, respondents viewed that animal enhancement is unburdened by the ethical complexities of human enhancement. These views may be related to participant perceptions of animals’ lesser moral status and because germline editing in animals is common practice. (shrink)

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) of the U.S. Department of Justice presents the full text of the report entitled "Animal Abuse and Youth Violence," by Frank R. Ascione that was published in September 2001. Ascione discusses psychiatric, psychological, and criminal research linking animal abuse to violence perpetrated by juveniles and adults. The report covers the definition of animal abuse, the prevalence of cruelty to animals by children and adolescents, animal abuse and (...) violent offending, animal abuse and conduct disorder, motivations that may cause animal abuse by children and adolescents, and the etiology of animal abuse. (shrink)

The book is about three things. First, how Ancient thinkers perceived humans as like or unlike other animals; second about the justification for taking a humane attitude towards natural things; and third about how moral claims count as true, and how they can be discovered or acquired. Was Aristotle was right to see continuity in the psychological functions of animal and human souls? The question cannot be settled without taking a moral stance. As we can either focus on continuity (...) or on discontinuities, how should natural science draw the boundaries? Moral agents act and react in a world that they see under a certain description, and there is no value free science that can settle what is the correct description. This book asks us to think about where moral justification could come from, and suggests that the supposed ‘moral status’ of the object cannot provide the answer. For the moral status of the object is a product of our own imagination, and once we see that, we also see that there remains the question where we ought to have the will to see it. Furthermore, since the perception of moral truth involves the development of imagination and will, the means to attain it will be better served by engagement with poetry and literature than with enquiries that seek to exclude the engagement of the imagination, or any appeal to the beauty of nature or the love of one's fellow creatures. (shrink)

This book criticizes the common belief that we are entitled to exploit animals for our benefit because they are not as rational as people. After discussing the moral (in)significance of reason in general, the author proceeds to develop a clear, commonsensical conception of what "animal rights" is about and why everyday morality points toward the liberation of animals as the next logical step in Western moral progress. The book evaluates criticisms of animal rights that have appeared in recent (...) philosophical literature and explains the consequences of animal liberation for our diet, science, and treatment of the environment. The issue of animal rights has become of increasing philosophical and popular importance over the past decade. Morals. Reason, and Animals is the first extensive, second-generation contribution to this debate. Focusing exclusively on the fundamental philosophical issues, Sapontzis both undermines the arguments that have been raised against animal rights and constructs a rebuttal that avoids the pitfalls encountered by earlier defenses. (shrink)

The Netherlands is a small country with many people and much livestock. As a result, animals in nature reservations are often living near cattle farms. Therefore, people from the agricultural practices are afraid that wild animals will infect domestic livestock with diseases like Swine Fever and Foot and Mouth Disease. To protect agriculture (considered as an important economic practice), very strict regulations have been made for minimizing this risk. In this way, the practice of animal farming has been dominating (...) the practices of nature management completely. If, for instance, Foot and Mouth Disease strikes an agricultural area, all wild pigs and cattle living in the nearby nature reservations have to be killed, whether infected or not. This dominant position of one practice over the other has now become problematic. While the morality of the practice of nature management seems to be very different from the morality of agriculture and agriculture has become less important from an economic point of view, the public as well as those involved in nature management no longer seem to accept the dominant position of agriculture. Besides a literature study, we performed a field study with in-depth interviews with experts from both practices to analyze the dynamics of the internal moralities of both practices in the previous century, in order to clarify the contemporary situation. The conclusion was that the traditionally strong position of agriculture is not only weakening; it also appears that the internal values of agriculture are changing. The experts from both sides agreed that, in case of a disease outbreak, it is neither ethically justified nor necessary (because of the estimated low risk of disease transfer) to destroy the animals in nature reservations as a routine preventive measure. This is a major shift in morality. (shrink)

Influential parts of the veterinary profession, and notably the American Veterinary Medicine Association, are promoting the routine neutering of cats and dogs that will not be used for breeding purposes. However, this view is not universally held, even among representatives of the veterinary profession. In particular, some veterinary associations in Europe defend the view that when reproduction is not an issue, then neutering, particularly of dogs, should be decided on a case-by-case basis. However, even in Europe the American view is (...) gaining ground. In light of this situation, this paper considers whether or not routine neutering of cats and dogs, in cases where uncontrolled reproduction is not an issue, can be ethically defended. The starting point of this consideration is a review of the veterinary literature on the effects of neutering on companion animals. The focus is both on the welfare of neutered animals themselves, and on behavioral and other effects that may not directly affect the animals’ welfare, but that maybe motivating factors for owners to neuter their companion animals. Here it becomes clear that justification for routine neutering, particularly of confined male dogs, does not follow from claims about the dogs’ own welfare. The costs of neutering male dogs, in terms of the increased risk of very serious diseases, may well outweigh the benefits. Then, building on this veterinary material, but including some other, additional considerations, the paper goes through some possible ethical approaches to routine animal neutering. These ethical approaches offer different degrees of concern about, or opposition to, routine neutering. Finally, based on this ethical exploration, it is argued that routine neutering, at least in the case of non- free-ranging companion animals, raises significant ethical questions, and from some ethical perspectives, looks highly problematic. (shrink)

This book further develops the interventionist literature on wild animal suffering using different theoretical frameworks, including some that have never previously been used to ground our positive duties to wild animals.------------Though we’ve always known that the wild is a nasty place where predators lethally attack prey, only recently have most animal ethicists come to realize that most wild animals fail to flourish. In fact, what we know about wild animal reproduction suggests that the majority of sentient (...) beings born into the world may not even live lives worth living. It’s not unreasonable for one to initially respond to the above with a sense of depressed resignation, but a growing number of ethicists believe that we both can and should intervene. The purpose of this book is to further develop the interventionist literature by bringing together philosophers who agree that we have significant duties to help wild animals, but who use different theoretical frameworks, or who disagree about the details, e.g., about the reasons that ground our obligations to help wild animals, about how those obligations should be classified, about the content of our obligations, about the means we should use to fulfill our obligations, etc.------------This book will be an invaluable resource for scholars, researchers and students of animal ethics, animal welfare, environmental ethics, philosophy, and sustainability. It was originally published as a special issue of the journal Ethics, Policy & Environment. (shrink)

This volume is a collection of essays concerned with the morality of hu man treatment of nonhuman animals. The contributors take very different approaches to their topics and come to widely divergent conclusions. The goal of the volume as a whole is to shed a brighter light upon an aspect of human life-our relations with the other animals-that has recently seen a great increase in interest and in the generation of heat. The discussions and debates contained herein are addressed by (...) the contributors to each other, to the general public, and to the academic world, especially the biological, philosophical, and political parts of that world. The essays are organized into eight sections by topics, each sec tion beginning with a brief introduction linking the papers and the sec tions to one another. There is also a general introduction and an Epilog that suggests alternate possible ways of organizing the material. The first two sections are concerned with the place of animals in the human world: Section I with the ways humans view animals in literature, philosophy, and other parts of human culture, and Section II with the place of animals in human legal and moral community. The next three sections concern comparisons between human and nonhuman animals: Section III on the rights and wrongs of killing, Section IV on the humanity of animals and the animality of humans, and Section V on questions of the conflict of human and animal interests. (shrink)

Abstract2 Enoch 58–59 provides an esoteric and somewhat eccentric delineation of attitudes toward the mistreatment of animals within some sect of Egyptian Judaism, in all probability. Three attitudes, having to do with the mistreatment of animals in failing to feed them properly, the wrongful binding of animals for sacrifice, and possible secret sexual exploitation of animals, are delineated along with warnings regarding the effects of such treatment on the human soul at the great judgment. This linking of how humans treat (...) animals with how humans will be judged in “the great age” is unique in the literature of this period and demonstrates a deep concern for animal welfare that has been largely dormant in many facets of religion until more recent times. (shrink)

By promoting total liberation, this volume challenges the reader to think about new approaches to justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion. The contributors examine and disrupt many of the exclusionary assumptions and behaviors by those working toward justice and liberation, encouraging the reader to reflect on their own thoughts and actions.

Peña-Guzmán (2017) argues that empirical evidence and evolutionary theory compel us to treat the phenomenon of suicide as continuous in the animal kingdom. He defends a “continuist” account in which suicide is a multiply-realizable phenomenon characterized by self-injurious and self-annihilative behaviors. This view is problematic for several reasons. First, it appears to mischaracterize the Darwinian view that mind is continuous in nature. Second, by focusing only on surface-level features of behavior, it groups causally and etiologically disparate phenomena under a (...) single conceptual umbrella, thereby reducing the account’s explanatory power. Third, it obscures existing analyses of suicide in biomedical ethics and animal welfare literatures. A more promising naturalistic approach might seek a theoretical understanding of the social/ecological circumstances that drive humans and perhaps other animals to self-destruction. (shrink)

After reviewing the literature on current knowledge about consciousness in humans, we present a state-of-the art discussion on consciousness and related key concepts in animals. Obviously much fewer publications are available on non-human species than on humans, most of them relating to laboratory or wild animal species, and only few to livestock species. Human consciousness is by definition subjective and private. Animal consciousness is usually assessed through behavioural performance. Behaviour involves a wide array of cognitive processes that (...) have to be assessed separately using specific experimental protocols. Accordingly, several processes indicative of the presence of consciousness are discussed: perception and cognition, awareness of the bodily-self, self-related knowledge of the environment (including social environment). When available, specific examples are given in livestock species. Next, we review the existing evidence regarding neuronal correlates of consciousness, and emphasize the difficulty of linking aspects of consciousness to specific neural structures across the phyla because high-level cognitive abilities may have evolved independently along evolution. Several mammalian brain structures (cortex and midbrain) are involved in the manifestations of consciousness, while the equivalent functional structures for birds and fishes would likely be the pallium/tectum and midbrain. Caution is required before excluding consciousness in species not having the same brain structures as the mammalian ones as different neural architectures may mediate comparable processes. Finally, specific neurophysiological mechanisms appear to be strongly linked to the emergence of consciousness, namely neural synchrony and neural feedback. Considering the limited amount of data available and the few animal species studied so far, we conclude that different manifestations of consciousness can be observed in animals but that further refinement is still needed to characterize their level and content in each species. Further research is required to clarify these issues, especially in livestock species. (shrink)

A number of factors-new research into human and animal consciousness, a heightened awareness of the methods and consequences of intensive farming, and modern concerns about animal welfare and ecology-have made our relationship to animals an area of burning interest in contemporary philosophy. Utilizing methods inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein, the contributors to this volume explore this area in a variety of ways. Topics discussed include: * scientific vs. non-scientific ways of describing human and animal behaviour * the (...) ethics of eating particular animal species * human nature, emotions, and instinctive reactions * responses of wonder towards the natural world * the moral relevance of literature * the concept of dignity * the question of whether non-human animals can use language This book will be of great value to anyone interested in philosophical and interdisciplinary issues concerning language, ethics and humanity's relation to animals and the natural world. (shrink)

A common view of politics is that it is reducible to applied ethics. If politics, in a classic phrase, is about “who gets what, when, and how,” then the task of normative political theory would simply be to tell us who is morally entitled to get whatever the “what” is in that statement.This view, however, can easily reduce politics to a dizzying vortex of actions to assess from an ethical perspective. And while the task of moral philosophy may be precisely (...) to articulate principles by which to pass such judgment, the focus of political theory lies elsewhere.To study and assess politics means attending to the institutional frameworks and structural conditions that enable or constrain human action to begin with. The question for normative political theory, in other words, is whether the organizational structure of a given society—embodied in its decision-making procedures, its distribution of power, and its defining patterns of production, reproduction, and distribution—is defensible or not.This question of justice in the institutional makeup of society has not been entirely ignored in animal rights literature. Animal advocates have always been clear about the massive societal ramifications of dismantling the speciesist order. Likewise, rights theorists and activists have often proposed concrete legal measures for improving the protection of animals, be it by piecemeal welfare reform in animal agriculture, by the abolition of specific practices in biomedical research, or by seeking the equivalent of human rights for select species like great apes or dolphins. The field has also seen fierce debate among animal advocates about the appropriate strategies for engaging with the state and the legal system.Nonetheless, most discussions have been about what it means to treat individual animals with respect, and not about what is required of a political order aspiring to just treatment of all species. In fact, it is only in the last decade that the issue of political justice has taken up a place at the center of animal ethics.Though the field is still developing, we may take it as a sign of maturity that it can now sport its first “short introduction” book: Alasdair Cochrane's Should Animals Have Political Rights? (2020). Its appearing as part of the Polity Press series Political Theory Today further attests to the book's timeliness.The starting point of Cochrane's book—and of political animal studies in general—is that political relations between humans and other animals are not optional but inevitable. Other animals live among us, and the way we organize our societies has a massive impact on the lives of other sentient animals both inside and outside the borders of our human communities. Assuming that these creatures possess intrinsic value as experiencing individuals with morally relevant interests, the question seems inescapable: What kind of polity can accommodate for the multispecies character of our communities and embody justice for all sentients? Cochrane's answer is largely the same as the one he offered in his previous book, Sentientist Politics: A Theory of Global Inter-Species Justice (Oxford University Press, 2018), where he laid out his full vision of a postnational and species-neutral “cosmozoopolis.”The present book is much more concentrated and written as an accessible introduction for readers new to the field. Over seven short chapters, Cochrane reconstructs his argument for an interspecies democracy by assessing a series of arguments and propositions drawn from previous literature on the topic.The first notion to be scrutinized is the popular idea that animal welfare legislation is enough to secure respect for animals. Here, Cochrane acknowledges that welfarism goes some way toward safeguarding animal interests, but he also stresses that its historical record has been disheartening. Welfarism protects animals only insofar as their protection coincides with human interests, and this is far from enough to ensure respect for the animals’ intrinsic value.The second line of argument tries to push beyond welfarism by claiming constitutional protection for animals. By this move, reformers hope to place animal interests on an equal footing with human interests and prevent the overriding of the former in the name of human entitlements (to property, artistic expression, freedom of science, and so forth). Looking at real-world cases, however, Cochrane finds that these constitutional provisions tend to be sidelined when they come into conflict with the interests of big agribusiness.Noting that more than constitutional protection is needed, Cochrane turns to a third set of arguments about legal personhood for animals. Winning personhood for animals would certainly constitute a radical step toward equalizing the interests of different species. Nonetheless, Cochrane argues that personhood alone would be insufficient. Intrinsic value, to him, cannot be fully respected unless animals win the political right to have their interests factor into society's articulation of the public good. As sentient beings, we can all make a claim on the political communities we are part of to not only recognize us as members but furnish us with the means to live well.The fourth and final step for Cochrane is to argue that democratic representation for animals is necessary for realizing these political membership rights. Without representation, he contends, political rights risk being watered down, leaving animals with much less than they are entitled to as sentient beings. Cochrane critically discusses several different models for how this representation could be organized. While he is partial to a system where specially trained human representatives are tasked with voicing the animals’ interests in the legislative process, he leaves many of the practicalities open for future experimentation.Readers familiar with the field of political animal studies will find little new in Should Animals Have Political Rights? For students new to the field, however, Cochrane's book does an excellent job introducing the main issues in a very accessible format. Students of “regular” political science will also benefit from the book's fresh challenge to the discipline's understanding of “the political” as well as its important insights into the relationship between individual and political rights. (shrink)

There are many introductions to the animal ethics literature. There aren't many introductions to the practice of doing animal ethics. Bob Fischer's Animal Ethics: A Contemporary Introduction fills that gap, offering an accessible model of how animal ethics can be done today. The book takes up classic issues, such as the ethics of eating meat and experimenting on animals, but tackles them in an empirically informed and nuanced way. It also covers a range of relatively (...) neglected issues in animal ethics, such as the possibility of insect sentience and the ethics of dealing with pests. Finally, the book doesn't assess every current practice using standard ethical theories, but tries to evaluate some of them using the moral frameworks endorsed by those involved. So, for instance, there is a chapter on the way that animal care and use committees try to justify some of the educational uses of animals, and the chapter on zoos considers the way that international zoological societies justify compromising animal welfare. The book wraps up with a discussion of the future of animal ethics. Each chapter opens with a helpful initial overview of the chapter and ends with a list of suggested readings to help students go further on their own. Key Features Covers animal ethics from an empirically informed perspective, bringing philosophy into conversation with key issues in animal science, conservation biology, economics, ethology, and legal studies, among other fields Provides ample coverage of the most salient current topics, including, for example: Debates about which animals are sentient The suffering of wild animals Research ethics The boundaries of activism Avoids suggesting that animal ethics is simply the practice of applying the right general theory to a problem, instead allowing readers to first work out the specific costs and benefits of making ethical decisions Impresses upon the reader the need for her to work out for herself the best way forward with difficult ethical issues, suggesting that progress can indeed be made Includes summaries and recommended readings at the end of each chapter. (shrink)

Jasper and Poulsen have long argued that moral shocks are critical for recruitment in the nonhuman animal rights movement. Building on this, Decoux argues that the abolitionist faction of the nonhuman animal rights movement fails to recruit members because it does not effectively utilize descriptions of suffering. However, the effectiveness of moral shocks and subsequent emotional reactions has been questioned. This article reviews the literature surrounding the use of moral shocks in social movements. Based on this review, (...) it is suggested that the exploitation of emotional reactions to depictions of suffering can sometimes prove beneficial to recruitment, but successful use is contextually rooted in preexisting frameworks, ideology, and identity. It is concluded that a reliance on images and narratives might be misconstrued in a society dominated by nonhuman animal welfare ideology. (shrink)

Within the field of medical ethics, discussions related to public health have mainly concentrated on issues that are closely tied to research and practice involving technologies and professional services, including vaccination, screening, and insurance coverage. Broader determinants of population health have received less attention, although this situation is rapidly changing. Against this backdrop, our specific contribution to the literature on ethics and law vis-à-vis promoting population health is to open up the ubiquitous presence of pets within cities and towns (...) for further discussion. An expanding body of research suggests that pet animals are deeply relevant to people’s health (negatively and positively). Pet bylaws adopted by town and city councils have largely escaped notice, yet they are meaningful to consider in relation to everyday practices, social norms, and cultural values, and thus in relation to population health. Nevertheless, not least because they pivot on defining pets as private property belonging to individual people, pet bylaws raise emotionally charged ethical issues that have yet to be tackled in any of the health research on pet ownership. The literature in moral philosophy on animals is vast, and we do not claim to advance this field here. Rather, we pragmatically seek to reconcile philosophical objections to pet ownership with both animal welfare and public health. In doing so, we foreground theorizations of personhood and property from sociocultural anthropology. (shrink)

How do we understand the dignity and value of non-human animals? Leading philosophers, ethnologists and writers contribute to this interdisciplinary and wide-ranging account of animal dignity. With a foreword by world-leading primatologist, Dr. Jane Goodall DBE, essays collected here make the case for applying the concept of dignity beyond its usual humanist framework and introduce readers to animal dignity in history, law, science, philosophy, and literature. United in recognizing the dignity of non-human animals, these essays suggest how (...) we might ensure a flourishing environment in times of ecological destruction and climate breakdown. Historians, primatologists, philosophers, novelists and artists approach the concept of animal dignity creatively, offering interpretations that are academically rigorous, alongside ones that are personal and literary. This variety of engagement knits together a fruitful way forward for progressive relations between all species. (shrink)

The literature presents a broad approach to Corporate Social Responsibility, which aggregates a diversity of issues, such as the environment, labor conditions, and human rights. We addressed the impact of increasing CSR demands during the internationalization of emerging market multinationals on one particular subject, animal welfare. This subject raises important ethical concerns, especially as we understand that animals are sentient beings. Through content analysis of annual reports, we tracked the evolution of AW-CSR activities throughout the internationalization of (...) two large Brazilian meat-processing multinationals as they accessed markets with complex AW regulations. We also synthetized findings on broiler chicken on-farm AW research in Brazil and conducted interviews to gauge the impact of CSR standards on animals. Our findings show that, although EMNs that enter developed markets engage with various standards, the impacts of standard enforcement on actual welfare are not straightforward and call for broader AW and animal ethics developments. Uneven results among AW criteria indicate that some aspects are prioritized over others. Furthermore, some actions of actors such as EMNs and low-tier suppliers seem to counterbalance the expected impact of normative pressures to change the lives of animals for the better. We conclude that AW standards may improve AW in emerging markets; but these standards do not appear to be sufficiently stringent, and require improvements to have a more significant positive impact. A major signal emerging from this research is the fundamental need to broaden the animal ethics debate regarding the use of animals to produce meat. (shrink)

There is almost no theoretical discussion of non‐human animal well‐being in the philosophical literature on well‐being. To begin to rectify this, I develop a desire satisfaction theory of well‐being for animals. I contrast this theory with my desire theory of well‐being for humans, according to which a human benefits from satisfying desires for which she can offer reasons. I consider objections. The most important are (1) Eden Lin's claim that the correct theory of well‐being cannot vary across different (...) welfare subjects and (2) his objection against theories of human well‐being that require exercising a sophisticated capacity such as reason giving. (shrink)

The Palgrave Handbook of Practical Animal Ethics is a recent addition to anthologies in the field, joining The Oxford Handbook of Animal Ethics, and The Routledge Handbook of Animal Ethics. Edited by Andrew Linzey and Clair Linzey of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, the book boasts more than 30 contributors, many of them philosophers, but also including sociologists, scientists, theologians, lawyers, psychologists, and animal advocates. The editors were intentionally multidisciplinary in their approach, noting that (...) “there is currently no book series that is a focus for multidisciplinary research in the field,” and calling attention to the need not only for philosophical inquiry into what we owe animals, but also into the “social, legal, cultural, religious and political” influences that “legitimate animal abuse” (p. viii).The book is divided up into four sections: “The Ethics of Control,” “The Ethics of Captivity,” “The Ethics of Killing,” and “The Ethics of Causing Suffering.” Each of these sections includes an editorial introduction and multiple entries spanning diverse issues, including animal research, animal agriculture, hunting, fishing, zoos, the role of animals in religion, the role of language in structuring thought about nonhuman animals, and others. Similarly, the chapters span issues affecting many species, including farmed animals, fish, deer, elephants, whales and dolphins, rodents, companion animals (e.g., dogs and cats), and others.While the book is billed as a “practical” handbook of animal ethics, it does wade into some conceptual territory, tackling such issues as the ethical permissibility of confining and controlling animals, the question of whether (painless) death harms nonhuman animals, and the comparative wrongness of killing humans and nonhuman animals. This said, it largely stays away from more detailed discussion of normative ethical theory and the moral standing of nonhuman animals, focusing instead on the specific ways that humans treat nonhuman animals. In focusing more on practical than theoretical ethics, the Palgrave Handbook of Practical Animal Ethics both complements and differentiates itself from some other anthologies in the field.The book has several strengths to recommend it, the first being the logic of its organization. The ethically problematic aspects of humans’ treatment of nonhuman animals frequently map onto one or more of the categories of causing suffering, killing, and confining. The organization of chapters under these section headings helps to provide a rational structure to the text, as well as an easy way for the reader to navigate which sections they would like to tackle first (although there is some overlap between sections). With this, the explicit and sustained focus on the ethics of control (section 1) is a welcome and differentiating feature of the text. Much prior work in animal ethics has addressed questions of harming and killing animals, but the ethical permissibility of control per se has received comparatively lesser attention.The multidisciplinary nature of the book is also a selling point. In any anthology on animal ethics, the reader can expect entries from academic philosophers, but the book's inclusion of empirical scientific reviews, sociological and legal analyses, and work in discourse analysis are strengths. One danger in focusing exclusively on what we ought to think and do is that it ignores the influences on how we actually think and act. Many of the book's entries address these influences and thus round out the normative analysis.The middle two sections of the book seem most successful to this reviewer. The section on the ethics of killing contains two well-argued conceptual chapters, coupled with practical analyses of fishing, deer hunting, and religious perspectives on killing nonhuman animals. While animal research and animal agriculture are not directly addressed in this section, the conceptual arguments can be applied to the killing of nonhuman animals in these contexts. The section on the ethics of captivity is not as conceptually strong but contains excellent empirical chapters on the welfare of elephants, whales, and dolphins in captivity. Prior work in normative ethics has established how confinement can be harmful to nonhuman animals by directly causing suffering or depriving them of opportunities for satisfaction (see, e.g., DeGrazia, 2002). However, it is important to complement such theoretical frameworks with substantiation of how captivity actually is harmful to nonhuman animals in virtue of the interests they have and how captivity infringes upon such interests. These chapters argue that captivity is fundamentally (and not conditionally) incompatible with the welfare of elephants, whales, and dolphins.If I have one criticism of the book, it is that it could be stronger on certain conceptual issues. Acknowledging its practical and not theoretical focus, it is nonetheless true that if controlling, confining, killing, and causing suffering to nonhuman animals is wrong, then it is important to say something about why it is wrong—even if that explanation amounts to a short synopsis of more theoretical work done elsewhere. While the question of killing is addressed well, the section on the ethics of causing suffering does not address directly why (or under what conditions) causing suffering is wrong. The chapters in this section are worthwhile reading and review practices causing animal suffering in a variety of contexts. Nonetheless, some additional conceptual front matter would have strengthened the section overall.From a conceptual standpoint, the sections on the ethics of control and captivity seem to hang together. Confinement is a form of control and might be argued against on the grounds that it deprives nonhuman animals of opportunities for satisfaction, directly causes physical injury, or causes psychological distress, anxiety, or boredom. These kinds of arguments fit into interest-based accounts of animal welfare, which in turn can be subsumed under a principle of nonmaleficence: We should not cause harm to animals under some specified set of conditions; confinement harms animals in ways x, y, or z; therefore, we should not confine animals in this way.While such interest-based arguments do make an appearance in the text, several of the book's authors also elaborate an autonomy-based argument against control and confinement: Nonhuman animals have their own kind of autonomy, and just as infringing upon the autonomy of paradigmatic persons is wrong, infringing upon nonhuman animals’ autonomy is also wrong. The problem with this argument is that different kinds of autonomy are likely to be at stake. The wrongness of infringing upon paradigmatic persons’ autonomy is often explained by the facts that we are self-conscious, capable of abstract thought (including language use), and capable of intentionally choosing the kind of life that we want to live (e.g., relating to long-term projects or schemes of personal ethics). It could be argued that because nonhuman animals are not capable of exercising this kind of autonomy, they therefore cannot be harmed by its infringement.Some of the book's authors chip away at this presumption, noting (inter alia) that nonhuman animals have desires to move around and do things that are thwarted by confinement or control, that these desires constitute a form of agency, and that (following previous scholarship) nonhuman animals possess some forms of self-awareness. Specifically, the chapters from Valéry Giroux and Carl Saucier-Bouffard, Lori Gruen, and Carlos Naconecy consider such arguments. Naconecy draws upon David DeGrazia's (2009) analysis of animal self-awareness in making his argument. Though the issue deserves more treatment than I can give it here, it seems that nonhuman animals’ autonomy and self-awareness, even if granted, are of a different sort than that possessed by paradigmatic persons. Specifically, (most) nonhuman animals cannot feel wronged by having their preferences overridden because they are not the kinds of beings who are capable of abstractly considering themselves as autonomous and worthy of self-direction. They may desire things, and thwarting these desires might sometimes harm them, but that is a different kind of argument.Infringing upon nonhuman animals’ (more limited kind of) autonomy might nonetheless be wrong, but if different sorts of autonomy are at stake, then moral arguments relating to paradigmatic persons cannot be directly transposed to nonhuman animals. Some additional argument(s) must be supplied, but (on my reading) the book's contributors stop short of this. Nonetheless, as stated above, the ethics of control and questions of nonhuman animals’ autonomy are not as well trod as other issues in animal ethics. Despite my taking issue with some of the details, the discussions contained in the book's first two sections are worthy reading and help to advance the field.Overall, the book's chapters are well written and cogently argued, and given its breadth, different readers will find different things to value in it. The Palgrave Handbook of Practical Animal Ethics is a welcome addition to the literature. (shrink)

Presents an introduction to the subject, suggestions on searching the Internet, and a bibliography of literature on animal nature, fatal and nonfatal uses, ...

Livestock production today faces thedifficult task of effectively meeting emergingconsumer concerns while remaining competitive on majortarget markets. Meeting consumer concerns aboutproduct safety and animal welfare are identified askey attention points for future livestock production.The relevance of these issues pertains to productionefficiency and economic benefits and tore-establishing meat sector image and consumer trust.The current paper analyses consumer concerns about theethical issues of meat safety and animal welfare fromcurrent livestock production. The research methodologyis based on literature review, (...) secondary data sources,and primary research through focus group discussionsand a survey of 320 meat consumers in Belgium.Objectives were to assess importance attached byconsumers to product safety and animal welfare asethical issues in commercial livestock production, andto evaluate consumer perception of these issues forbeef, pork, and poultry. Significant differences inissue importance and perception are identified amongconsumer groups based on socio-demographic andbehavioral characteristics. From the analysis, meatsafety emerges as an absolute but minimum requirementfor future success of livestock and meat production.Additionally, animal welfare can be expected to becomea critical theme especially for pork and poultryacceptance. (shrink)

There are extensive literatures on two kinds of non-anthropocentric values: animal welfare and such environmental goods as biodiversity and ecosystem integrity. These values are also widely recognized and have influenced public policy. But there is no generally accepted overarching conception of the welfare of life on Earth. Such conceptions are described here, their potential utility is explained, and various objections and difficulties are addressed. So broad a conception of welfare must have multiple components, including an expansive (...) conception of physical health and, for sentient life forms, a conception of hedonic well-being. These are incommensurable, so methods are needed for accommodating and aggregating incommensurable values. Such methods are described. Finally, three problems of application are briefly discussed: establishing well-grounded measures of welfare, obtaining the data necessary to use them, and making the results intelligible to decision-makers and the public. (shrink)

This Handbook fills a large gap in current scholarly literature on animal abuse studies. It moves considerably beyond the debate that has traditionally dominated the discourse of animal abuse – the link between one-on-one interpersonal violence and animal abuse – and towards those institutionalised forms of animal abuse which are routine, everyday, socially acceptable and invisibilised. Chapters from expert contributors raise issues such as: the use of animals as edibles; vivisection; animal sexual assault; animals (...) used in sport and hunting; animal trafficking; the use of animals by youth gangs, by other groups and in war; species extinction; and the passivity of national and international organisations in combating animal abuse. The Handbook is a unique text: it is essential reading for students, researchers, academics, activists and policy makers involved in understanding and preventing animal abuse. (shrink)

This article explores the philosopher Alice Crary’s ideas about ethics, literature, and nonhuman animals. Through studying certain works of literature, Crary writes, readers can see aspects of animals’ moral characteristics that are difficult to perceive outside of literary study. To illustrate and extend Crary’s argument, the article presents a reading of John Steinbeck’s (1937/1993) Of Mice and Men, a novella that is taught frequently in secondary schools and that has been re-evaluated by critics as offering insights into social (...) inequality and animal welfare. Drawing upon and adapting Crary’s work, which does not address questions of pedagogy, the article describes forms of instruction that enable students reading Of Mice and Men and other works of literature to explore the moral lives of animals. Thus, a key contribution of this project is its explanation of how educators can use philosophy to open pedagogy to new ways of seeing and assessing animals’ moral characteristics. (shrink)