Concepts of Animal Welfare in Relation to Positions in Animal Ethics

When animal ethicists deal with welfare they seem to face a dilemma: On the one hand, they recognize the necessity of welfare concepts for their ethical approaches. On the other hand, many animal ethicists do not want to be considered reformist welfarists. Moreover, animal welfare scientists may feel pressed by moral demands for a fundamental change in our attitude towards animals. The analysis of this conflict from the perspective of animal ethics shows that animal welfare science and animal ethics highly depend on each other. Welfare concepts are indispensable in the whole field of animal ethics. Evidence for this can be found by analyzing the structure of theories of animal ethics and the different ways in which these theories employ welfare concepts. Furthermore, the background of values underneath every welfare theory is essential to pursue animal welfare science. Animal ethics can make important contributions to the clarification of underlying normative assumptions with regard to the value of the animal, with regard to ideas about what is valuable for the animal, and with regard to the actions that should follow from the results of animal welfare science.     

The welfare of fish

Our interactions with fish cover a wide range of activities including enjoying them as pets to consuming them as food. I propose that we confine the consideration of the welfare of fish to their physiology, and not join the discussion on whether fish can feel pain and suffering, as humans. A significant proportion of the papers on animal welfare center on whether non-human animals can feel pain, and suffer as humans. This is a question that never can be answered unequivocally. The premise of the present paper is that we have an ethical responsibility to respect the life and wellbeing of all organisms. Thus, we should concentrate on the behavioural, physiological, and cellular indicators of their well-being and attempt to minimize a state of stress in the animals that we have in our care or influence.     

Compulsory moral bioenhancement should be covert

Some theorists argue that moral bioenhancement ought to be compulsory. I take this argument one step further, arguing that if moral bioenhancement ought to be compulsory, then its administration ought to be covert rather than overt. This is to say that it is morally preferable for compulsory moral bioenhancement to be administered without the recipients knowing that they are receiving the enhancement. My argument for this is that if moral bioenhancement ought to be compulsory, then its administration is a matter of public health, and for this reason should be governed by public health ethics. I argue that the covert administration of a compulsory moral bioenhancement program better conforms to public health ethics than does an overt compulsory program. In particular, a covert compulsory program promotes values such as liberty, utility, equality, and autonomy better than an overt program does. Thus, a covert compulsory moral bioenhancement program is morally preferable to an overt moral bioenhancement program.     

A Kantian ethics approach to moral bioenhancement

It seems, at first glance, that a Kantian ethics approach to moral enhancement would tend towards the position that there could be no place for emotional modulation in any understanding of the endeavour, owing to the typically understood view that Kantian ethics does not allow any role for emotion in morality as a whole. It seems then that any account of moral bioenhancement which places emotion at its centre would therefore be rejected. This article argues, however, that this assumption is incorrect. Given later writings by Kant on the role of sympathy, and taking into account other concerns in Kantian ethics (such as bodily integrity), it may in fact be the case that Kantian ethics would allow for an account of moral bioenhancement through emotional modulation, and that in some (rare) cases such an intervention might even be considered to be a duty.     

宠物的福利和管理

＂家庭动物＂或＂伴侣动物＂的提法较＂宠物＂而言,更为确切并规范。伴侣动物往往因为种种原因成为城镇的流浪动物,在一定程度上,已经成为社会问题。遗弃宠物的原因尽管多种多样,深层次原因主要还是伦理道德的缺失。流浪动物日益泛滥,正在拷问人类的精神文明,有必要引起全社会的关注。动物福利在当今社会已不仅仅是概念化的一般性号召,一些发达国家出版的动物法典对犬、猫的福利有专题阐述。法典不仅对伴侣动物的各种福利条件作了具体规定,同时还提出了最低标准和最佳方案。本文以犬的食物饲喂、饮水及犬舍的要求为例,逐一介绍。     

Science, sentience, and animal welfare

I sketch briefly some of the more influential theories concerned with the moral status of nonhuman animals, highlighting their biological/physiological aspects. I then survey the most prominent empirical research on the physiological and cognitive capacities of nonhuman animals, focusing primarily on sentience, but looking also at a few other morally relevant capacities such as self-awareness, memory, and mindreading. Lastly, I discuss two examples of current animal welfare policy, namely, animals used in industrialized food production and in scientific research. I argue that even the most progressive current welfare policies lag behind, are ignorant of, or arbitrarily disregard the science on sentience and cognition.     

Ethical considerations in fish research

Fishes are used in a wide range of scientific studies, from conservation research with potential benefits to the species used to biomedical research with potential human benefits. Fish research can take place in both laboratories and field environments and methods used represent a continuum from non-invasive observations, handling, through to experimental manipulation. While some countries have legislation or guidance regarding the use of fish in research, many do not and there exists a diversity of scientific opinions on the sentience of fish and how we determine welfare. Nevertheless, there is a growing pressure on the scientific community to take more responsibility for the animals they work with through maximising the benefits of their research to humans or animals while minimising welfare or survival costs to their study animals. In this review, we focus primarily on the refinement of common methods used in fish research based on emerging knowledge with the aim of improving the welfare of fish used in scientific studies. We consider the use of anaesthetics and analgesics and how we mark individuals for identification purposes. We highlight the main ethical concerns facing researchers in both laboratory and field environments and identify areas that need urgent future research. We hope that this review will help inform those who wish to refine their ethical practices and stimulate thought among fish researchers for further avenues of refinement. Improved ethics and welfare of fishes will inevitably lead to increased scientific rigour and is in the best interests of both fishes and scientists.     

After Dolly--ethical limits to the use of biotechnology on farm animals

The cloning of Dolly the sheep gave rise to a widespread call for limits on interference with life. Until recently, the main limits were technical: what it is possible to do. Now scientists are faced with ethical limits as well: what it is acceptable to do. In this context, we take ethics to involve systematic and rational reflection on moral issues raised in the public sphere. The concerns of the general public are not necessarily valid, but they are the best point of departure if the discussion is to lead to a socially robust framework for setting limits to the use of animal biotechnology. To assess public understanding, we examine two sources of data: Eurobarometer surveys from 1991 to 2002 and a qualitative interview study carried out in Denmark in 2000. Based on these sources, we formulate, and then discuss closely, the following concerns: dangers to human health and the environment, animal welfare, animal integrity, and usefulness. In the final part of the article, it is proposed that a principle of proportionality should be the foundation for socially robust applications of animal biotechnology. Only in cases where the usefulness of the technology can be said to outweigh countervailing moral concerns, as in biomedical research, will applications of animal biotechnology stand up to scrutiny in the public sphere.     

Ethics committee recommendations for laboratory animals in private research in France

Complementary to existing legislation, non-public research companies in France have been working together voluntarily within an organization known as Grice (Interprofessional Working Group on Ethics Committees for Laboratory Animals/Groupe de Réflexion Interprofessionnel sur les Comites d'Ethique appliquée à l'animal de laboratoire) with the objective of creating institutional ethics committees in an effort to promote animal welfare and good scientific procedures. Each company's commitment to the creation of these committees has been expressed by signing the Charter. Each ethics committee is composed of at least three members, including one who is not a scientist; a veterinarian is highly desirable. The committee examines all procedures and protocols involving animals and hands down a favourable or unfavourable opinion, or requests improvements, especially concerning animal well-being. Consensual approval of the protocol is an essential requirement before the purchase or allocation of animals. The committee examines every aspect of laboratory animal housing and care, and inspects all temporary or permanent animal housing facilities. Grice will continue its efforts in relation with public research organizations as well as with groups and in other countries whose objectives are in line with its own.     

A Survey of Chinese Citizens’ Perceptions on Farm Animal Welfare

Farm animal welfare has been gradually recognized as an important issue in most parts of the world. In China, domestic animals were traditionally raised in backyard and treated as an important component of family wealth. Industrialization of animal production brings forth the farm animal welfare concerns recently in China, yet the modern concept of animal welfare has not been publicized and a comprehensive recognition on how consumers and farmers perceive animal welfare is lacking. Therefore, we conducted a survey on public opinions toward farm animal welfare in China, based on pigs (including sows, piglets, and fattening pigs), domestic fowls (including layers and broilers) and their products. From 6,006 effective questionnaires approximately two thirds of the respondents had never heard of ‘animal welfare’; 72.9% of the respondents claimed that, for the sake of animal derived food safety, human beings should improve the rearing conditions for pigs and domestic fowls; 65.8% of the respondents totally or partly agreed on establishing laws to improve animal welfare; more than half of the respondents were willing, or to some extent willing, to pay more for high-welfare animal products, whereas 45.5% of the respondents were not willing or reluctant to pay more. In summary, farm animal welfare is still in its early stage of development and more efforts are needed to improve the public conception to animal welfare in the process of establishing farm animal welfare standards and legislations in China.     

The Controversy on Fish Pain: A Veterinarian’s Perspective

Fish welfare is still a relatively new field. As such, regulations and protocols to ensure fish welfare are currently limited and vary considerably in different jurisdictions. This is in part because of the ongoing controversy as to whether or not fish feel pain. This controversy has persisted for several years, yet veterinarians have been mostly absent from the discussion so far. This essay aims to address this issue. Here, it is argued that while this controversy has its place, it is unlikely to be resolved in the near future. Fish welfare could instead be improved by pursuing more clinically applicable research to increase knowledge of fishes’ behavior and physiology. Such research would assist in learning the optimal environment for their specific needs, as well as compiling some verified indicators of pain in fish. This would then lead to improved studies that could help to determine if and when analgesic drugs can be beneficial in fish, as they are in many other species.     

My pigs are ok,why change? – animal welfare accounts of pig farmers

Intensive pig production systems are a source of stress, which is linked to reduced animal welfare and increased antimicrobial use. As the gatekeepers of the welfare of the animals under their care, farmers are seen as the stakeholder responsible for improving animal welfare. The aim of this study was to explore the knowledge and attitudes of pig farmers towards pig welfare and the impact of such attitudes on farmers' selection of management strategies on the farm. We conducted in-depth semi-structured interviews with 44 pig farmers in one of the main pig producing regions of Brazil. Interviews covered knowledge and attitudes towards pig sentience and behaviour and welfare-related issues commonly observed in intensive pig farms (belly-nosing, fights, tail-biting, diarrhoea and castration without pain control) and farmers' conception and attitudes towards pig welfare. We identified many management and animal-based indicators of poor welfare, such as the use of painful and stressful management practices and use of environments that limit the expression of natural behaviours. However, most farmers were satisfied with animal welfare standards at their farms. Farmers' perceptions are aligned with their understanding of animal welfare. Although they identified all the dimensions that impact the welfare of a pig on a farm (affect, biological functioning and naturalness), their social reality, industry demands and available advice pushed them to perceive their range of action limited to biological and environmental aspects of the animals that do not necessarily benefit affective state. This precluded farmers from making associations between good health and the animal's ability to express a full behavioural repertoire, as well as from viewing abnormal behaviours as problems. The negative consequences for the welfare of the animals were commonly alleviated by routines that relied on constant use of medication, including high dependence on antibiotics. Expressions of estrangement from the production chain were common voices among the participants. This suggests that farmers may not be sufficiently informed or engaged in responding to consumers' expectations and commitments made by companies, which can pose a severe economic risk for farmers. The findings of this study indicate that economic, technical and social factors restrict farmers' autonomy and their ability to perform their role as stewards of animal welfare. (Re)connecting different human, animal and environmental interests may be a step to changing this scenario.     

In Memoriam

Practicing physicians are just becoming aware of the animal rights movement, which during the 1980s spawned numerous acts of violence against research facilities throughout the United States. The animal rightists are challenging physicians to show moral justification for the human exploitation of nature and the world of subhuman species. They have aroused public interest in animal welfare, sparked protective legislation for experimental animals, and indirectly encouraged the creation of committees to oversee the conduct of animal experimentation and the conditions of animal confinement. This controversy has necessitated a closer look at the questions of animal experimentation and animal rights against the backdrop of human experimentation and human rights. Physicians and specialists in animal care seek to alleviate suffering and anxiety, and, as moderates, they may be able to bring both sides of the animal rights controversy together in a spirit of mutual tolerance and in the common cause of promoting both human and animal welfare.     

Veterinary Students’ Beliefs About Animal Sentience: What Role Does Gender Play?

ABSTRACT

Across a 15-year period, annual cohorts of first-year veterinary science students (n = 1,380; 77% female) at a British university completed the Belief in Animal Sentience (BiAS) questionnaire, in which they reported their beliefs about the sentience (capacity to feel) of ten species: dogs, cats, lions, pigs, sheep, rats, rabbits, chickens, bees, and spiders. On the basis of previous findings regarding people’s beliefs about animals’ capacities for mind, it was hypothesized that female students would ascribe more human-like sentience to animals than would male students. It was also hypothesized that the proportion of female students in each of the cohorts studied would have an influence on the beliefs of the year group as a whole: cohorts comprising a larger percentage of women would have higher animal sentience beliefs in both males and females. The data were analyzed using two-level regression models to concurrently investigate the effects of individual respondents’ gender and the percentage of female students in their cohort. Compared with their male counterparts, female veterinary students across all the cohorts studied attributed significantly higher (more human-like) sentience to each of the ten animals listed in the BiAS questionnaire, but the percentage of female students in each year group was not associated with students’ sentience beliefs. It was also found that childhood experience of having owned pet cats or dogs was related to students’ beliefs about the sentience of these species, although this association did not contribute to the differences found between male and female respondents. Given the increasing number of women entering the veterinary profession, and previous findings that beliefs about animals’ capacities for sentience may be associated with the veterinary care they are given, we conclude that gender differences in sentience beliefs could have a significant impact on the future of veterinary practice and patient welfare.     

Sexual selection for moral virtues

Moral evolution theories have emphasized kinship, reciprocity, group selection, and equilibrium selection. Yet, moral virtues are also sexually attractive. Darwin suggested that sexual attractiveness may explain many aspects of human morality. This paper updates his argument by integrating recent research on mate choice, person perception, individual differences, costly signaling, and virtue ethics. Many human virtues may have evolved in both sexes through mutual mate choice to advertise good genetic quality, parenting abilities, and/or partner traits. Such virtues may include kindness, fidelity, magnanimity, and heroism, as well as quasi-moral traits like conscientiousness, agreeableness, mental health, and intelligence. This theory leads to many testable predictions about the phenotypic features, genetic bases, and social-cognitive responses to human moral virtues.     

Covert moral bioenhancement,public health,and autonomy

In a recent article in this journal, Parker Crutchfield argues that if moral bioenhancement ought to be compulsory, as some authors claim, then it ought to be covert, i.e., performed without the knowledge of the population that is being morally enhanced. Crutchfield argues that since the aim of compulsory moral bioenhancement is to prevent ultimate harm to the population, compulsory moral bioenhancement is best categorized as a public health issue, and should therefore be governed by the norms and values that apply in public health settings. In this article, I argue for two related claims. First, I question the extent to which compulsory moral enhancement should be considered a public health issue that ought to be governed by the norms and values that apply in public health settings. Second, I argue that Crutchfield's argument that covert moral bioenhancement would better respect people's autonomy than an overt program overlooks two important autonomy‐based reasons that, in fact, favor an overt moral enhancement program over a covert one.     

Ethics and animal welfare evaluations in South East Asian zoos: a case study of Thailand

Concern for zoo animals is palpable throughout society in many countries in South East Asia. It is important to understand problems of animal welfare in order for zoos to make significant improvement in maintaining high standards. With a case study of 3 zoos in Thailand, this article presents results for the first time on how ethics and welfare evaluations are conducted in South East Asian zoos. The study identified several major and minor welfare problems and provided constructive suggestions to zoo authorities, which in turn significantly improved the standards of animal welfare. Thus, the data presented in this article could serve as a model for other zoos to follow animal welfare evaluations locally, regionally, and globally.     

Adaptation and Moral Realism

Conventional wisdom has it that evolution makes a sham of morality, even if morality is an adaptation. I disagree. I argue that our best current adaptationist theory of meaning offers objective truth conditionsfor signaling systems of all sorts. The objectivity is, however, relative to species – specifically to the adaptive history of the signaling system in question. While evolution may not provide the kind of species independent objective standards that (e.g.) Kantians desire, this should be enough for the practical work of justifying our confidence in the objectivity of moral standards. If you believe morality is an adaptation, you should be a moral realist.     

Moral agency,moral worth and the question of double standards in medical research in developing countries

International regulations governing medical research, healthcare and medical practice, are, obviously, meant to be guidelines and not detailed procedural rules of thumb that can be applied unreflectively without any danger of doing moral wrong. Moreover, such regulations are meant to apply internationally, and no set of straight-jacketed rules of thumb can conceivably apply to all societies and communities of the world, extremely diverse and differently situated as they are. The mark of a good international guideline or regulation, in my view, is that it should provide a clear principle of action that applies equally to all global communities and societies without seeking to foist the particular or momentary moral dilemmas, quandaries, obsessions and preoccupations of some on all. In this paper, I propose to argue that, because moral obligations are obligations only from the point of view of a particular moral agent, we should avoid making the peculiar problems of any particular moral agent(s) the obsessive concern of all moral agents, and that we need, in particular, to make appropriate distinctions between the ethics of developed world research in the developing world, collaborative or cooperative research between the developed and developing worlds, developed world research in the developed world and developing world research in the developing world. A consequence of looking at things this way is that, while it should be clear that there are ethical concerns, imperatives and obligations at all levels, different standards may and, in fact, cannot but be applied in different contexts at different levels, without resorting to the use of double standards, which can never be morally justified. Finally, I venture to propose a formula for a solemn pledge of moral integrity and noble intent, from the perspective of the agent, that is to say, the investigator, sponsor and funder of any research, to complement and balance the widely accepted informed consent requirement, from the perspective of the patient, the subject of any biomedical research.