Reasoning about eating animals across the lifespan.

This guide accompanies the following article : The Animal Rights Movement in Theory and Practice: A Review of the Sociological Literature, Compass 6/2 (2012): pp. 166–181, 10.1111/j.1751‐9020.2011.00440.x Author’s introduction The animal rights movement has been described as one of the most neglected and misunderstood social movements of our era. However, social movement scholars are beginning to realise the political and moral significance of the world wide animal protection movement at a time when nature itself has been included in the specialist field of environmental sociology. Just as people are beginning to see that nature matters and is not separate from society, nonhuman animals (hereafter animals) too are increasingly perceived as worthy of our respect and consideration. The long‐running animal protection movement which began in England in the 18th century is today better known as the animal rights movement. It is the men and women of this movement who, atypically for a social movement, are campaigning for a species that is not their own. The movement’s theories and practices are important for what they do for animals and also because of what the animal rights controversy reveals about human beings. Author recommends Garner, Robert. 1998. Political Animals: Animal Protection Policies in Britain and the United States. London: Macmillan Press Ltd. The book describes the progress made by the animal protection movement in the two countries where animal rights protests have been most prominent. The author presents a comprehensive examination of animal welfare policies in Britain and the US thus providing an informative comparative study of the movement’s relationship with the state in these two countries. Garner’s focus on policy networks corresponds to the sociologist’s concept of social movement organizations. More than fifty such organizations balanced evenly between animal protectionists and animal‐user industries are discussed in the book. Political Animals provides an excellent introduction to the politics of animal rights, although missing in the accounts are the voices of the animal activists and their opponents. In the final analysis, it is the meaning activists attribute to their cause that drives the movement, a fact which Garner tacitly acknowledges. Imhoff, Daniel (ed) 2010. The CAFO Reader: The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories. Published by the Foundation for Deep Ecology with Watershed Media, Berkeley, LA: University of California Press. The Reader’s subject – concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO) – covers most of the topics relevant to factory farmed animals and is divided into seven parts: (1) The pathological mindset of the CAFO; (2) Myths of the CAFO; (3) Inside the CAFO; (4) The loss of diversity; (5) Hidden costs of CAFO; (6) Technological takeover; (7) Putting the CAFO out to pasture. The acronym CAFO suggests a bland, mundane practice and is therefore a name which the editor believes should be replaced by the more accurate label “animal concentration camps”. The chapter titles indicate what is in store for the reader but the content is perhaps less confronting than the book’s companion photo‐format volume of the same name. The reader is a very comprehensive survey of how living creatures are subjected to inhumane practices for their body parts by “corporate food purveyors” and is essential reading for anyone who cares about the future survival of all of the earth’s species. Kean, Hilda. 1998. Animal Rights: Political and Social Change in Britain since 1800. London: Reaktion Books Ltd. In this attractive book, the historian Hilda Kean provides one of the most comprehensive and interesting surveys of the early animal protection movement in England, the birthplace of animal rights. Kean tells a compelling story of how and why people’s attitudes and practices involving animals changed over the past two centuries. She attributes these changes largely to the seemingly simple idea of “sight”, or how people were influenced by seeing for themselves how animals such as horses and dogs were ill treated in public spaces such as in streets and markets. Animals “out of sight” in vivisection laboratories and in abattoirs also came to the attention of the early animal protectionists, most of whom were women. The sight and spectacle of animal abuse turned hearts and stomachs once a light was shone on these everyday cruelties by the pioneers of animal rights in England. Kean’s book is nicely illustrated in keeping with the theme of seeing animals in their various relationships with humans. Munro, Lyle. 2005. Confronting Cruelty: Moral Orthodoxy and the Challenge of the Animal Rights Movement. Leiden & Boston: Brill. For most people animal cruelty is understood as unspeakable acts perpetrated by warped individuals mostly against dogs, cats, birds and sometimes horses. The animal rights movement seeks to broaden the issue of animal cruelty to include the vast numbers of animals that suffer and die in “the animal industrial complex” of intensive farming, recreational hunting and animal research and experimentation. The book draws on social movement theory to explain how and why an increasing number of people in the UK, US and Australia have taken up the cause of animals in campaigning against the exploitative practices of the animal‐user industries. Essentially, the thesis is that animal abuse is constructed by the animal rights movement as a social problem (speciesism) on a par with sexism and racism. This is the first book in the Human and Animal Studies Series which currently lists about a dozen monographs published by Brill under the editorship of Kenneth Shapiro of the Society & Animals Institute in the US. Noske, Barbara. 1989. Humans and Other Animals: Beyond the Boundaries of Anthropology. London: Pluto Press. As an anthropologist, Noske brings a different perspective to our relationship with nature, especially in the long process of animal domestication. Her chapter on “the animal industrial complex” shows how both human and nonhuman animals suffer within this structure of domination; for example, slaughterhouse work takes a heavy toll on the meat workers while the animals experience atrocious pain and misery on the assembly line of mass execution. Noske’s book is valuable for its broad treatment of animal‐human relations in which she describes cultural, historical, structural and sociological aspects of these relations particularly in America and Australia. Wilkie, Rhoda and Inglis David (eds.) 2007. The Social Scientific Study of Nonhuman Animals: A Five‐volume Collection – Animals and Society: Critical Concepts in the Social Sciences. (Vols 1–5), London: Routledge. This is a collection of 90 previously published articles and book chapters in approximately 2,000 pages on the social‐scientific study of animals. The papers range from the earliest in 1928 on “the culture of canines” to the latest in 2006 on “religion and animals.” Three quarters of the papers were published in the last two decades and are derived from anthropology, sociology, psychology, geography, philosophy and feminist studies. Because Animals and Society is based mostly on work derived from more than 12 different specialist journals, it has a claim to comprehensiveness; however, the editors mention topics that are not covered in the collection:

Yew-Kwang Ng’s research is the work of an obviously sincere, intelligent, and conscientious animal advocate. But I am unable to accept his starting assumption that animal welfare is an appropriate basis for animal ethics. More specifically I argue that animal welfare as a means to animal liberation is an issue that can be debated, but animal welfare as the ultimate end or goal of animal advocacy is misguided.

IT'S hard to avoid the subject of artificial intelligence (AI) at the moment, and what chat bots like ChatGPT can do for us, or the Terminator-style threats, existential or otherwise, that AI poses. But there is more to technology than AI, and technological developments in the animal health industry mean that remote monitoring of animals is more possible than ever before. But what are the consequences of this? This question was posed at the recent Animal Welfare Foundation discussion forum, in a session entitled ‘Technology is challenging the paradigm of animal welfare’. All four speakers on the panel – Nicola Blackie, Kevin Corley, Piers Hampson and Jonathan Statham – agreed that there were opportunities to improve animal welfare through the use of technology, but that it should augment rather than replace people. They argued that technology could even help retain people in the animal health industry as it could free them up to do more interesting tasks and solve more complex challenges. Technological innovations can generate, gather and process a huge amount of data, but as Blackie pointed out, it is how these data are interpreted that is important. She gave examples of how certain remote measurements might lead to misinterpretation of what was happening in the field if nobody was there to observe what was going on. Corley highlighted the importance of ensuring that any algorithms developed did not worsen bias and that data were thoroughly interrogated to understand the starting point. However, there is certainly the opportunity to use technology to spot subclinical signs and early warning behaviours to help identify and tackle health and welfare problems before they become serious. But again, the panellists sounded a note of caution, highlighting the challenge of identifying when these warning signs would lead to an actual problem. There is, for example, a danger of overtreating or overprescribing antimicrobials following the detection of subclinical signs that, ultimately, would not turn into disease. Nonetheless, continued data collection and research may well yield biomarkers and measurements that are reasonably accurate in flagging up a problem, giving the opportunity for intervention before a disease becomes established. An audience member also highlighted the danger of animals being considered as non-sentient ‘machines’ if too much monitoring is done remotely. This is another reason why people must maintain day-to-day knowledge of and responsibility for the animals they are caring for – be they owner or vet. More widely, technology can be of benefit in many current areas of concern. During the debate, Statham suggested that technology could help balance the pressures between animal health and welfare, sustainability, food security and antimicrobial use, for example. “Technology must not be introduced blindly, without consideration of possible consequences Keeping the interests of animals front and centre in all developments is key, and vets and vet nurses must advocate for them. This debate is taken further in an opinion piece on p 491 of this issue, in which Steve McCulloch, a vet and animal welfarist, argues vets should be involved in securing not only animal welfare but animal rights too. BVA grants editorial freedom to the Editor of Vet Record. The views expressed in the journal are those of the authors and may not necessarily comply with BVA policy

We and they: Animal welfare in the era of advanced agricultural biotechnology

JAVMA, Vol 233, No. 6, September 15, 2008 T often, veterinarians decline opportunities to discuss animal rights. They sometimes state that they support animal welfare, but they often avoid engaging the subject of animal rights. As a result, important questions regarding the appropriate and inappropriate use of animals are addressed by individuals who are frequently poorly informed in these matters. The public believes that veterinarians are experts on animal welfare and animal rights. A veterinarian’s formal education and experience qualify him or her to provide guidance in these areas. However, when the public seeks direction from veterinarians on matters of animal rights, the responses they receive are often vague or nonsubstantive. Some of the confusion that infects any discussion on animal welfare and animal rights results from a failure to focus on what does and does not impact the welfare of farm animals. Discussions on animal rights are often sidetracked onto issues such as vegetarianism, the urban consumer, farm size, organic agriculture, and other tangential subjects. Discussions should focus on the history of animal domestication with an emphasis on the use of the correct terminology to build well-constructed arguments. In this commentary, we distinguish between those areas germane to discussions on animal welfare and animal rights from those that are of an extraneous nature.

Whether humans will ever find peace is up for conjecture, but this book aims to demonstrate that until we improve the welfare of non-human animals, we will never find health. For many involved in the health field, this proclamation will come as a great surprise. For others, it might be viewed as approaching heresy. How could the medical field, which is charged with the enormous responsibility of promoting human health and alleviating our suffering, also be concerned about the welfare of animals? It may be argued that animal welfare has nothing to do with human health, or even, more broadly, with human welfare. Yet, the notion that the way in which we treat animals impacts our own welfare is not a new one. Philosophers, scientists and other thinkers, dating from ancient Greece to modern times, have long suggested that when we disregard the welfare of other animals it may come back to haunt us in one way or another. The list of such thinkers is long and includes distinguished names such as Pythagoras, Plutarch, Socrates, Albert Einstein, St Francis of Assisi, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant and Isaac Bashevis Singer.

The rise in public interest in animal rights and welfare during the last two decades has been dramatic, and concern for zoo animals is evident throughout society in many South East Asian countries. It is essential that problems related to animal welfare are understood in order for zoos to make significant improvements in their professional and ethical standards. In this paper, I describe in detail the procedures of welfare and ethics evaluations in South East Asian zoos. Zoo evaluation is an ongoing process and is carried out on behalf of the South East Asian Zoos Association to evaluate the members of this organisation. During recent evaluations, several major and minor problems have been identified and constructive suggestions have been provided to zoo authorities which have in turn significantly improved the standards of animal welfare and ethics. Thus, the welfare evaluation procedures outlined in this paper could serve as a model for other zoos to follow — locally, regionally and globally.

Sweden is often mentioned as a leading country when it comes to animal welfare (AW). However, substantial changes have been made in the national AW legislation lately, resulting in criticism. This study analysed how the Swedish Central Competent Authority (CCA) has handled AW research findings, and changes in governmental and stakeholder interests when revising the national legislation between 1988 and 2019. AW legislation amendments for cattle, pigs and horses were scrutinized as well as other governmental documents. The AW regulations have been modified several times since 1988. The main motive presented by the CCA’s for an alteration of the legislation was to improve AW. However, the CCA’s use of scientific results were surprisingly scarce and inconsistent. The second most common motive was that changes were made in the interest of the owners/industry. The stakeholders’ major opportunity to influence new AW regulations turned out to be through an early CCA consultation. After referral management, the CCA did generally not make substantial changes in relation to the original proposal, even if a majority of referral bodies were critical. The industry had the biggest impact, while the opinions from AW, animal rights, and consumer NGOs never per se induced changes. The Government and the Ministry are involved not only in the AW Act and Ordinance but indirectly also at the CCA level. The CCA regulations did mirror the Government’s views and wordings, focusing on improving the AW level and making detailed regulations before 2007, and after 2007 recommending that the CCA regulations’ AW level shall be maintained but less detailed, more flexible and goal oriented. The governmental directions to the CCA are, and have been, anything but unambiguous. The regulations can hence be perceived as inconsistent. We hence, argue that the politicians need to provide clearer directions and instructions to the CCA.

Improving animal health and welfare in livestock systems depends on reliable proxies for assessment and monitoring. The aim of this project was to develop a novel method that relies on animal-based indicators and data-driven metrics for assessing health and welfare at farm level for the most common livestock species in Switzerland. Method development followed a uniform multi-stage process for each species. Scientific literature was systematically reviewed to identify potential health and welfare indicators for cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and poultry. Suitable indicators were applied in the field and compared with outcomes of the Welfare Quality® scores of a given farm. To identify farms at risk for violations of animal welfare regulations, several agricultural and animal health databases were interconnected and various supervised machine-learning techniques were applied to model the status of farms. Literature reviews identified a variety of indicators, some of which are well established, while others lack reliability or practicability, or still need further validation. Data quality and availability strongly varied among animal species, with most data available for dairy cows and pigs. Data-based indicators were almost exclusively limited to the categories “Animal health” and “Husbandry and feeding”. The assessment of “Appropriate behavior” and “Freedom from pain, suffering, harm and anxiety” depended largely on indicators that had to be assessed and monitored on-farm. The different machine-learning techniques used to identify farms for risk-based animal welfare inspections reached similar classification performances with sensitivities above 80%. Features with the highest predictive weights were: Participation in federal ecological and animal welfare programs, farm demographics and farmers' notification discipline for animal movements. A common method with individual sets of indicators for each species was developed. The results show that, depending on data availability for the individual animal categories, models based on proxy data can achieve high correlations with animal health and welfare assessed on-farm. Nevertheless, for sufficient validity, a combination of data-based indicators and on-farm assessments is currently required. For a broad implementation of the methods, alternatives to extensive manual on-farm assessments are needed, whereby smart farming technologies have great potential to support the assessment if the specific monitoring goals are defined.

Through the use of primary source documents, readers can learn about key opinions and legislation in the important field of animal rights and welfare—a current and highly relevant topic. Animal Rights and Welfare: A Documentary and Reference Guide addresses a broad range of key topics within the subject of animal rights and welfare, including zoos, animal testing, philosophy regarding the treatment of animals, and practical measures instituted to protect animals, supplying readers with an impartial and authoritative resource for understanding the history of animal rights and the issues that dominate discussions about animal rights. Organized chronologically, the book discusses topics such as animal rights within the context of hunting for food, pelts, and other body parts, as well as for recreation; working animals; animals used for education or scientific and medical research; animals in the fashion and entertainment industries; and the food industry. The text provides reproductions of dozens of carefully selected primary documents from the time of Aristotle (B.C.) to present day to engage readers and provide opportunities for them to apply their critical thinking and analysis skills. The text of each document is introduced by a headnote to place it in context and concludes with analysis that details its significance and clarifies specific passages when needed. Each document or excerpt is followed by a full citation of the document.

The purpose of the study was to investigate the influence of demographic and experiential factors on first-year veterinary students career choices and attitudes to animal welfare/rights. The study surveyed 329 first-year veterinary students to determine the influence of demographic factors, farm experience, and developmental exposure to different categories of animals on their career preferences and on their attitudes to specific areas of animal welfare and/or rights. A significant male gender bias toward food-animal practice was found, and prior experience with particular types of animals--companion animals, equines, food animals--tended to predict career preferences. Female veterinary students displayed greater concern for possible instances of animal suffering than males, and prior experience with different animals, as well as rural background and farm experience, were also associated with attitude differences. Seventy-two percent of students also reported that their interactions with animals (especially pets) had strongly influenced the development of their values. Animals ranked second in importance after parents in this respect. The present findings illustrate the importance to issues of animal welfare of the cultural context of past experience and influences on attitude development. The results also suggest that previous interactions with animals play a critical role in guiding veterinary students into their chosen career, as well as in helping to determine their specific employment preferences within the veterinary profession. From an animal welfare perspective, the dearth of women choosing careers in food-animal practice is a source of concern.

<i>Literary Bioethics: Animality, Disability, and the Human</i> by Maren Tova Linett

Historically, conservation has focused on species, ecological communities, systems and processes, rather than on individual animals. Even among advocates for compassionate conservation, the focus on animal welfare or animal rights only relates to conservation activities. However, in recent years the idea of managing ecosystems primarily to improve wild animal welfare has been gaining traction among animal ethicists and animal welfare researchers. Managing ecosystems for animal welfare is generally antithetical to management to support ecological and evolutionary processes, since essential features of those processes, such as predation, privation and competition, are sources of animal suffering. Our aim in this paper is not to defend the proposal that ecosystem management should focus primarily on improving wild animal welfare. It is, rather, to situate this proposal in relation to concerns about wild animal welfare expressed by the public and conservation biologists; to connect it to the rise of subjectivist theories of animal welfare; to introduce the ethical arguments used to support elevating the importance of individual wild animals; to explain the advocacy context; to outline potential implications for conservation; and to review critiques of taking a wild animal welfare focus in ecosystem management.

In February 2014, Denmark joined a growing list of European nations to ban kosher and halal butchering methods without pre-stunning. While this policy is a victory for the animal welfare and rights movements, it is also part of a troubling trend of European states limiting religious freedom for religious minorities. This violation of minority rights is not just a problem for liberal democracy, but I suggest it is also a challenge to animal welfare and rights globally. In this chapter, I will look at the ethical, political, and theological issues surrounding the banning of non-stun religious slaughter to underlie a practical policy recommendation that members of a liberal democracy, including proponents of animal welfare and animal rights, ought to oppose bans on kosher and halal butchering without pre-stunning for the sake of religious freedom and animal welfare. First, I will describe the requirements of religious slaughter in Judaism and Islam along with the controversy in Europe over the banning of non-stun religious slaughter. Next, I will challenge the claim that stun slaughter is more humane than non-stun slaughter. In the third section, I will discuss religious freedom and the moral status of animals within the liberal requirements of moral pluralism and secularism. Finally, I will argue that religious traditionalists and animal welfarists ought to work together to promote overall animal well-being. My purpose in this essay is not just to discuss liberal democratic principles but to engage in the deliberative process of exchanging reasons and finding common ground. Far too often groups with opposing interests work to improve their arguments against one another, but genuine deliberation involves understanding the underlying motivations for policy positions. The goal here is not to downplay the differences between animal movement proponents and religious traditionalists but to highlight the areas where their interests overlap for the benefit of animal welfare, religious freedom, and liberal democracy.

Most people around the world eat meat and billions of animals are slaughtered each year to meet that demand. For many, eating meat is a biocultural activity steeped in tradition and formative in cuisines and identity. Eating meat, however, comes with a myriad of ethical and practical considerations. In tandem with animal rights and environmental sustainability concerns surrounding the impact of animal slaughter for meat, animal welfare science has identified numerous ways animals may suffer on an individual level during various methods of slaughter. Practices of slaughter differ around the world and the degree to which culture and regional interpretations of religion impact consumer expectations and perceptions of suffering at slaughter are relatively unknown. We begin to address some of these gaps by conducting a survey of 4,291 members of the general public to assess knowledge and attitudes around animal welfare at slaughter and religious slaughter, across 14 culturally and religiously diverse countries in local languages; Australia, Philippines, Nigeria, United Kingdom and United States (English), Bangladesh (Bengali), Brazil (Portuguese), Chile (Spanish), China (Traditional Chinese), India (Hindi and English), Malaysia (Bahasa Malay, Chinese and English), Pakistan (Urdu), Sudan (Arabic) and Thailand (Thai). Our results demonstrate that in highly developed countries where exposure to slaughter is low, comfort witnessing slaughter and knowledge about animal welfare at slaughter and the local application of stunning is also low. Cultural and religious differences exist by country, however in all countries except Bangladesh, the majority of participants stated that it mattered to them that animals do not suffer during slaughter, and in most countries, participants would prefer that animals be rendered unconscious before they are slaughtered (preslaughter stunning); including in countries where this practice is not currently widespread. These findings suggest that concern for the reduction of animal suffering during slaughter is a universal human tendency, rather than a cultural development, while opinion of how best to achieve this (i.e., to stun or not to stun) may be cultural and tied to local interpretations of religious slaughter requirements. The findings of this study serve as an indication for meat industries and governments that continual review and improvement of animal welfare processes at slaughter are required to continue to meet evolving general public sentiment.