Animal Welfare Theories

This 5-part series of articles  (written as an undergraduate major in Philosophy and Government) at the College of William and Mary) is the first major study of the animal rights and animal liberation movement that was fully emerging in the United States.  It examines the organization, structure, goals, and ideas of those working to protect non-human animals.  (Note: unpublished but also available upon request from the author or though the library at the College of William and Mary—and a separate part of this work— is an original theory and analysis of "Inter-specific Justice" (i.e., for both human and non-human animals).

Animal welfare is a growing public concern that has the potential to undermine the social license of zoos and aquariums. The lack of consensus on how animal welfare is defined across such a diverse sector combined with and a widespread belief that commercial priorities such as entertaining visitors conflicts with animal welfare,

This Article develops the proposition that non-human animals can possess and exercise legal rights. This proposal is supported by the fact that our legal system already accommodates a number of animal interests within the criminal anti-cruelty laws and civil trust laws. To make a more coherent package of all animal-related public policy issues, it is useful to acknowledge the existence of a fourth category of property, living property. Once separated out from other property, a new area of jurisprudence will evolve, providing legal rights for at least some animals. This Article establishes why animals should receive consideration within the legal system, which animals should be focused upon, what some of the legal rights might be, and how the traditional rules of property law will be modified to accommodate the presence of this new category of property.

Husbandry training and environmental enrichment are both important advancements associated with current behavioral welfare practices. Additionally, the use of training procedures has been proposed as a form of enrichment, with the implication that training can produce beneficial behavioral welfare results. This paper examines the concept of training as enrichment through three distinct ways training procedures could enrich: (1) training facilitates enrichment usage, (2) training modifies interactions, conspecific or otherwise, and (3) training expands behavioral repertoires. Within each category, the paper focuses on past research that provides empirical support for training functioning as enrichment, as well as related areas of research that provide additional evidence. Previous studies support the claim that training is enriching, with additional research necessary to better understand how prevalent and under what conditions training procedures function as enrichment. Future training research should examine these potential enrichment effects, including methodology that allows for comparisons to traditional enrichment, the use of welfare diversity/variability indices, and the effects of learning on trainers and trainees alike.

Animal Welfare 1996, 5: 139-153 To assess the validity of using wild behavioural data as a welfare indicator for zoo animals, the time budgets of 19 captive giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis), from four zoos were compared with the time budgets of wild giraffe from Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe. Differences were shown to exist between the behaviour of wild and captive giraffe. However, only the duration of lying differed significantly across zoos. Correlations demonstrated that both enclosure size and feed restriction affected the locomotor activity of giraffe. An attempt to quantify observer influence upon the behaviour of wild giraffe was made. Different methods of observation were shown to significantly affect the time budget established. The extent to which wild giraffe behaviour can be used as a welfare indicator for captive conspecifics is discussed, as are the problems inherent in such a study. The difficulties in constructing an alternative welfare measure using prevalence to veterinary problems, are briefly considered. Methods by which captive giraffe welfare can be improved are discussed, particularly concerning the provision of browse to allow more natural feeding patterns to be established.

Kant’s view that we have only indirect duties to animals fails to capture the intuitive notion that wronging animals transgresses duties we owe to those animals. Here I argue that Kantianism can allow for direct duties to animals, and in particular, an imperfect duty to promote animal welfare, without unduly compromising its core theoretical commitments, especially its claims concerning the source and nature of our duties toward rational beings. The basis for such duties is that animal welfare, on my revised Kantian view, is neither a conditioned nor unconditioned good, but a final and non-derivative good that ought to be treated  as an end-in-itself.  However, this duty to promote animal welfare operates according to a broadly consequentialist logic that both accords well with our considered judgments about our duties to animals and explains differences between these duties and duties to rational agents.

Extending ethical considerability to animals consistently takes the form of imperialism:  progressing outward from the core of human morality, it incorporates only those animals deemed relevantly similar to humans while rejecting or reforming those lifeforms which are not.  I develop an ethic of animal treatment premised on the species difference of undomesticated animals, which has the potential to reunite not only animal and environmental ethics, but environmental and interhuman ethics:  each species has evolutionarily specified patterns of behaviour for the proper treatment of members of its own species and members of other species, and vice versa.

У монографії досліджено теоретичні та практичні питання
міжнародно-правового регулювання співробітництва держав у сфері
забезпечення добробуту тварин та їх захисту від жорстокого поводження.
Здійснено аналіз становлення та розвиток міжнародно-правового
співробітництва держав у сфері забезпечення добробуту тварин та їх захисту
від жорстокого поводження та виявлено його особливості та структуру з
виокремленням європейської системи регіонального співробітництва.
Монографія містить пропозиції та рекомендації щодо участі України в
міжнародно-правовому співробітництві у сфері забезпечення добробуту
тварин та їх захисту від жорстокого поводження та імплементації
міжнародно-правових норм із вказаних питань у законодавство України.
Призначена для науковців, викладачів, аспірантів та студентів вищих
навчальних закладів, для усіх, хто цікавиться проблемами забезпечення
добробуту тварин та їх захисту від жорстокого поводження.

This paper analyses Connecticut's "pet trust statute," and attempts to answer a question left silent by its drafters and the Connecticut Probate Courts—to what duty or standard of care should a trust protector be held?  It reviews hedonic utilitarian, Kantian, and Aristotlelian models of animal welfare to derive an answer.

В данной статье исследуется проблема соотношения и разграничения понятий  «благополучие  животных»  и  «защита  животных  от  жестокого  обращения»  в  контексте  международно-правового  регулирования. Рассматриваются различные подходы к определению содержания  указанных терминов.

У  статті  досліджується  проблема  співвідношення  і  розмежування  понять «добробут тварин», «захист тварин від жорстокого поводження» у контексті міжнародно-правового регулювання. Розглядаються різні підходи до визначень вказаних термінів.

This research explores the problem of the relation and distinction between «animal welfare» and «protection of animals from cruelty» in the context of international legal regulation. Different approaches to the definitions of these terms are also marked.

The purpose of the present paper is to demonstrate the inconsistencies between ethical theory and legal practice of animal treatment. Specifically, we discuss contemporary legal solutions, based on three case studies – Serbian, German and UK positive law, and point out the inconsistencies in them. Moreover, we show that the main cause of these inconsistencies is anthropocentric view of moral relevance. Finally, when it comes to the different treatment of animals living in the wild and domestic animals, we show that the current theoretical explanations are unsatisfactory.

La loi n° 2018-938 du 30 octobre 2018 « pour l’équilibre des relations commerciales dans le secteur agricole et alimentaire et une alimentation saine, durable et accessible à tous » (EGALIM) traite incidemment dans plusieurs de ses articles de la question du bien-être animal, bien que son intitulé n’explicite pas ce thème.
Dans cet article nous analysons comment la notion philosophique de « bien-être » a pris une importance centrale dans les démocraties européennes de l’après Seconde
Guerre mondiale avec le développement des États dit du Welfare (l’un des deux termes désignant le bien-être en anglais avec celui de well-being) avant d’être transposée aux animaux et dans les textes juridiques internationaux, européens et nationaux,
qui tentent de la définir (I).
Puis nous envisageons les enjeux juridiques, politiques et sociétaux, que cette définition restreinte à la protection contre la souffrance "injustifiée" soulève dans la loi alimentation elle-même. Cette conception du bien-être, limitée, également à l’œuvre dans la loi EGALIM peut être qualifiée d’utilitariste, welfariste classique et environnementaliste car elle n’envisage jamais les animaux comme détenteurs de droits fondamentaux en tant qu’êtres vivants sensibles comme le montrera l’analyse de deux articles emblématiques de la loi alimentation concernant le bien-être animal : celui traitant des élevages de
poules pondeuses et celui traitant du contrôle vidéo dans les abattoirs (II)

In this paper I introduce the 'changing the subject' problem. When proponents of animal protection use terms such as dignity and respect, they can be fairly accused of shifting debate from welfare to rights because the terms purportedly refer to properties and values that are logically distinct from the capacity to suffer and the moral
significance of causing animals pain. To avoid this problem, and ensure that debate proceeds in the familiar terms of the established welfare paradigm, I present an expressivist analysis of animal rights vocabulary.  Drawing upon Helm's theory of love, I show how the usage of rights vocabulary can be a respectable way for people to register their concern for the welfare of animals, even at times when it is unlikely that the animals concerned are suffering. Tying rights vocabulary to welfare via expressivism aligns the aims of animal rights with welfare without the theoretical problems associated with attempts to 'reduce' dignity or respect to natural behaviour or inherent value.

Behaviour represents a reaction to the environment as fish perceive it and is therefore a key element of fish welfare. This review summarises the main findings on how behavioural changes have been used to assess welfare in farmed fish, using both functional and feeling-based approaches. Changes in foraging behaviour, ventilatory activity, aggression, individual and group swimming behaviour, stereotypic and abnormal behaviour have been linked with acute and chronic stressors in aquaculture and can therefore be regarded as likely indicators of poor welfare. On the contrary, measurements of exploratory behaviour, feed anticipatory activity and reward-related operant behaviour are beginning to be considered as indicators of positive emotions and welfare in fish. Despite the lack of scientific agreement about the existence of sentience in fish, the possibility that they are capable of both positive and negative emotions may contribute to the development of new strategies (e.g. environmen...

The purpose of this paper is to describe the welfare conceptions of international thoroughbred racing industry bodies and situate them in the wider animal welfare debate. The aim is to assess the industry’s future-readiness in light of a changing social and ethical landscape in which animal protection has been labelled the next social justice movement. The welfare conceptions of the industry are derived from online content of industry websites and from industry reports. These are then mapped against conceptions of welfare in the natural science and social science literature, and those of animal protection organisations. A conceptual map visualises the findings.

In conclusion, while the scientific and scholarly work, and social/cultural and ethical viewpoints in terms of animal welfare continue to evolve in a more holistic fashion, the thoroughbred racing industry continues to lag behind on the technocentric pathway. Overall, it appears the industry regards the horse as a resource that can be mined for human purposes. Moreover, it appears that the industry is walking a fine line between claiming to intervene for positive change for thoroughbred welfare, and maintaining the status quo for as long and as far as society allows them to. Consequently, the social sustainability of the industry and the welfare of thoroughbreds continue to be at risk.

In The Netherlands annually over 45 million (and globally billions) male chicks are killed immediately after hatching. Because the aim of the layer breeding industry is to produce laying hens, they have no use for male chicks. These chicks do not lay eggs and in layer breeds males are not suitable for meat production because of their unfavourable feed efficiency compared to meat type chickens. This mass killing raises discussions. Since the mid-eighties the societal resistance against the culling of male chicks is growing, as can be witnessed by numerous newspaper articles. Animal rights activists maintain that current practice of killing one day old male chicks is unethical.
Several years ago the Dutch minister of agriculture commissioned research projects to identify alternatives with the best prospects to the killing of male chicks, resulting in the following alternatives:
1. Genetic modification (GM): sexing un-incubated eggs might be possible through genetic modification such that eggs can be recognized by optical equipment as to sex and not hatching the eggs with a male embryo. An important part of the innovation is that the female chickens, and also their eggs, will not be GM. In practice this alternative will mainly have impact on the hatcheries, but will not change production processes of eggs or chicken meat.
2. Dual purpose chickens: in this case the males can be used for meat production. These dual purpose chickens do need more time to reach the desired weight than the current broilers. Furthermore, the hens are bigger than current laying hens and produce fewer eggs than specialized laying hens.
Although both alternatives seem feasible, the problem is that both alternatives have different specific health- and welfare consequences and also may be problematic from an ethical perspective. The aim of this paper is to provide researchers and stakeholders, by reviewing and analysing literature, with a conceptual framework that will help them to understand, evaluate and monitor the social- and ethical aspects of GM chickens and dual purpose chickens as alternatives to the killing of male chicks.