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Summary Health and welfare management lectures + papers
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Health and Welfare ManagementETHICS
The primary debate focuses on public demands to minimize animal suffering and optimize animal
welfare in managed populations of animals. There is no consensus on how to measure the welfare status
of an animal objectively or the welfare implications of any given management practice.
Differences in opinions can be explained from the sociological and psychological perspective. Views on
animals in general are indisputably culture-, time-, place-, and context dependent.
• Northern Europeans perspective bull fighting in Spain is an animal welfare problem that should
be banned, while Spanish colleagues may consider it less problematic.
• One person may consider individual housing of rabbits unproblematic in their backyard, while
signing a petition to ban it in animal testing.
What makes animal welfare different?
• Address the ethical dimension of animal welfare.
• It is not about facts and figures only, but is intrinsically related to values and ethical principles.
• Cruelties to animals is not so much a problem because of duties towards the animal, but because
it does not fit to our human morality. It is inhumane to treat animals in a way that does not
consider their welfare. This attitude resulted in a lot of improvements for the living conditions
of animals.
• 1970: animals were no longer considered as mere things that can be used for human aims, but as
entities that have independent interests and belong to the moral community → animal was seen
to have independent moral status and therefore humans might be considered to have direct duties
to them.
o Cruelty to a cow is not a moral wrong because it is a waste of resources but because the
moral position of the cow itself is sufficient reason to care for its welfare → negative
impact on animal welfare asks for a moral justification.
Whether and to what extent are animals morally entities in their own right
• Animals have a special position in Western society and human-animal interactions are
considered to be important and valuable.
• But: there is no single relationship between human and animals. Humans keep animals in many
ways and for different purposes.
The animal welfare can function as overarching concept in the discussion on the human-animal
interaction.
People that consider animals as mere instrument:
• Care for the welfare of the animal (dog otherwise becomes aggressive, cow may not grow or
produce maximum efficient milk → animal welfare is important because it serves our human
interest. Focus is on biological functioning → welfare is assessed as positive if an animal
reproduces or grows.
People that consider animals to be morally important for their own sake:
• Recognition of an animal as a sentient being → attention to animal welfare doesn’t depend on
human interest only. It is a feelings based approach and provides room for negative and positive
emotions → improving welfare includes creating living conditions that an animal experiences as
positive.
,Intrinsic value imlies that ethics should focus on the individual animal rather than on collective or the
maximization of welfare. Each action should show respect to the individual animal.
• Tail cutting in pigs: positive for animal welfare, negative because it implies human adaptation
of the animal to its instrumental function rather than a respect for it as a creature with own moral
standing.
What one person sees, is not uniform, neutral or beyond discussion. Frames are used for structure, to get
grip on the complexity and for norms and values. The importance of rationality, objectivity, consistency
and coherence starts with the idea of what we value a think to be important.
Person one: consider poultry as instrument that Person two: morally relevant for their own sake
should be handled with care otherwise it might and refers to animal welfare in terms of positive
produce not optimal. emotions and natural behavior.
Assessing housing system in which laying hens biologically function very well but appear to be unable
to take dust baths and have trimmed beaks due to feather picking, they probably have opposite
judgements → starts with their different views on why animals are morally important, what we owe
to them and how important welfare is.
1. One denies animals having right but acknowledges that an animal has intrinsic value → debate on
what we owe to the animal cannot be limited to welfare arguments only → animal welfare can only
function if we are aware of its limits.
2. Be aware of one’s ethical position and that of other regarding the moral status of animals.
3. Be aware of the limits of animal welfare
→ the debate on animal welfare has to cope with a variety of questions that its hampers the
conceptual scientific discussion.
→ to owe aware that share understanding of the moral importance of animal welfare still leaves room
to plurality of view on the moral status of animals and what we owe to them.
Beyond neutral facts
When studying animal health, we aim to find scientific evidence for claims:
• Norms about good science;
• Assumptions about the importance of transparency, scrupulousness or reproducibility.
The empirical level is what the world is like → normative level is how we should deal with that world.
Emperical level Normative level
• Is it possible/practically feasible to • Should you improve the welfare of the
improve the welfare of the animal? animal?
• With ethics, the focus is on the normative
level.
➔ The answer does not imply anything about what is desirable or what you ought to do.
Animal health and welfare are always linked to normativity → need for ethics.
Why ethics?
As professional:
• Expectations about what you should do
• Your own assumptions about what you value
As researcher you have to live up to the norms and values that underlie science.
As animal scientist you need to:
• Be aware of the special position of animals in our society;
,• Be aware that there is not (yet) one view on the value of animals;
• Establish your own position and be able to justify it;
Why do we need ethics?
Ethics is a systematic reflection on morality. Morality is the totality of norms and values that a person or
group regard as directive for action and that are deemed universalizable and important by this person or
group.
Values: Experiences, situations and states of affairs that are desirable for their own sake.
Norms: Specific action guiding rules or prescriptions
Moral norms: Rules that are derived from values(in contrast to etiquette or laws).
Intuitions: First thing that pops up. It can be a signal that something is potentially
morally problematic.
• If the implication of certain principles are very counterintuitive, this can be a reason to
redefine principles. Counterintuitive is not automatically wrong.
• Intuitions play an important role;
• It need to be related to facts and principles
Facts: We cannot draw moral conclusions from facts. They are not neutral and can be interpreted in
different ways.
• Derived from scientific reports
• Facts can play an important role in moral judgements, e.g. whether animals matter. This might
depend on their cognitive capacities:
o Dogs that distinguish meanings of words;
o Elephants with long memory
o Dolphins having conversations
➔ How relevant is complex consciousness?
➔ The answer depends on your ethical principles.
Ethic is dynamic: there is often more than one good answer.
Moral judgement formation
• The principles can be: do not harm, proportionality, maximize happiness, respect autonomy, animal
welfare, justice.
• The principles relate to underlying ethical theories: consequences, quality of the act of person,
relations, context.
o The consequences determine partially whether something should or should not be done.
Dealing with ethical theories
• Understand them not as decision models, but as justifications for positions and as ways of reasoning.
Often it is possible to give a utilitarian/animal rights arguments both in favor and one against a
position.
• Insight in these theories helps you understand argumentation lines of yourself and others
• Helps you to see the potential problems or counterarguments.
, How does the picture link to the three components intuitions, principles and facts?
• Intuitions: The picture plays a role in your intuitions or emotions.
• Principles: The principle of caring: the cow should be able to care for her calf.
Furthermore, factors playing a role are: animal welfare,
respect for intrinsic value, relational value and justice.
• Facts: It is a fact that the cow is separated from her calf after
birth, we assume that that is bad for the calf as well the mom.
But we don’t know if that is actually true.
How does the transportation of cows link to each of the three elements? In the
Nederlands, injured animals are not allowed to be transporterd. Why would this be a
different case?
Adaptation: The process or the state of adjusting or changing to become more suited to an
environment; the traits as a result of the process.
• We can use and change the adaptive capacity of animals, should we?
Adaption, welfare and ethics
Adaptation: The process or the state of adjusting or changing to become more suited to an
environment: the trait as result of the process.
Beyond welfare
If ethics is restricted to animal welfare:
• We ask too much from the concept of animal welfare
• We overlook legitimate arguments beyond welfare.
Arguments beyond welfare are:
• Integrity
o Violation of the integrity: the wholeness and intactness of the animal, its species-specific
balance, the capacity to sustain itself in an environment suitable to the specie.
o Integrity seems to refer to a biological norm but primarily refers to the intention behind the
interference. It refers to a species-typical norm, the ideal image. It appeals to intuition that we
should not tamper with animal genomes.
• Instrumentalization
o Meaning that the animal is seen, treated and turning into an object.
o Treating as if the animal is an object → denial of its own interest or its nature.
o Turning into an object → the animal is treated solely as an instrument for our use or that is in
fact turned into an artefact. The animals become a living part of machinery.
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